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Richard Stallman Answers Your Questions
A while ago you had the chance to ask founder of the GNU Project, and free software advocate, Richard Stallman, about GNU/Linux, free software, and anything else. You can read his answers to a wide range of questions below. As usual, RMS didn't pull any punches.
Capitalism and You
by eldavojohn
Your monkish lifestyle would leave most people who work in software screaming for a Lear Jet and you have stated "I've always lived cheaply ... like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do." Growing up in the United States, I have been served the koolaid of Capitalism several times and I have been taught that the inherent competition and struggle for money in all aspects of our lives make us the greatest country ever. I've read a lot of your comments on intellectual property reform and I can't help but feel that it just isn't compatible with capitalism. Have you ever had problems rectifying your stance on intellectual property with capitalism? Do you see any problems at all with no copyright or patent laws inside a capitalistic society?
RMS: First, I need to correct an apparent misunderstanding. I do not have a "stance on intellectual property", because that would mean using the term "intellectual property" in my thinking. I take pains never to do that, because that term is an obstacle to clear thinking. Every time it is used, it misrepresents the legal reality and spreads confusion.
I judge copyright law by its practical requirements and their practical effects. I judge patent law by its practical requirements and their practical effects -- totally different requirements and totally different effects. These two laws are different on every practical point; all they have in common is a very abstract idea which is of no practical significance.
I want to encourage clear thinking about copyright law. Separately, I want to encourage clear thinking about patent law. The first step in clear thinking about these laws is not to lump them together. In particular, never use the term "intellectual property", since it lumps them together.
I must not respond directly to a question that treats copyright law and patent law as a single issue. If I did, I'd be lumping them together and spreading the confusion I want to clear up.
However, I can split it into two separate questions.
First, copyright. Copyright is a legal restriction on certain kinds of use of works of authorship. The US has always had some sort of copyright law, but it has changed tremendously. The US has always practiced capitalism, but many sorts of works were, at some time in US history, not covered by copyright. Thus, we know it is possible to have capitalism without copyright.
However, I don't advocate simple elimination of copyright as a solution.
Works that are designed for use doing practical jobs must be free; however, simply eliminating copyright on those works would not have this result. In software, it would make things worse, because copyleft is based on copyright. Without copyright, programs could still be made nonfree using EULAs, tivoization, and nonrelease of source code, but we would no longer be able to prevent this using copyleft.
If we wanted to legislate to make all these works-for-use free, we would have to go further than just eliminating copyright on them. In an ideal world, we would do this, but I don't propose doing it now.
As for works of opinion and art, I don't think they must be free. I advocate some reforms of copyright for these works but I see no reason to abolish it.
Patent law is a totally different issue. A patent is an artificial monopoly on using a specified idea. There have been successful capitalist countries that didn't have a patent system. My expertise is in computing, so I campaign to eliminate patents from computing, where I know they are harmful. However, Boldrin and Levine present good arguments that patents do mostly harm in every field and that it would be better to eliminate patents entirely.
With any or all of these changes, we would still have capitalism; only some details would be different.
I feel like you have this admirable and altruistic quality where money isn't the ultimate driving force and when you speak to people who base their entire lives around money, there's a fundamental disconnect that is overlooked.
RMS: Arguments are always based on values. The free software movement is based on values of freedom and community -- that is where it differs from open source. People who don't share those values will simply not get it, no matter what I might say. Since that's inevitable, I don't worry about it. I do my best, and I persuade some, which is better than giving up and persuading none.
Re:Do you like being worshiped ?
by capt.Hij
This brings up a good point. Let me rephrase the question. Mr Stallman, you are regarded as a founding father of the free software movement, and your opinion on free software carries a lot of weight. Because of this you are put under a harsh spot light, and every little thing you do is magnified. For example, your comments about Steve Jobs immediately after his death were broadcast quite widely. To some people the timing showed a lack of taste and were seen as disrespectful.
RMS: Those people evidently were more concerned with forms of politeness that with substantive good and evil. Someone told me I should not criticize Jobs because he could not defend himself -- while thousands were lionizing him with the indirect support of Apple's PR machine. Compared to that, I was David against Goliath.
Because of your status in the free software movement your statement was used by some to smear the larger community. How do you feel about this kind of attention?
RMS: I stand by what I said about Jobs. Apple is your enemy, and if you don't recognize this and fight, you're being a chump.
If someone tried to spin my statement as something to be ashamed of, please fight back by arguing with his spin.
Have you given it much thought, and what kind of insight can you share about the situation you are in when your private and public mannerisms are misconstrued to be part of a larger group's views and outlooks?
RMS: I hope that a lot of the community shares my views of Jobs and Apple. I ask them to stand up and be counted.
Apple's favorable public image, including public admiration of Jobs for side issues, is a crucial asset in its war against our freedom. To tarnish its image, we need to speak loud and clear about Apple's wrongs. When Steve Jobs is praised for the elegant styling of the jails he designed, we must respond that it is wrong to put users in jail. Speak up and spread the word!
Role of the FSF
by ssam
It seems to me that in the early days of the FSF the main role was writing software. A huge chunk of that code is what makes up modern day free operating systems. A lot of it is class leading software (bash, gcc, emacs, etc). In the past few years it seems that the FSF is far more involved in campaigning than coding. Is this an accurate view of the situation? Is this intentional, and if so why? Should the FSF be trying to create a class leading web browser, for example.
RMS: In the first years of developing the GNU system, before Linux completed the system, not many people worked on free software. A few staff hired by the FSF made a big difference to our progress.
Once GNU/Linux caught on, lots more people got involved, so that the few people the FSF could hire were inevitably a tiny fraction of what the community did. Meanwhile, our other jobs became bigger and more important. For instance, once the DMCA made it illegal to release free software to handle common media formats, just writing free software was no longer enough, so we launched the DefectiveByDesign.org campaign. A year ago we launched our campaign against Restricted Boot, which is the way Microsoft perverts Secure Boot into an anti-security feature.
"Success" is not our goal; we're not here to win a race, we are here to win freedom. I didn't write GCC with the idea of making a "better" C compiler. I wrote it so there would be a freedom-respecting C compiler, and while I was at it, I did the best job I knew how. We didn't develop GNU to have a "better" operating system than Unix; we developed it so we could have a freedom-respecting operating system. It's the same today.
Thus, if we could raise money to hire a few software developers, we would spend it on projects that are more than technical improvements. For instance, it would make no sense to try to develop a web browser that is "better" in a merely practical sense. There is no reason to think we could outdo the Firefox developers in what they are good at, and it would be wasteful duplication to try.
Instead we are trying to do something that Firefox does not aim to do: protect the user's privacy from surveillance by web sites, and protect the user's freedom from nonfree Javascript code. A volunteer is working on our variant of Firefox, called IceCat, with changes for these purposes. We don't have funds for this, so would you like volunteer to help?
GNU visibility and factioning
by Digana
GNU is supposed to be a free operating system as well as a group of people working towards building this OS. To a casual observer, however, GNU does not appear very active.
RMS: I've decided to post new package releases in a more visible place in gnu.org.
Development of GNU is done by volunteers, so the level of activity is up to you. If you wish GNU were more active, join in the work on some GNU package that interests you. For instance, it would be useful to have more developers for LibreJS, which detects and blocks nonfree Javascript, and for IceCat.
Some of the most prominent and supposedly GNU packages, such as Gimp, Gnome, GTK+, and R are mostly GNU in name only. The hackers working on these projects have very little interaction with other hackers working on GNU projects and they very frequently espouse views contrary to GNU's philosophical aims. Thus to an outside observer, GNU does not appear to be a cohesive group of people working towards a common goal.
RMS: The GNU project is not as cohesive as I wish it were. To some extent, this is a consequence of an approach that was necessary. The only way to develop something as large as the GNU system through the work mostly of volunteers was to divide it into projects that could be implemented mostly independently by different people. The design of Unix lent itself to this. The fact that the GNU system incorporated programs such as X and TeX, that were developed by other people or groups that regarded the GNU Project as just a user, pushed in the same direction.
There is always a centrifugal tendency when many groups work mostly independently. It is often hard to persuade the developers of one component to do what improves the system as a whole rather than what will make their own component more useful and successful.
By 1990, when we started the HURD kernel, I expected that in a couple of years it would be working and we would integrate the GNU system. However, the HURD didn't work at all until 1996, and in the mean time the community began using GNU with Linux as the kernel. By the time we started using it that way, others had integrated the GNU/Linux combination, making various GNU/Linux distros.
The initial goal of GNU, to have a free operating system, has been achieved; the initial sharp focus on completing a free Unix-like system is no longer applicable. This doesn't mean our work is over; most GNU/Linux distros today contain nonfree software, and there are more things that we expect a system to do. We still need people to seek out and do the development jobs that need doing in order to win freedom for the users of computing.
My first step to make the GNU Project more cohesive was in 1999. In the 1980s and 90s, when I appointed someone as the maintainer for a GNU package, I took for granted that he would understand that his job was to manage a part of a larger project, and what that implied. In 1999 I realized this could not be taken for granted, so I began explaining this relationship to new maintainers and asking new maintainers to agree to it. However, the relationship with a few packages had already become distant.
Many GNU mailing lists being private further the public perception that GNU is not even actively producing software anymore.
RMS: Our main packages have public discussion lists, but that's a choice for the package maintainer to make. Feel free to suggest changes to the maintainer.
What can be done to remedy this situation? How can we strengthen GNU, make it reach out again to the people it's supposed to be freeing?
RMS: For the most part, this is up to you. When you start working on a new free program, do you propose making it a GNU package? Would you like it to be part of a coherent GNU Project? If so, please write to me.
How to reverse the aggregation problem?
by concealment
A problem with software and operating systems is what I call the "aggregation problem," which is that what we have now is an aggregate of past solutions to problems that may no longer exist. The stuff piles up, increasing complexity and decreasing the uniformity and effectiveness of the interface. At what point do software projects call for a top-down redesign? How can free software do this where industry cannot?
RMS: I don't have any solution to offer for this particular problem, other than the slow methods we are using now. Partly that's because I don't think this is the most important issue -- I think our freedom is more important than technical improvement.
However, this is not the only area in which more uniformity is desirable. Around 1990, I designed a protocol for configuring and building packages from source: you type `./configure; make install'. It would be nice if all free software packages supported this uniform interface, but they don't.
To help implement that uniformity, a GNU volunteer recently made it very easy to use Autoconf in Python packages, so that they can build and install using our uniform commands. If you maintain a program in Python, how about adding this support? Every user that isn't a Python programmer will be glad he can install your program without learning a special Python build method.
What project is using the wrong license?
by gQuigs
What free software project is using a license that doesn't actually match with it's mission - or hinders free software in other ways? In other words, if you could *magically* switch the license of one project - which would you choose and why? Examples: Move Mesa to GPLv3, Move Linux from GPLv2 to v3, Make android GPLv3, GCC - from GPLv3 to Apache.
RMS: If I could magically change one program to GPLv3, it would be Linux. One of the improvements of GPLv3 is that it blocks tivoization, and Linux is very frequently tivoized. (Many Android devices contain a tivoized copy of Linux.)
While we're talking about magic, I'd change the license of LLVM also.
Another program that is important to convert is LibreCAD. This is more than a fantasy: the developers of LibreCAD are working on replacing the old GPLv2-only code that they included, so as to switch to GPLv3-or-later. Would you like to help?
What do you think of non-free, non-software works?
by Shlomi Fish
Dear Dr. Stallman, In this Slashdot feature"Stallman is quoted here saying that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that graphics, music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently (i.e., "Non-Free.")." However, this feature does not give a citation from you for that. To add to the confusion in a post to the Creative Commons Community mailing list, Rob Myers said:
"RMS's views on culture are coherent and consistent with his views on software. But he's treating game assets as a matter of functionality (software) rather than speech (culture). There is an issue with the latter not being free.."
So I'm a little confused. Do you approve of people using non-free licenses for cultural works, including the CC-by-nc, CC-by-nc-sa, CC-by-nd, and CC-by-nc-nd licenses? If so, when?
This is especially important given the fact that in the process for formulating the latest version of the Creative Commons licenses (4.0), there has been some requests to deprecate the non-commercial (nc) and/or no-derivatives (nd) options (which I doubt will happen, but is nonetheless some thing some people feel strongly about).
RMS: After some 12 years of stating my position in all my speeches on Copyright vs Community, and publishing transcripts, I'd expect interested people to have found it. But here it is.
Those works that are made for doing practical jobs must be free. This includes software, educational works, reference works, text fonts, recipes, and 3d-printer models for objects for practical use, as well as some other things.
Works of testimony and opinion, and artistic works, don't have to be free as in the four freedoms, but their users should have more freedom than now. I think people should be free to share them (noncommercial redistribution of exact copies), and to remix them. Putting DRM or EULAs on them should be banned too. I think all the CC licenses do these things, more or less, and I use CC-ND for my statements of my views, including this one.
Two of the nonfree CC licenses, CC-NC and CC-NC-SA, have a peculiar problem: they lead to making works which are orphan before they are born.
I call this a "peculiar problem" because I don't think these licenses are bad in principle. The problem is purely a matter of practical consequences, and it seems they should be avoidable, yet I can't see a way to avoid them. I hope one is found; in the mean time, I urge not using these two licenses.
Favorite hack
by vlm
Give me your best hack. Specifically something YOU did personally not hire / grad student. Hardware, software only (yes yes the GPL is cool but I'm looking for code or schematic or at least a description of something made out of source or solder) I can't put words in your mouth but the ideal answer would be something like "I'm particularly proud of the O(n) memory garbage collection routine in emacs implemented around '89 and how it worked was very roughly ..." or "I really like my homemade fully automatic automotive relay based routing system for my OH scale model railroad sorting yard" or "I built my own legal limit ham radio amplifier" almost certainly a different topic of course, but something of this form of answer.
RMS: I can't remember all the hacks that I was proud of, so I can't pick the best. But here's something I remember fondly. The last piece of Gosmacs code that I replaced was the serial terminal scrolling optimizer, a few pages of Gosling's code which was proceeded by a comment with a skull and crossbones, meaning that it was so hard to understand that it was poison. I had to replace it, but worried that the job would be hard. I found a simpler algorithm and got it to work in a few hours, producing code that was shorter, faster, clearer, and more extensible. Then I made it use the terminal commands to insert or delete multiple lines as a single operation, which made screen updating far more efficient.
Why FDR and Churchill?
by eldavojohn
During a Q&A Session a while back you were asked about people and movements near and dear to your heart and you said "I admire Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, even though I criticize some of the things that they did." I love World War II history and I also find myself in a love-hate situation with Churchill. Could you go into further detail about what specifics lead you to single out these two over leaders like Lincoln, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin or even historical figures who have enabled information itself like Turing, Shannon, etc?
RMS: I like math, and I respect good mathematicians, but I don't admire them as heroes. The people I admire are those who fight for freedom.
Why did I mention Roosevelt and Churchill in particular? I didn't make a list of all the leaders I admire and then choose the ones I admire most. That would be a big job, and my memory does not lend itself to that, so I didn't try. I mentioned the people that came to mind.
I was thinking of leaders that fought against evil tyranny. Of the five leaders you mentioned, Roosevelt and Churchill had the hardest fight against the greatest evil. King George trampled the colonists' rights, and the Confederacy fought for slavery, but Hitler's genocidal empire was much worse.
If I were judging peacetime political leadership, I would not choose Churchill; perhaps Jefferson.
Stolen bag / laptop in Argentina
by Cigarra
What ever happened with the stolen bag and laptop? Did you get something back? Did you LOSE data (that is, was something not backed up)? Are you mad with the organizers / country that hosted the event?
RMS: My friends never found any sign of what was stolen. I lost some files, those which were outside the directories that I regularly backed up, but nothing really important.
I don't blame the speech organizers or Argentina in general for this theft. The reason I will never go to Argentina again has nothing to do with the theft. I announced it before I arrived in Argentina: I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy, and I hope you too will refuse to go to any country that would demand your fingerprints.
Revolution OS ...
by i.r.id10t
Interviews with you comprised a big percentage of the documentary Revolution OS. If it were to be remade today, and the financial aspects ignored, what do you think would be different? If you were producing such a documentary today, what would you focus on?
RMS: I didn't make that movie, so how to make it was not my decision, and how to make one today would not be my decision. But I see some things that would have to be different.
Much attention was paid to business leaders of the open source bubble, which popped after the interviews. The movie ended saying how some companies' stock had gone down. If the movie were made today, those people and their commercial claims would probably not be in it. Also, I would not be found at a "Linux" event; shortly after that time, I concluded it was self-defeating to legitimize events that call the GNU system "Linux".
Other advocates
by SirGarlon
Who, other than yourself and the FSF, do you consider to be effective advocates for software freedom? Please name individuals if you can.
RMS: Eben Moglen and SFLC, Bradley Kuhn and the Conservancy, Frederic Couchet and APRIL, Via Libre, Alexandre Oliva, Octavio Rossell, Quiliro Ordoñez, are the ones that occur to me. I have probably forgotten many.
Open Source and Ethics in research?
by tsquar3d
RMS, I am a PhD student in computing and I have run up against an interesting problem. I consider FOSS to be at the core of my personal philosophy.
RMS: I have to point out that there is no "FOSS" philosophy. The term "FOSS" is a way of referring to two different philosophies: free software is one, and open source is the other.
When you want to refer to both philosophies, I recommend "FLOSS" rather than "FOSS". "FLOSS", or "Free/Libre and Open Source Software", gives the two equal visibility, whereas with "FOSS", "Free and Open Source Software", "Open Source" is more prominent. But you can't possibly agree with both of these philosophies, because they disagree at the deepest level. Your views might be one, or the other, or a mixture, or something else, but it can't be both of them at once.
See here for more explanation of the difference between free software and open source. To me it is not just a pragmatic issue, but an ethical one.
RMS: It sounds like your philosophy may be closer to the free software movement. We consider this an ethical issue, whereas the usual open source philosophy presents it as a practical issue alone.
Therefore, in my research, I use all FOSS software. Now, the problem arises when trying to justify my use of FOSS to colleagues and supervisors.
RMS: Why do you need to try to justify your _own_ use of free software? I'd expect you to decide, and follow your own decision, with no need to justify it to anyone else. Is there something I have misunderstood?
The time you need to argue is to convince other teachers and researchers to move to free software.
I have tried to make the case that it is an ethical issue, and have argued the merits of freedom and academia, however, I invariably am told "that's not an academic argument".
RMS: I suggest you respond "I'm a citizen first, and an academic second, so I care about ethical arguments as well as academic arguments."
This is incredibly frustrating and annoying to me as, in academic research, we are constantly being restricted by "research ethics" (e.g. the ethical treatment of subjects, plagiarism, etc.) and I am more than willing to bet that if a researcher objected to a methodology based on "religious principles" they would be excused.
RMS: I don't understand -- "excused" from what? I am not sure now what issue the argument is about. Are they criticizing you for your decision? If so, you don't need to be "excused", you just need to stand firm and proud. Or are you asking them for permission? There, too, standing firm is best, but it is trickier.
Or are you asking them to change their practices? That is good to try, but there is no guaranteed recipe for persuading others. I suggest telling them about the malicious features commonly found in nonfree software, to bring home to them that this is an important issue. Also, raise the issue publicly so as to build consciousness of the issue and search for allies.
by eldavojohn
Your monkish lifestyle would leave most people who work in software screaming for a Lear Jet and you have stated "I've always lived cheaply ... like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do." Growing up in the United States, I have been served the koolaid of Capitalism several times and I have been taught that the inherent competition and struggle for money in all aspects of our lives make us the greatest country ever. I've read a lot of your comments on intellectual property reform and I can't help but feel that it just isn't compatible with capitalism. Have you ever had problems rectifying your stance on intellectual property with capitalism? Do you see any problems at all with no copyright or patent laws inside a capitalistic society?
RMS: First, I need to correct an apparent misunderstanding. I do not have a "stance on intellectual property", because that would mean using the term "intellectual property" in my thinking. I take pains never to do that, because that term is an obstacle to clear thinking. Every time it is used, it misrepresents the legal reality and spreads confusion.
I judge copyright law by its practical requirements and their practical effects. I judge patent law by its practical requirements and their practical effects -- totally different requirements and totally different effects. These two laws are different on every practical point; all they have in common is a very abstract idea which is of no practical significance.
I want to encourage clear thinking about copyright law. Separately, I want to encourage clear thinking about patent law. The first step in clear thinking about these laws is not to lump them together. In particular, never use the term "intellectual property", since it lumps them together.
I must not respond directly to a question that treats copyright law and patent law as a single issue. If I did, I'd be lumping them together and spreading the confusion I want to clear up.
However, I can split it into two separate questions.
First, copyright. Copyright is a legal restriction on certain kinds of use of works of authorship. The US has always had some sort of copyright law, but it has changed tremendously. The US has always practiced capitalism, but many sorts of works were, at some time in US history, not covered by copyright. Thus, we know it is possible to have capitalism without copyright.
However, I don't advocate simple elimination of copyright as a solution.
Works that are designed for use doing practical jobs must be free; however, simply eliminating copyright on those works would not have this result. In software, it would make things worse, because copyleft is based on copyright. Without copyright, programs could still be made nonfree using EULAs, tivoization, and nonrelease of source code, but we would no longer be able to prevent this using copyleft.
If we wanted to legislate to make all these works-for-use free, we would have to go further than just eliminating copyright on them. In an ideal world, we would do this, but I don't propose doing it now.
As for works of opinion and art, I don't think they must be free. I advocate some reforms of copyright for these works but I see no reason to abolish it.
Patent law is a totally different issue. A patent is an artificial monopoly on using a specified idea. There have been successful capitalist countries that didn't have a patent system. My expertise is in computing, so I campaign to eliminate patents from computing, where I know they are harmful. However, Boldrin and Levine present good arguments that patents do mostly harm in every field and that it would be better to eliminate patents entirely.
With any or all of these changes, we would still have capitalism; only some details would be different.
I feel like you have this admirable and altruistic quality where money isn't the ultimate driving force and when you speak to people who base their entire lives around money, there's a fundamental disconnect that is overlooked.
RMS: Arguments are always based on values. The free software movement is based on values of freedom and community -- that is where it differs from open source. People who don't share those values will simply not get it, no matter what I might say. Since that's inevitable, I don't worry about it. I do my best, and I persuade some, which is better than giving up and persuading none.
Re:Do you like being worshiped ?
by capt.Hij
This brings up a good point. Let me rephrase the question. Mr Stallman, you are regarded as a founding father of the free software movement, and your opinion on free software carries a lot of weight. Because of this you are put under a harsh spot light, and every little thing you do is magnified. For example, your comments about Steve Jobs immediately after his death were broadcast quite widely. To some people the timing showed a lack of taste and were seen as disrespectful.
RMS: Those people evidently were more concerned with forms of politeness that with substantive good and evil. Someone told me I should not criticize Jobs because he could not defend himself -- while thousands were lionizing him with the indirect support of Apple's PR machine. Compared to that, I was David against Goliath.
Because of your status in the free software movement your statement was used by some to smear the larger community. How do you feel about this kind of attention?
RMS: I stand by what I said about Jobs. Apple is your enemy, and if you don't recognize this and fight, you're being a chump.
If someone tried to spin my statement as something to be ashamed of, please fight back by arguing with his spin.
Have you given it much thought, and what kind of insight can you share about the situation you are in when your private and public mannerisms are misconstrued to be part of a larger group's views and outlooks?
RMS: I hope that a lot of the community shares my views of Jobs and Apple. I ask them to stand up and be counted.
Apple's favorable public image, including public admiration of Jobs for side issues, is a crucial asset in its war against our freedom. To tarnish its image, we need to speak loud and clear about Apple's wrongs. When Steve Jobs is praised for the elegant styling of the jails he designed, we must respond that it is wrong to put users in jail. Speak up and spread the word!
Role of the FSF
by ssam
It seems to me that in the early days of the FSF the main role was writing software. A huge chunk of that code is what makes up modern day free operating systems. A lot of it is class leading software (bash, gcc, emacs, etc). In the past few years it seems that the FSF is far more involved in campaigning than coding. Is this an accurate view of the situation? Is this intentional, and if so why? Should the FSF be trying to create a class leading web browser, for example.
RMS: In the first years of developing the GNU system, before Linux completed the system, not many people worked on free software. A few staff hired by the FSF made a big difference to our progress.
Once GNU/Linux caught on, lots more people got involved, so that the few people the FSF could hire were inevitably a tiny fraction of what the community did. Meanwhile, our other jobs became bigger and more important. For instance, once the DMCA made it illegal to release free software to handle common media formats, just writing free software was no longer enough, so we launched the DefectiveByDesign.org campaign. A year ago we launched our campaign against Restricted Boot, which is the way Microsoft perverts Secure Boot into an anti-security feature.
"Success" is not our goal; we're not here to win a race, we are here to win freedom. I didn't write GCC with the idea of making a "better" C compiler. I wrote it so there would be a freedom-respecting C compiler, and while I was at it, I did the best job I knew how. We didn't develop GNU to have a "better" operating system than Unix; we developed it so we could have a freedom-respecting operating system. It's the same today.
Thus, if we could raise money to hire a few software developers, we would spend it on projects that are more than technical improvements. For instance, it would make no sense to try to develop a web browser that is "better" in a merely practical sense. There is no reason to think we could outdo the Firefox developers in what they are good at, and it would be wasteful duplication to try.
Instead we are trying to do something that Firefox does not aim to do: protect the user's privacy from surveillance by web sites, and protect the user's freedom from nonfree Javascript code. A volunteer is working on our variant of Firefox, called IceCat, with changes for these purposes. We don't have funds for this, so would you like volunteer to help?
GNU visibility and factioning
by Digana
GNU is supposed to be a free operating system as well as a group of people working towards building this OS. To a casual observer, however, GNU does not appear very active.
RMS: I've decided to post new package releases in a more visible place in gnu.org.
Development of GNU is done by volunteers, so the level of activity is up to you. If you wish GNU were more active, join in the work on some GNU package that interests you. For instance, it would be useful to have more developers for LibreJS, which detects and blocks nonfree Javascript, and for IceCat.
Some of the most prominent and supposedly GNU packages, such as Gimp, Gnome, GTK+, and R are mostly GNU in name only. The hackers working on these projects have very little interaction with other hackers working on GNU projects and they very frequently espouse views contrary to GNU's philosophical aims. Thus to an outside observer, GNU does not appear to be a cohesive group of people working towards a common goal.
RMS: The GNU project is not as cohesive as I wish it were. To some extent, this is a consequence of an approach that was necessary. The only way to develop something as large as the GNU system through the work mostly of volunteers was to divide it into projects that could be implemented mostly independently by different people. The design of Unix lent itself to this. The fact that the GNU system incorporated programs such as X and TeX, that were developed by other people or groups that regarded the GNU Project as just a user, pushed in the same direction.
There is always a centrifugal tendency when many groups work mostly independently. It is often hard to persuade the developers of one component to do what improves the system as a whole rather than what will make their own component more useful and successful.
By 1990, when we started the HURD kernel, I expected that in a couple of years it would be working and we would integrate the GNU system. However, the HURD didn't work at all until 1996, and in the mean time the community began using GNU with Linux as the kernel. By the time we started using it that way, others had integrated the GNU/Linux combination, making various GNU/Linux distros.
The initial goal of GNU, to have a free operating system, has been achieved; the initial sharp focus on completing a free Unix-like system is no longer applicable. This doesn't mean our work is over; most GNU/Linux distros today contain nonfree software, and there are more things that we expect a system to do. We still need people to seek out and do the development jobs that need doing in order to win freedom for the users of computing.
My first step to make the GNU Project more cohesive was in 1999. In the 1980s and 90s, when I appointed someone as the maintainer for a GNU package, I took for granted that he would understand that his job was to manage a part of a larger project, and what that implied. In 1999 I realized this could not be taken for granted, so I began explaining this relationship to new maintainers and asking new maintainers to agree to it. However, the relationship with a few packages had already become distant.
Many GNU mailing lists being private further the public perception that GNU is not even actively producing software anymore.
RMS: Our main packages have public discussion lists, but that's a choice for the package maintainer to make. Feel free to suggest changes to the maintainer.
What can be done to remedy this situation? How can we strengthen GNU, make it reach out again to the people it's supposed to be freeing?
RMS: For the most part, this is up to you. When you start working on a new free program, do you propose making it a GNU package? Would you like it to be part of a coherent GNU Project? If so, please write to me.
How to reverse the aggregation problem?
by concealment
A problem with software and operating systems is what I call the "aggregation problem," which is that what we have now is an aggregate of past solutions to problems that may no longer exist. The stuff piles up, increasing complexity and decreasing the uniformity and effectiveness of the interface. At what point do software projects call for a top-down redesign? How can free software do this where industry cannot?
RMS: I don't have any solution to offer for this particular problem, other than the slow methods we are using now. Partly that's because I don't think this is the most important issue -- I think our freedom is more important than technical improvement.
However, this is not the only area in which more uniformity is desirable. Around 1990, I designed a protocol for configuring and building packages from source: you type `./configure; make install'. It would be nice if all free software packages supported this uniform interface, but they don't.
To help implement that uniformity, a GNU volunteer recently made it very easy to use Autoconf in Python packages, so that they can build and install using our uniform commands. If you maintain a program in Python, how about adding this support? Every user that isn't a Python programmer will be glad he can install your program without learning a special Python build method.
What project is using the wrong license?
by gQuigs
What free software project is using a license that doesn't actually match with it's mission - or hinders free software in other ways? In other words, if you could *magically* switch the license of one project - which would you choose and why? Examples: Move Mesa to GPLv3, Move Linux from GPLv2 to v3, Make android GPLv3, GCC - from GPLv3 to Apache.
RMS: If I could magically change one program to GPLv3, it would be Linux. One of the improvements of GPLv3 is that it blocks tivoization, and Linux is very frequently tivoized. (Many Android devices contain a tivoized copy of Linux.)
While we're talking about magic, I'd change the license of LLVM also.
Another program that is important to convert is LibreCAD. This is more than a fantasy: the developers of LibreCAD are working on replacing the old GPLv2-only code that they included, so as to switch to GPLv3-or-later. Would you like to help?
What do you think of non-free, non-software works?
by Shlomi Fish
Dear Dr. Stallman, In this Slashdot feature"Stallman is quoted here saying that game engines should be free, but approves of the notion that graphics, music, and stories could all be separate and treated differently (i.e., "Non-Free.")." However, this feature does not give a citation from you for that. To add to the confusion in a post to the Creative Commons Community mailing list, Rob Myers said:
"RMS's views on culture are coherent and consistent with his views on software. But he's treating game assets as a matter of functionality (software) rather than speech (culture). There is an issue with the latter not being free.."
So I'm a little confused. Do you approve of people using non-free licenses for cultural works, including the CC-by-nc, CC-by-nc-sa, CC-by-nd, and CC-by-nc-nd licenses? If so, when?
This is especially important given the fact that in the process for formulating the latest version of the Creative Commons licenses (4.0), there has been some requests to deprecate the non-commercial (nc) and/or no-derivatives (nd) options (which I doubt will happen, but is nonetheless some thing some people feel strongly about).
RMS: After some 12 years of stating my position in all my speeches on Copyright vs Community, and publishing transcripts, I'd expect interested people to have found it. But here it is.
Those works that are made for doing practical jobs must be free. This includes software, educational works, reference works, text fonts, recipes, and 3d-printer models for objects for practical use, as well as some other things.
Works of testimony and opinion, and artistic works, don't have to be free as in the four freedoms, but their users should have more freedom than now. I think people should be free to share them (noncommercial redistribution of exact copies), and to remix them. Putting DRM or EULAs on them should be banned too. I think all the CC licenses do these things, more or less, and I use CC-ND for my statements of my views, including this one.
Two of the nonfree CC licenses, CC-NC and CC-NC-SA, have a peculiar problem: they lead to making works which are orphan before they are born.
I call this a "peculiar problem" because I don't think these licenses are bad in principle. The problem is purely a matter of practical consequences, and it seems they should be avoidable, yet I can't see a way to avoid them. I hope one is found; in the mean time, I urge not using these two licenses.
Favorite hack
by vlm
Give me your best hack. Specifically something YOU did personally not hire / grad student. Hardware, software only (yes yes the GPL is cool but I'm looking for code or schematic or at least a description of something made out of source or solder) I can't put words in your mouth but the ideal answer would be something like "I'm particularly proud of the O(n) memory garbage collection routine in emacs implemented around '89 and how it worked was very roughly ..." or "I really like my homemade fully automatic automotive relay based routing system for my OH scale model railroad sorting yard" or "I built my own legal limit ham radio amplifier" almost certainly a different topic of course, but something of this form of answer.
RMS: I can't remember all the hacks that I was proud of, so I can't pick the best. But here's something I remember fondly. The last piece of Gosmacs code that I replaced was the serial terminal scrolling optimizer, a few pages of Gosling's code which was proceeded by a comment with a skull and crossbones, meaning that it was so hard to understand that it was poison. I had to replace it, but worried that the job would be hard. I found a simpler algorithm and got it to work in a few hours, producing code that was shorter, faster, clearer, and more extensible. Then I made it use the terminal commands to insert or delete multiple lines as a single operation, which made screen updating far more efficient.
Why FDR and Churchill?
by eldavojohn
During a Q&A Session a while back you were asked about people and movements near and dear to your heart and you said "I admire Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, even though I criticize some of the things that they did." I love World War II history and I also find myself in a love-hate situation with Churchill. Could you go into further detail about what specifics lead you to single out these two over leaders like Lincoln, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin or even historical figures who have enabled information itself like Turing, Shannon, etc?
RMS: I like math, and I respect good mathematicians, but I don't admire them as heroes. The people I admire are those who fight for freedom.
Why did I mention Roosevelt and Churchill in particular? I didn't make a list of all the leaders I admire and then choose the ones I admire most. That would be a big job, and my memory does not lend itself to that, so I didn't try. I mentioned the people that came to mind.
I was thinking of leaders that fought against evil tyranny. Of the five leaders you mentioned, Roosevelt and Churchill had the hardest fight against the greatest evil. King George trampled the colonists' rights, and the Confederacy fought for slavery, but Hitler's genocidal empire was much worse.
If I were judging peacetime political leadership, I would not choose Churchill; perhaps Jefferson.
Stolen bag / laptop in Argentina
by Cigarra
What ever happened with the stolen bag and laptop? Did you get something back? Did you LOSE data (that is, was something not backed up)? Are you mad with the organizers / country that hosted the event?
RMS: My friends never found any sign of what was stolen. I lost some files, those which were outside the directories that I regularly backed up, but nothing really important.
I don't blame the speech organizers or Argentina in general for this theft. The reason I will never go to Argentina again has nothing to do with the theft. I announced it before I arrived in Argentina: I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy, and I hope you too will refuse to go to any country that would demand your fingerprints.
Revolution OS ...
by i.r.id10t
Interviews with you comprised a big percentage of the documentary Revolution OS. If it were to be remade today, and the financial aspects ignored, what do you think would be different? If you were producing such a documentary today, what would you focus on?
RMS: I didn't make that movie, so how to make it was not my decision, and how to make one today would not be my decision. But I see some things that would have to be different.
Much attention was paid to business leaders of the open source bubble, which popped after the interviews. The movie ended saying how some companies' stock had gone down. If the movie were made today, those people and their commercial claims would probably not be in it. Also, I would not be found at a "Linux" event; shortly after that time, I concluded it was self-defeating to legitimize events that call the GNU system "Linux".
Other advocates
by SirGarlon
Who, other than yourself and the FSF, do you consider to be effective advocates for software freedom? Please name individuals if you can.
RMS: Eben Moglen and SFLC, Bradley Kuhn and the Conservancy, Frederic Couchet and APRIL, Via Libre, Alexandre Oliva, Octavio Rossell, Quiliro Ordoñez, are the ones that occur to me. I have probably forgotten many.
Open Source and Ethics in research?
by tsquar3d
RMS, I am a PhD student in computing and I have run up against an interesting problem. I consider FOSS to be at the core of my personal philosophy.
RMS: I have to point out that there is no "FOSS" philosophy. The term "FOSS" is a way of referring to two different philosophies: free software is one, and open source is the other.
When you want to refer to both philosophies, I recommend "FLOSS" rather than "FOSS". "FLOSS", or "Free/Libre and Open Source Software", gives the two equal visibility, whereas with "FOSS", "Free and Open Source Software", "Open Source" is more prominent. But you can't possibly agree with both of these philosophies, because they disagree at the deepest level. Your views might be one, or the other, or a mixture, or something else, but it can't be both of them at once.
See here for more explanation of the difference between free software and open source. To me it is not just a pragmatic issue, but an ethical one.
RMS: It sounds like your philosophy may be closer to the free software movement. We consider this an ethical issue, whereas the usual open source philosophy presents it as a practical issue alone.
Therefore, in my research, I use all FOSS software. Now, the problem arises when trying to justify my use of FOSS to colleagues and supervisors.
RMS: Why do you need to try to justify your _own_ use of free software? I'd expect you to decide, and follow your own decision, with no need to justify it to anyone else. Is there something I have misunderstood?
The time you need to argue is to convince other teachers and researchers to move to free software.
I have tried to make the case that it is an ethical issue, and have argued the merits of freedom and academia, however, I invariably am told "that's not an academic argument".
RMS: I suggest you respond "I'm a citizen first, and an academic second, so I care about ethical arguments as well as academic arguments."
This is incredibly frustrating and annoying to me as, in academic research, we are constantly being restricted by "research ethics" (e.g. the ethical treatment of subjects, plagiarism, etc.) and I am more than willing to bet that if a researcher objected to a methodology based on "religious principles" they would be excused.
RMS: I don't understand -- "excused" from what? I am not sure now what issue the argument is about. Are they criticizing you for your decision? If so, you don't need to be "excused", you just need to stand firm and proud. Or are you asking them for permission? There, too, standing firm is best, but it is trickier.
Or are you asking them to change their practices? That is good to try, but there is no guaranteed recipe for persuading others. I suggest telling them about the malicious features commonly found in nonfree software, to bring home to them that this is an important issue. Also, raise the issue publicly so as to build consciousness of the issue and search for allies.
"Steve Jobs is praised for the elegant styling of the jails he designed"
Well said, RMS.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy, and I hope you too will refuse to go to any country that would demand your fingerprints.
Such as the United States?
"I want to encourage clear thinking about copyright law. Separately, I want to encourage clear thinking about patent law." I have also seen (in these days of international trade pacts) counterfeiting lumped in with copyright infringement and patent violations. I am unsure of how the law looks upon this, but to me it seems different enough. If one illegally downloads a song or a movie and violates copyright, they know it is not an official copy, and are getting an exact copy of the original. I think of counterfeit products as in-exact copies being passed off as official ones. I don't want to put a value judgement on these scenarios here, but point out that grouping this too under "Intellectual Property" is a barrier to clearly thinking about these activities and how they should be dealt with.
I'm sorry, but as much as I respect RMS for some of his technical achievements, the moment he (or anybody) mentions "Boldrine and Levine" as a serious source of anti-copyright theory, this gives up the fact that they don't know what they are talking about. Boldrine and Levine are frauds, pure and simple. Their theoretical ideas don't hold up to even the most basic scrutiny and their empirical observations tend to be cherrypicked as well. Their entire body of work seems to simply exist for people of a certain mindset to obliquely refer to their work hoping against hope that the listener won't actually do their homework. If you're interested, I encourage you to go and actually read their "against intellctual monopoly." It's utter, and utterly uscientific trash.
There have been successful capitalist countries that didn't have a patent system.
I wish he named them.
I don't get this -
RMS: Those people evidently were more concerned with forms of politeness that with substantive good and evil.
Good and Evil?! To me, evil is some despot murdering people or starving them; not some business guy getting market share.
Perspective people!
His whole perception of "good and evil" with regards to software IP (Oops! He doesn't use that term!) is black and white thinking and doesn't lend itself to progress.
Now includes the US. I'm kind of surprised he didn't comment on that (given he's pretty outspoken anyway).
Some people you can't persuade. Accepting that is not a bad thing.
Forms of politeness to ignore evil is a treacherous thing.
Dear RMS:
Would you rather fight 100 Clippy-sized Penguins or 1 Penguin-sized Clippy?
"I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy"
Like the USA?
Why does he fancy eating chunks of his own toe cheese in public?
What's up with all these EldavoJohn questions that get approved for every "ask Slashdot"?! It's not like they are the most interesting questions...
When you want to refer to both philosophies, I recommend "FLOSS" rather than "FOSS". "FLOSS", or "Free/Libre and Open Source Software", gives the two equal visibility, whereas with "FOSS", "Free and Open Source Software", "Open Source" is more prominent. But you can't possibly agree with both of these philosophies, because they disagree at the deepest level. Your views might be one, or the other, or a mixture, or something else, but it can't be both of them at once.
I've just gone cross-eyed.
I'll remember that next time I install a closed-source web server.
Oh, wait. I'm never going to install a closed-source web server.
Huh. I guess the shift key sticks on Macbooks.
Cuz, he said a mouthful today...
Re: Reaching out to Amazon for credit?
Shorter Stallman: Kill Ubuntu!
For the last 20 years I've been an advocate of free software, but I've also merrily made an exception for gaming systems -- buying a series of consoles and handhelds which are as closed as platforms can be. I wasn't *quite* able to explain why this was OK.
RMS helps:
As for works of opinion and art, I don't think they must be free. I advocate some reforms of copyright for these works but I see no reason to abolish it.
Word processors, printer drivers, operating systems, central heating controllers, sequencers, web servers, should be free - games, music compositions, etc. - not so much.
"Works that are designed for use doing practical jobs must be free; " ... uhmm... and that would be because...??
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
While we're talking about magic, I'd change the license of LLVM also.
Yes, Richard, I bet you would. LLVM proves that much of what you say is a lie, and that the industry can co-operate perfectly well on important tools without coercion via copyleft or any psuedo-religious nonsense about "good" and "evil". Getting that under GPL would be a huge win for the walled garden you are attempting to construct yourself. I can't imagine anything worse for the progress of LLVM, though, than to eliminate most of its contributors by arbitrarily changing its licence to something that's not useful for them.
I think the problem is that you define progress using monetary terms and he defines it in terms of freedom
No.
Labeling the other guy "evil" doesn't promote progress towards anything - let alone software freedom.
Saying to Microsoft or Apple or anyone for that matter, "You guys are EVIL and must change!" does absolutely nothing to get them to work with you. And if Stallman is really serious about software freedom, he will have to get those people on board. But that won't happen because he comes across as a petulant adolescent who demands his way or the highway.
That's not someone who will work with you.
I see that "how do you consider yourself relevant in the technology world when you refuse to embrace any of it?" didn't make the list.
I'll look forward to the day that Stallman and his crazy ilk are out of the picture so that the free software world can actually have some kind of chance to grow without being tied down to a legal document thousands of words long.
Code that is truly free allows you to do something with it that someone else hates.
" I do my best, and I persuade some, which is better than giving up and persuading none.:" --RMS
And this is why he is successful.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Regarding tsquar3d's question on FLOSS in research; I too have come across this in other fields of academia.
There are a lot of pro's to using FLOSS for research besides the ethical, and if you do need to justify your use of it then it is likely these you will need to rely on. So, off the top of my head, and with a more general not necessarily CS view:
Verifiability: you can trace the source code and know precisely what is being done in your analysis.
Reproducibility: you can distribute the exact version of the software you used for your analysis, to allow others to reproduce your results.
Longevity: proprietary products will stop being supported eventually and as such make it much harder to reproduce results at a later date.
Extensibility: it's quicker to make your awesome new twist on an existing analysis if you can just extend the existing software
Naturally this doesn't apply to all fields, or situations but these are all things I have come across while doing various things with applied machine learning.
On the other hand you will need to consider these points from the other side too. If you switch from the standard proprietary software your department uses then you have to prove that your new software provides the same results, or account for any discrepancies.
Similarly, if any extensions to the proprietary software have been made you may have to reproduce them yourself (and verify them, and so on).
In the end you have to weigh up the pro's and con's and see if the pro's of using FLOSS out weigh the con's, and in your case as a PhD student, also consider whether you actually have enough time to make the switch. (Unless you already have).
That non javascript browser is going to have a rough ride. Almost any site I visit with any sort of regularity requires some noscript permission giving to work properly. I wish them luck.
>>> it would be useful to have more developers for LibreJS
Richard, fighting for free software is difficult enough. Trying to smuggle "libre" into English is hopeless. In the case of LibreJS, it does not matter. But something like LibreOffice is just hindering success.
Regards
john
I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy, and I hope you too will refuse to go to any country that would demand your fingerprints.
Such as the United States?
Yes, they took mine last time I visited the US. I think if you were to visit here (UK) your fingerprints would be validated against those in the biometric passport (or visa), unless you live here.
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/customs-travel/Enteringtheuk/fingerprint-checks-at-border/
"Passengers will need to provide their fingerprints each time they travel to the UK with a visa, entry clearance or biometric residence permit. Fingerprints will be held for a maximum of two working days, and will then be destroyed."
Does the US destroy the data?
If he spent as much time writing code as he spends soapboxing about the semantics of phrases like "Intellectual Property" and "FOSS", the GNU OS would be done and he wouldn't have to piggyback the GNU name on Linux.
I say that it used to be "greatest country ever" at some point because it was a country that recognised and protected individual freedoms, understood that the collective is not above the individual, that the collective (government) must be authorised only a limited role.
Nonsense. The US government from the beginning did not respect the individual freedoms of blacks (and women and American Indians and other people who basically aren't considered real people at the time). The civil war ended slavery for blacks (on paper) but the US government simply switched to targeting other peoples (Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Mexicans, etc.), and slavery just came in different forms under different names (i.e Jim Crow laws, income taxes)
Did you know the same President who supposedly ended slavery also introduced personal income taxes?
That's what made the US was the "greatest country ever" - it was the greatest enslaving people while making people THINK they aren't enslaved. They did it through tricks like the above: replacing one form of slavery (of blacks) with another (income taxes)
open sores and freetard software have FAILED in the marketplace and have FAILED in the technology realm. ANyone who is anyone in tech uses OS X.
While RMS might seem a bit wacky every now and then, we should remember that he speaks for many things that FOSS folk and Slashdot find important. Don't bite the helping hand.
"RMS: If I could magically change one program to GPLv3, it would be Linux. One of the improvements of GPLv3 is that it blocks tivoization, and Linux is very frequently tivoized. (Many Android devices contain a tivoized copy of Linux.) "
Yet, quoted from his website:
"Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this."
Is it just me, or do these two statements seem rather contradictory?
Not while you impose that one-sided, open-ended contract you portray as a 'copyright assignment'...
Growing up in the United States, I have been served the koolaid of Capitalism several times and I have been taught that the inherent competition and struggle for money in all aspects of our lives make us the greatest country ever.
- here is a person that doesn't understand anything about the US system.
USA is not "the greatest country ever" because of capitalism. I say that it used to be "greatest country ever" at some point because it was a country that recognised and protected individual freedoms, understood that the collective is not above the individual, that the collective (government) must be authorised only a limited role.
Adhering to the principles of freedom unlike any other nation on the planet, with the federal government being structured around those principles, trying to preserve and protect them (protecting the Constitution being the actual oath that politicians take when they come into the office and of-course it is what they break every single minute of every single day today, which is why USA is falling apart) - that is what made USA "the greatest country ever".
Capitalism is only a consequence of a free society, it's not a prerequisite. Free market competitive capitalism is a consequence of people being free to try and fail and to try again and some will succeed, it's economic Darvinism: survival of the fittest ideas and implementations given free market principles, which are necessarily based on individual freedoms.
That's the actual greatness that USA used to have, nothing else - individual freedoms that were codified as the main principle.
It is no longer true, hasn't been for decades. That's why the economy is really falling apart and the society with it.
Firstly, what constitutes the greatest country ever depends heavily on your values and quite frankly, while the USA is indeed a remarkable country, calling it the greatest ever is nationalistic schmaltz. Secondly, most of human evolutionary success has been a case of the pack triumphing over the individual i.e. "survival of the best team players", that's how our ancestors brought down giant creatures like woolly mammoths which predators that were way more powerful than any individual human avoided attacking. It is our social nature that makes us the most successful complex organism in the history of the know universe not our dogged determination to be the most individualistic loners. Some people are better than others at certain things a few are even brilliant but none of them would have achieved anything of note without the support of the rest of the pack. It's the rest of the pack that builds and runs universities, highways, canals, railways, electric distribution networks, sewer systems, communications infrastructure.... not quite as glorious as making tons of money but where would the billionaires of this world be without the ants that run the hive.
OS X is a toy for babies.
Don't bite the helping hand.
He's not biting the helping hand: don't feed the trolls.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I use my Apple products as I intended when I bought them. Have Windows and Linux stuff, too. They work well and I've gotten more than my money's worth out of them. If you can't accept that there are different people with different needs and use cases, then fuck off. You are not better than me because you choose a different way. There is nothing better or worse if we are both satisfied by our choices. Your need to belittle and insult people who DARE make a different choice than you is telling, and that attitude is what is behind most of the misery in this world. You're just another intolerant, blinkered, talking head geek with atomic personality disorders feeding the sound and fury of a disintegrating world.
Don't also forget treatment of the natives as lower than slaves, but still, it was great for many Europeans whose home countries were ruled by monarchs.
"RMS: I hope that a lot of the community shares my views of Jobs and Apple. I ask them to stand up and be counted."
damn skippy. On my feet.
Indeed, you have proven you have drunk the Kool-aid.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I don't give a shit if I can't tweak my HVAC software.
I do give a shit that I can't run my favorite games on a another platform. What do you plan to do when your Xbox 360 or PS3 fails? The original Xbox isn't being sold anymore and the PS2 has stopped production. Emulators are a hack to get around this problem.
Consoles suck precisely for this reason and it's the reason I buy the PC port whenever possible.
changing opinions.
It is the foundation of modern political social engineering, and firmly rooted in neurology and modern neurology-based psychology.
The only problem is, that it depends on knowing the subject/target extremely well. Whch input triggers which memories, emotions, behaviors and other triggers.
And that's what most people don't have the patience for. ^^
But given enough time, you can easily manipulate somebody at will.
Apple obsession is irrelevant. Jobs is dead, and iOS is making coffee for Android. How about discussing Apple-wannabes within the Linux (pardon! GNU/Linux) community and given the nature of that community, how much more dangerous they are.
Sorry, but it's national security, not a kindergarten classroom. I'd like everything to be hugs and handshakes as much as the next guy, but that won't actually work for the U.S. borders.
It worked for the 225 years before 911. How many "Terrorists" have been caught since it was implemented? How many people have been located by their fingerprints and deported after their visa expired?
Any time someone uses the "nation security" trope, it is a good bet that they have no credible reason. Ditto for any variant of "you and everyone you love will die horribly".
Yeah, right.
Fine, it's their project after all. Do you have the balls to commit yourself to your own project instead? No? Then, to join the FSF and try to convince them of your stance? Oh no?
Thought so. You'll just write a witty sentence on slashdot about how you won't do anything except...writing witty sentences on slashdot.
Hmm, yeah I too feel the need to be "someone", so I'll pay bucks for shit to a shitty company :)
n/t
open sores, freetard software, FAILED, FAILED
...posted from my iphone during my saturday night mall hangout.
I know it says not to even ask about this on your "tour rider", but I just have to know.. why no breakfast..? Health reasons...?
I'm not sure you read RMS's post, he didn't mention Boldrine and Levine at all as a source of anti-copyright theory. Do you know what you are talking about?
What are you talking about? It's in the response to the very first question on this very page!
Patent law is a totally different issue. A patent is an artificial monopoly on using a specified idea. There have been successful capitalist countries that didn't have a patent system. My expertise is in computing, so I campaign to eliminate patents from computing, where I know they are harmful. However, Boldrin and Levine present good arguments that patents do mostly harm in every field and that it would be better to eliminate patents entirely.
What qualifies Stallman as an expert on ethics?
I like free software as much as the next guy, but Richard's personal software peccadilloes don't constitute a new ethics -- only society as a whole can define what is or isn't ethical.
Actually I think he puts it in terms of ethics as a shortcut to having to defend the legal and financial ramifications of what he is suggesting. He's basically saying you should give away your software because it's the "right thing to do". If someone claims that his stance isn't friendly to competitive markets he claims they are calling him a communist and that he's the victim of a personal attack.
This guy is full of rhetoric and I'm not sure why he would still be considered a leader in this movement.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
economic Darvinism
I've never met this Darvin character. Was he a whirling Dervish perhaps?
survival of the fittest ideas and implementations given free market principles, which are necessarily based on individual freedoms.
That is the pretty window dressing for what actual happens when your proposals are implemented. You propose to strip all workers' rights and give all powers to employers. You similarly propose to strip all powers from the courts and instead represent peoples' interests in a court that is for sale. On top of all that you propose to strip people of their power to take action against corporations and business owners who directly harm the populace in actions (or inactions).
You claim that your proposal would increase individual freedoms, but in reality it accomplishes exactly the opposite of that. Your plan concentrates power into the hands of very very few and legalizes the abuse of the rest.
In other words you sell freedom, but you produce fascism for the people.
Are you for real? You guys border on delusional. Screw Apple but the dregs of slashdot that decrees anyone as an "X shill" are just retarded.
Farting in public, using rude words at a dinner party - these things are impolite, but it's a hard stretch to cast them as evil (well, okay, *maybe* letting out a really ripe one in an elevator might kinda qualify). I'd say speaking ill of the dead certainly qualifies as well (and you'd be hard pressed to find many who would consider rejoicing at the death of a more vile tyrant - say Hitler or Pol Pot to be bad form). Politeness is the veneer of courtesies we agree to as a society in order to keep things moving in a pleasant manner. By and large they're completely arbitrary, and different social groups have different codes of conduct. It's not unheard of for different behaviors to conflict between different groups, so that an act which is considered impolite in one group is so broadly accepted in another that it's considered impolite *not* to do it (the first that springs to mind is spitting in your hand before shaking on a verbal contract, though I think that custom has gone out of fashion these days.)
Good and Evil are usually interpreted to have a somewhat more substantial and cross-cultural significance.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
GNU recommends copyright assignment, but in the end it's up to the maintainer. Several GNU projects does not utilize copyright assignment.
Just want to say thank you to RMS for fighting for our freedoms!
China is exactly what I described: A thriving free enterprise economy because of a properly working financial system that serves national objectives.
Capitalism in America and Britain might be on the deathbed, but it thrives in many other places.
Don't deflect from the main point. If you have no application source, you are simply stuffed.
Besides, that "compiler-based virus" can be quite easily defeated by making the compiler source portable. So for example, ensure gcc can be built using intel cc, llvm, aix xlcr, SUN CC, msvc. Then build gcc using all of these compilers plus gcc itself. After that, use this collective of gcc binaries to again compile gcc source. If they don't all produce the same code, something fishy is ongoing or all compilers are tainted in THE SAME WAY (relative to gcc source). Which is quite improbable.
If you are totally paranoid, check the assembly against gcc source. Yeah, a bit of work, but then you have a "certified" gcc binary which can then be used to build later "trusted" gcc binaries. In some industries (aviation) they do this kind of thing on a regular basis, because their compilers could potentially kill hundreds of people at a time.
The bell labs though experiment is interesting, but not actually scary in reality.
You are just responding to $hill #453, currently operating on SD, wired.com and reddit.
Yeah not to mention I haven't owned an Apple device in years, which was just an ipod. :p
The problem was that nobody had a free kernel to run an X server on it. Plus, before the 386 CPU becoming widespread, small computers did not have an MMU, while the commercial Unix guys had those quite early.
Early PCs where simply to weak to run X11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workstation#History
This interview is a prime example of why I don't think RMS is a good person to follow, especially where ethics are concerned. One questioner calls him out on the comments he made about the (then recently) deceased Steve Jobs. Rather than admit he was being inappropriate, RMS states it is okay for him to slander a dead man because Apple has a large PR department. He even identifies himself as David in the David vs Goliath match. How arrogant can a person be? It's okay to be a jerk to people who have more supporters, that's the line he is going with? So it would be perfectly acceptable for me to call RMS a deluded nut job and claim the world will be better when he's dead, since RMS has so many more followers than I have? No, of course that isn't acceptable behaviour! It's not okay for me to be a jerk just because I have a smaller following than RMS and it's not okay when he does it either.
It' statements like the ones he made above which make me question why anyone would consider RMS an example to follow where ethics are concerned, he is obviously lacking in them himself.
... sweet, salty, sour or bitter?
My kids have 4 or 5 Apple devices laying around the house and I have an iTunes account, and all that has nothing to do with the fact that paid Apple shills come on here and troll anonymously with their "neckbeard" and poverty comments directed toward Linux users anytime one of their devices becomes the topic of conversation.
Every major company that's embraced Open Source has been at the receiving end of his derision. Expecting RMS not to 'bite the helping hand' is like expecting the Saudis or the Iranians or the Pakistanians to not put apostates from Islam to death.
If you believe in GNU, why do you force authors of software to write the waiver of their rights in your favor and then tell them to piss off if they want to take THEIR software away from your dictatorship? Yup, I'm talking about gnutls situation.
I don't see any place where RMS claims to be an expert on ethics. Instead he is treating ethics as something that everyone can understand, simply through gut feeling. We all know instinctively when something harms us or acts to our disadvantage. That's the only experience needed.
He isn't arguing from authority, which would require some kind of expert status. (That would also be flawed on logical grounds.)
and can use whatever the hell devices they want. I primarily use Linux, with Windows for a few work related apps that only run there. Now kindly piss off.
... but I would have loved to have seen him address one that came up often, along the lines of "Do you think your behavior harms the movement?"
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The grandparent used a metaphor, the dimension of Freedom vs Slavery. Because of the emotive element in "slavery", it could be argued that the metaphor was unhelpful through potentially alienating a participant, but no hyperbole was involved.
Metaphors are by their very nature unrelated to the matter under discussion, so their appropriateness is always going to be elusive. Perhaps metaphors should not be used at all in reasoned discourse --- I find that more worthy of consideration than criticizing an argument because a metaphor causes emotional distaste. If a metaphor inaccurately portrays the relationships of the argument, simply point out the significant mismatch.
In this particular case, the metaphor has very few problems that I can identify. (I'm leaving out the potential emotional derailment, because I am not derailed by it.) Many of the elements in slavery appear in proprietary software, not only because of the loss of freedoms that interest RMS, but also because your use of the software shares properties with attachment to a single master as a matter of principle. It's just less extreme in degree. You are frequently tied to a single supplier by it, and this is very widely regarded as a good thing by producers of proprietary software. The parallels with slavery are quite clear.
What most people fail to recognise is that Steve Jobs and RMS are the opposite sides of the same coin. Both are a product of 60's counter-culture, but wound up in radically different roles. One was a "perfect capitalist" and a marketing genius, with a knack for choosing good people to do the hard stuff for him, other one was a true hippie freedom fighter in the newly emerging Information age.
Steve Jobs made a lasting impression on the IT of the 80's, late 90's and 00's. He wasn't an innovator, he was a motivator. A driving force. He was also an obnoxious ass, rude, and many people disliked him. Rightfully. RMS shares those same characteristics. He's also an obnoxious ass, driven and rude. But he's also more akin in some ways to that other Steve (Woz) in that he was a technical person. Operative word being WAS. Both men saw, and one still sees, the world in black and white. So you can rightfully apply idiot and genius to both of them.
FSF that RMS created is a plague upon the software freedom. That's now, things were very, very different back in the day. Insisting on GPL3, hard copyleft licensing, delusions about people wanting to be free from chains of proprietary software, that's his legacy. If people wanted to be free from the "chains of copyrighted software" they would be. Thing is, some stuff is closed source and rightfully so. I like open-source, and support the free software movements for the most part, but I can't stand zealotry. For all the good that he's done with envisioning GNU in the right moment in time, making some great software (namely GCC and Emacs), he made FSF purely for the sake of his ego. Not principles, and not your or my freedom.
I do web development now mostly. I've been a sysadmin in a bank, managing Linux/UNIX systems for the past 8 years. I've changed back to thing that I love most, and that's coding. Started a company and we're doing fine for now. In all my time with computers (first PC when I was 6, now I'm 28, and no, I didn't finish college), coding some stuff I needed was always eating at my free time. In my high-school days I discovered Linux, by the end of high-school I was using only Linux. Now I'm working on a Mac, because I like the workflow (well to be honest it's dual-boot machine with Arch). I also have 2 Linux machines as VM hosts that run my firewall, testing web/db servers and various other stuff.
Point is I use GNU software because I must (and because I'm lazy) (actually I use BSD variants of the same utils, being on a Mac mainly, but point still stands). GNU just isn't relevant anymore. All of basic GNU utils could be replaced with better quality software in a matter of months. If you are choosing software that's "free", over software that's good, then frankly you're an idiot. Most of my friends/coworkers agree with me on this, because choosing GPL3 licensed software is essentially taking away your freedom to modify it with better, but not hard-copyleft, software part.
My freedom isn't for someone to choose for me. My freedom is my own. I am not evil, or even misguided. I don't hate RMS, nor do I bear him any ill will, I just think his ego got the better of him. This is most visible in insisting on calling Linux GNU/Linux, even though the GNU part is, well most of it, outdated and comes with a stench of decay, and for the most part will be replaced in the following years with better software. Yes, even the venerable GCC which is being phased out in most BSD flavours in favour of LLVM/Clang (again because of the idiotic move towards enforcing GPL3 at all costs). I bet this will happen with Linux too in the following years, distro by distro (or even Linus and the Penguins make another bold shift toward Clang when it matures a bit more, LLVMForLinux is a good start). I shudder to think what would have happened hadn't Linus said no, RMS, FO, I'm not going to use the new more restrictive license. For one, no Android. No Steam on Linux. ...
More examples of replacement software that's better than gnu... Grub, ye
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Having both makes one a genius.
Seriously? You're comparing Jobs to Hitler?
Can we compare Stallman to a rather unsuccessful Stalin, then? "Free the Software! Software belongs to the people! Death to the bourgeoisie!" Here, I'm imagining lines of starving programmers waiting for their bread ration, and clunky, Soviet-esque software running on oversized computers.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I presume he's an American? Or that an AMERICAN transcribed the interview, and ignored the word "than", and instead used the word "that"?
You morons.
What the hell is it with Americans not understanding the meanings of the three simple words "than", "that" and "then"? They aren't the same word!
It isn't "more... THEN", or "more... THAT".
It's MORE THAN! You idiots. We even have a company in the U.K. called "More Than". How stupid are you? How can you NOT understand what those three words mean, and why is this shit all over the internet, in the last five years?
Despite all of the hate posts towards RMS, I really enjoyed it. RMS thanks for answering the questions! I look forward to this again.
The G
And for even longer, they ignored foreign copyrights (but acknowledged the copyrights of their own citizens), so that bit is actually wrong from RMS.
Of course, to hear the USA banging on about how Canada is on a "Watch list" because they keep not passing a DMCA like law and have fair use that actually is usable, you'd never have known the historical "piracy" of the USA.
Growing up in the United States, I have been served the koolaid of Capitalism several times and I have been taught that the inherent competition and struggle for money in all aspects of our lives make us the greatest country ever. I've read a lot of your comments on intellectual property reform and I can't help but feel that it just isn't compatible with capitalism. Have you ever had problems rectifying your stance on intellectual property with capitalism?
I always find it very interesting every time I see this argument. What is it about the US education system that gives the impression that monopolies such as copyright and patent are inherent and necessary elements of "capitalism"? Is it just a "This is our system now, and our system now is capitalism" kind of thing?
Monopolies are the opposite of Laissez-faire capitalism or free trade. They restrict who can participate in money making enterprises. They are inherently prejudicial and usually prejudicial to wealthy parties. Further, government backed monopolies, as opposed to spontaneous wealth based monopolies, are an unfair abuse of government power to restrict the free market. Monopolies have a long history in Europe's feudal period, and copyright itself was born out of a long tradition of monarchical censorship in England in which the publishers were charged with monopolizing information to control the public.
The term "intellectual property" leads to even scarier territory. The term itself smacks of 1984's Thought Police. I am certain that is not your picture of "capitalism". The very concept that ideas can be "property" is offensive. While you are at it, why not package all the air in the world and charge people to breathe?
As such, whose view of capitalism is really flawed and in need of rectification: yours? or Mr. Stallman's? The way I see it, the onus is on you, eldavojohn, to justify your incorrect view of what capitalism is, your support of feudalism, and your support of censorship. Do you believe in capitalism, the free market, and liberal democracy? Or do you believe in communism, restricted trade, and monarchies?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Why do most gnu projects have major code quality issues? An example coreutils needing rt funcs for nanosecond ls, glibc mess of macros and obtuse functions such as the word sized strlen, etc.
As an academic who does basic research in bioinformatics and computer vision, I think this issue is simple and the argument straightforward. If a software is not open source, then you cannot verify that the algorithms it uses were correctly implemented.
In particular, many academic works present an algorithm without its implementation details, something which severely compromises reproducibility if the implementation source is unavailable. Furthermore, projects which are not also free (libre) often require you pay or conform to strict requirements in order to merely view code. The requirements can be incompatible with science. For example the license for Gaussian, the quantum chemistry suite, prohibits licensees from competing with the authors academically. So much for "standing on the shoulders of giants."
.: Semper Absurda
If you wish GNU were more active, join in the work on some GNU package that interests you. For instance, it would be useful to have more developers for LibreJS, which detects and blocks nonfree Javascript, and for IceCat.
Again, it's less important for there to have a GNU Office, or a GNU video editor or a GNU System configuration tool than it is to have a program that blocks JavaScript that he doesn't consider free. Somehow, this would enhance the cause of Free software.
Notice the irony!
"This is incredibly frustrating and annoying to me as, in academic research, we are constantly being restricted by "research ethics" (e.g. the ethical treatment of subjects, plagiarism, etc.) and I am more than willing to bet that if a researcher objected to a methodology based on "religious principles" they would be excused.
RMS: I don't understand -- "excused" from what?
The word "Excused" in this context means "to be relieved of duty". When a Researcher or Professor is kicked out in a "nice" fashion, they are "excused" as opposed to "fired" or "terminated" or "let go". RMS seems to be confusing that with "Making excuses for" aka "defending or justifying".
Or in other words, RMS misunderstood the statement. The statement was, in my words, "I suspect that if a researcher were to cite a religious principle as opposed to a secular principle as a basis for objection, he would be fired, kicked out, or otherwise ostracized by the Community."
But to be blunt, "morals" and "ethics" are both standards which come from the collective opinion of one particular body or another. We can argue all day about what is "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "bad" and we'll be missing the point entirely. What is "right" is purely subjective, unless some all powerful universal being shows up and tells us otherwise, so all we have to measure "right" vs. "wrong" is the collective opinion of those around us (and/or those we care to listen to).
But how was that lost? The original X-window was still there and could be used and developed. The others - Irix, SunOS, Ultrix, et al (NeXT didn't use X - they used Display Postscript) essentially forked X-windows to different proprietary platforms, such as Indy, SparcStations, DECstations and so on, but they didn't take w/ them the original X-windows. What's more - they couldn't be run on x86s anyway (I think one would have needed SCO or Interactive Unix for that).
And X11 is still using the MIT/BSD style license, so nothing has changed, except that there are no longer 10 companies around who can fork it in different directions, and so the forking issue is less visible now than it was then.
The real reason BSDL is preferable is not so much the lack of copyleft itself - good as it is - but that it allows the code to be combined in something different that changes the license. I've argued that while having source code always accompany binaries is good and preserves all the advantages of open source that Eric Raymond argued in 'The Cathedral & the Bazaar', forcing the software creators to allow distribution downstream is what is the business killer. Not all software authors want to sell services or hardware, and the tin cup model simply doesn't work. A good way to preserve the interests of both the software creator as well as the software user is to have the license provide the user w/ both the source code as well as the binaries, with the freedom to use it on as many seats as needed, for whatever price makes sense. However, the license can forbid the user from distributing it to anyone. That way, if another customer wants the software, he has to buy it, under the same terms & conditions.
That way, the ISV can sell their software to all interested users w/o it being pirated, while on the customer end, the customer can tweak the software to do something that only they may be interested in, or maybe in a future version of an OS or a different computer platform, recompile the software for the new box. Or if the ISV goes out of business, the customer can have in-house software maintenance personnel who know how to keep it running indefinitely, and extending functionality as needed. The ISV makes money like any proprietary software company, but the customer has the same advantages that users of open source software have. Win-win!
TiVo's business model is to distribute content from providers to its customers, and one of the conditions that they have from their providers is that that content stay in their boxes, and not get all around the place. For that reason, they had to lock down their flash which had the OS and the code in question, so that the device will only output to an HDMI, and not, say, an MP4 file or some other video format that can be easily transferred to a computer and be splashed all over the internet. Had they not done it, there's no way content providers would have agreed to do business w/ them. Linus too had no problems w/ this, since his deal is actually about providing the best software, as opposed to 'promoting freedom'.
In case of Google and Android, carriers, particularly in the US who subsidize phones, are not likely to want the phones that they subsidize to be jailbroken and carry someone else's service. That's why Android has to lock them down. If phones w/ Replicant on them ever surface (actually, in this case, I do laud the FSF for at least pushing their own alternative), you can bet that carriers won't be selling them in their stores - one would have to buy them separately, probably at full price, and then have the SIMs transferred to them (in case of the 'GSM' style phones - I doubt that there will be Replicant phones offering Verizon or Sprint).
Why would anyone need a better comeback to this diarreah? You present yourself like a retard, you'll be treated like one.
I bet that Argentina doesn't require fingerprints from their own citizens.
The USA also requires fingerprints from non-citizens to enter the country.
RMS said: "I object to the requirement for visitors to give their fingerprints. I refuse to go to any country which has that policy, "
Therefore RMS should refuse to go to the USA, or he is a hypocrite.
(It doesn't matter whether they ask for *his* fingerprints or not, since he says he refuses go to any country which has the requirement for *visitors* to give their fingerprints.)
I'd like to thanks Dr. Stallman for taking the time to reply to all these questions in a coherent, easy to understand and interesting manner, and thank him for replying to my question, even though someone else in the original slashdot feature replied to me while giving citations from Dr. Stallman's online writings. I find Stallman's interviews interesting to read, even though I differ with him on many opinions and also prefer using permissive licences (such as the MIT/X11 licence) for my code instead of the GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPLv2.1, LGPLv3, or AGPLv3. I do the latter not because I approve of proprietary software (the fact is that I actually don't trust it but still think that non-free software should be legal and legitimate to author and distribute), but because I want people and companies to have as few reservations as possible about using my software, building upon it, learning from it or whatever, and think that often (usually?) using copyleft licences and especially strong copyleft ones works against the cause of FOSS. I'm not going to argue with you if you prefer copyleft licences, but that's my modus operandi. I don't have reservations for contributing to FOSS projects under copyleft licences which I find interesting, useful or necessary enough, but in that case I disclaim all explicit or implicit ownership from all of my original contributions, or licence them under the MIT/X11 licence to allow for easy relicensing of my code later on if the project desires it.
Anyway, thanks again, and sorry for getting carried away. Feel free to Moderate down.
We have two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. http://www.shlomifish.org/