Stallman On the State of Free Software 25 Years On

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 4, 2009 @03:38AM from the industry-of-free dept.

TRNick writes "What's the state of free software, 25 years after GNU's birth? TechRadar has an interview with Richard Stallman to find out. Stallman thinks free software is making good progress: 'Nowadays hardware developers are also increasingly likely to publish the interface specs so that we can develop free software that works with the hardware. Perhaps we are turning the corner, but we still have a big fight on our hands before all computer users have freedom.' But how many of us actually run an operating system that Richard Stallman would consider free? Many of the more popular GNU/Linux distributions, including Mandriva and Ubuntu, bundle proprietary code with their free software packages. Perhaps free software has reached a large enough install base that companies are happy to use it for their own gain, but aren't quite so willing to make their own commitments to free software development. How important this is to the success of free software depends on how strong your stance is on freedom is."

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Re:The problem with Stallman's approach by beelsebob · 2009-01-04 04:08 · Score: 0, Troll

That's not the problem at all. The problem is that he doesn't deliver what he promises. True software freedom would allow you to do anything you like with the software, and wouldn't be restricted to only people who carry on making it free. The GPL isn't freedom, it's just a different set of restrictions. If Stallman supported free software, he would use something along the lines of the BSD license.