Stallman — 20 Years of Explaining Free Software

H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "The first recorded talk by Richard Stallman on free software was in 1986, so I've picked from the 2006 recordings and have made a transcript of a recent talk: The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom. Those two are the only transcripts of his general free software talk. Others that exist are on specific topics such as patents, GPLv3, copyright, etc. For those who've been reading Slashdot during the gradual evolution of Stallman's pronouncements, it's interesting to see what has changed over 20 years."

Comments

Re:Will Stallman ever get over this?

[LainTouko]

The difference is that Windows is an operating system, Linux is just a kernel. You can do quite a bit with Windows on its own. But there's not much you can do with Linux on its own, without anything from GNU.

Re:Hard to explain

[doti]

it's about source code, not price. No, it's not about code, it's about freedom.
How good is to be able to see the code, if you can't modify and redistribute it?

Re:Will Stallman ever get over this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough, credit where credit is due, however all the GNU stuff in the world amounted to nothing until the Linux kernel came along (and in all probability still would not of).

Where were you before 1993? Back before Linux was 1.0, GNU had gcc, g++, Emacs (yes, there was XEmacs too), libc, text utils, and quite a few others that were typically installed on AIX, SunOS, HPUX, Dynix, OSF, DOS (I used grep.exe, sort.exe and uniq.exe quite frequently), and IRIX among others. It was essentially required to have most of the GNU stuff on development Unixes as the standard Unix utilities sucked in comparison.

Credit where credit is due, GNU was everywhere before Linux ever started.

Re:security

[QuantumG]

Way to totally miss the point. The purpose of introducing passwords to the MIT lab back in the early 80s wasn't to protect user's content from people hacking into the system over a network. The purpose of introducing passwords was to give administrators control over the use of the computers. It doesn't matter if today we have large networks and buffer overflows and the assumption that every machine contains confidential information. That wasn't the purpose of introducing passwords. That wasn't what RMS, and other hackers of his era, found offensive. The key message to take away from the password incident is that some people don't believe that the person sitting in front of the keyboard should have complete freedom to do whatever they want to do on the computer.. and some people do. If you want a modern version of this message, think about DRM on home computers. Or region coding on DVD players. A computer is a tool. The operator of that tool should have complete control over how it is used. If we don't have control over our tools, we can never be free.

More on the submitter's home page

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Here's my post directive review of that project. But there's more to do.

Something very important this year is GPLv3. Here's a transcript of RMS on GPLv3, and one of something I said.

Re:If only he could count

[honkycat]

Regardless of how you number them, the ordinals don't have a "zeroth" element. If you start numbering from zero, then the first element is number zero, the fourth is number three. I didn't read/listen to TFA, but if he really said there is no fourth freedom, he's wrong and I agree with you. If he's just numbering from zero, then I have no problem with that aspect.

Re:Just a few counterpoints.

[FallLine]

I think that your arguments focus on the wrong side of the point. Proprietary software is popular, true. That doesn't mean that open sourcing it would make it less popular.

To cut to the chase, this is your flawed argument, not mine. The debate truly is not whether the act of open sourcing existing software itself impacts user adoption: most users don't even know what source code is nor would they care. The debate is about whether or not open source licensing creates an environment condusive to the production of high quality software that the end-users' (not just a handful of geeks) actually want to use. To make photoshop free, for instance, would probably boost short term adoption (piracy), but it would come at the cost of future development and maintenance.

What's more, your arguments also miss the point about the status quo. The shareholders of these various software programs agreed to invest money to develop and maintain photoshop and like programs on the condition that they get high returns on their investment. Your argument is kind of like arguing that, as a car owner, it really wouldn't impact you if GM (or whomever) doesn't pay its employees for the work they performed on your car after it rolls off the assembly line and that, therefore, labor costs should not be a factored into car building.

Stallman attempted to dismiss the incentive argument as just being about how well developers eat and live (necessity vs "sushi" and "condos"). He then goes on to argue how inferior the closed-source development model is because the users can improve/tweak the programs and because code can't be shared across projects. Well, 20 some years after he established his movement, open source development has far less user-adoption than closed source code does.

One of the biggest reasons for the relative lack of adoption of open source as compared to closed source is that RMS ignores the absolute importance of capital investment in modern software development (Developing software was much more of a hobbyists activity 20 years ago because it was generally much less complex--one man could much more easily produce a product worth using for millions of people) No one wants to investment enough money to employ 10 developers for a year or two, ignoring pay rates for a minute, if they can't get a good return on their investment even if the resulting product actually takes off (there is still a chance people don't want it... more risk... more return needed). Even the personal motivation of the developers is important. If I produce 50% more than my developer co-workers because I'm smarter and work harder, then I want more than just name in the credits and perhaps a goldstar next to my name. If some large company won't pay me appropriately, then I'll take some personal risk join/start a startup that will at least give me an equity stake for my blood, sweat, and tears.

RMS also ignores the fact that many proprietary companies also go into the business of facilitating software development with the production of libraries and utilities...

But anyways-I know there are people that like to code for its own sake. I am one of those people sometimes. However, if I'm not getting paid as a developer or if I'm not likely recieve a payout as an entrepreneur (which I am now), then I'm apt to want to only work on the things that I want to work on today. These things tend to be very different than what the majority of the population, average users/companies, want and need (the applications themselves, the scope of the work, the quality, etc). Where is the fun in perfecting install and un-installation routines? Documentation/Help files? Making an easy UI for beginners? Making sure that it runs without modification on many different hardware/software configurations?....

A directory of free software recordings

[jbn-o]

Let the community decide what Stallman said, including comments by Stallman.

Any misunderstanding of what Stallman said will not be corrected by allowing "the community [to] decide what Stallman said". Unlike the expressions of ancient speakers, we can hear his recordings, read the transcripts of what he said, and email him.

Also, such work is being done (albeit not on a wiki, which poses some minor technical advantages) thanks to the work of the FSF and FSFE.

Finally, it's worth noting that Stallman was not and is not a member of the open source movement. He started and remains a member of the free software movement which is philosophically distinct and over 10 years older than the open source movement. In fact, it is people's ignorance of this is directly addressed in the talk being referenced in this /. story:

It's not enough just to teach people to use Free Software. Of course I hope that they use Free Software, because it's a shame if they're using non-free, user-subjugating software. But just to use Free Software is not enough if we want to have freedom that will last for many years. If we gave everybody that uses computers freedom tomorrow, but they didn't know what that freedom was, five years from now, many of them would have lost it because someone would have said to them "I've got a nice program that will make things easier, would you like it? Of course, you have to promise not to share it, and I won't let you see what's inside, but it's a nice program, don't you want it?"

A person who has not learned to think that there is something wrong there might say yes. And that means her freedom is partly gone. So, it's not enough just to give people freedom. We need to teach people to recognise it as freedom so that they can learn to value it and then defend it and not let it go. That's what we need if we want to have freedom not just tomorrow but permanently.

Re:Just a few is enough

[p0d3r1]

...his redefinition of the word "free" to make a point to first time I heard it - let alone the tenth time he jumped down some poor journalists throat for using the word the way the dictionary defines it He never tried to re-define the meaning of the word "free". "Free"(as adjective) has 2 main meanings (which are very different from each other). He just tried, and still tries, to explain to which one he referes when speaking about Free Software, but, in general, it seems that lot of people can't understand that point yet.