Slashdot Mirror
RMS Calls to Liberate Cyberspace
Henri Poole writes "In an interview with Groklaw's Sean Daly at GPLv3 Conference in Barcelona, RMS talks with passion about the dangers of DRM. From the article: 'the point is, we shouldn't be passive victims! We should decide that it will not happen! And the way we decide that is by activism. We have to do everything possible to make sure that those products are rejected, that they fail, that they give bad reputations to whoever makes them.' He closed the interview with a far reaching goal for the Free Software Movement: 'the goal is to liberate everyone in cyberspace.'"
I live in the United States. I spent yesterday looking at other countries and what qualities of government they have, because I am just plain sick of it here. Every week, I read at least one story about our rights and how they are being taken away through the back door. It was difficult to find a country where there weren't any drawbacks - all forms of government seem fundamentally flawed in (at least) one way or another. We don't NEED it on the Internet.
This world-wide network has gained a momentum, and there are people in power that are AFRAID of that momentum. With no REAL commercial core, with free speech and architecture giving itself power and stance... These people feel threatened that they will be disregarded. So they start fighting it in their world.
MPAA/RIAA lawsuits. DRM. Internet taxation. F*CK THAT.
How about open standards. Open SOURCE CODE. Open practice and ethics. These are all the backbone of the Internet, such as the Tier 1 Internet providers, Internet exchanges and other entities that share information freely. We *KNOW* how to govern ourselves. It's actually very inspiring, isn't it? No real central authority (except for standards and protocols, like the IEEE and DNS root servers)... These people who don't see how it works right now intend to change it so THEY are the ones calling the shots.
No thanks, I think we can do it ourselves.
He's right. We need to fight. Keep it in the hands of everyone, not a just a few corruptable, power hungry mother f*ckers who want to either make money from it or pat themselves on the back knowing that they are in control.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Copyright is a very recent notion. Only in the last 400 years or so has it been enforced by government, and really only in the West until it was forced on the rest of the world. Look to other places and times. Take, for example, Rome and ancient Greece: there poets, dramatists, and orators created works of art that have lasted through the ages, and they weren't concerned about people freely copying their work. Martial, for exmaple, makes reference to free copying of his epigram in the marketplce, with no payment getting back to him, and he suggests he's fine with it as long as no one who copies it tries to claim they themselves wrote it. In India, there has always been a long tradition of copying and adapting previous material without payment, and yet it hasn't stopped a vibrant art scene. Copyright holds back the creation of art more than it spurs it.
There are 3 (video) talks at http://www.rehash.nl/hollandopen/ from Eben Moglen (rms lawyer) on these topics (license_drm.mp4 too). I submitted these a few days ago but they got rejected.
No, no, no. Source code is step-by-step instructions for building a product, it's not (usually) the product itself. (The exception would be for stuff like teaching/educational programs, such as Minix, where the source code is part of the product.) To get the "source" for a car, you need all the blueprints, design schematics, assembly line instructions, etc. to build one yourself from very small parts.
Now you may, from looking at the finished product, be able to deduce some or even most of how the car was made. But that's just reverse-engineering, which you can do with software too (well, less and less these days). All those books you see at your local auto parts store, like the Haynes manuals? They're the result of reverse-engineering the car. Manufacturers have their own manuals which they sell (for big money), but they are more like MS's MCSE books than source code.
Sorry, but the analogy you made is kind of a pet peeve of mine. I think so many people make the same error because cars are so simple (compared to major computer programs) that a regular Joe can look at one and figure most of it out. It's frustrating that we can't do the same with software, but even people who do have the source code can't keep it all straight in their heads. It's why we have APIs.
And this is the standard false dichotomy that opponents to the GPL like to ask. Of course given only those choices we would rather have proprietary ones. But even better would be free (libre) drivers. And to get those we have to convince the people making the drivers that everyone wants their drivers to be Free. To do that you have to stop accepting the non-free drivers that the companies give you. One we have free drivers, the entire community benefits from better driver software. So the answer to your question is "NO drivers for a little bit leading to free drivers forever is better than proprietary drivers forever."
That's the theory, in any case. But don't make it look as though FSF is trying to cripple your computer for its own lofty ideals. The ultimate goal is to make it so everyone will see it as a mistake if people don't release their software under a free license. There are two major methods to acheive this goal so far: try and win through superior software alone, or, in addition, use your rights as a software writer to make sure your software isn't used against this goal.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?