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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).
Why does he fancy eating chunks of his own toe cheese in public?
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.
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...
Nope. It's just one of my favorite aspects of Slashdot. They only ever take one or two of my questions no matter how many are +5 or +4. The editors evidently have no time for editing let alone "friendship."
:-)
I'm sorry that you don't find my questions interesting but then again as an Anonymous Coward you're probably only interested in questions surrounding GNAA and Goatse.
I just like to ask questions. Is there something wrong with that?
My work here is dung.
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 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).
Its not about treachery, its about not trampling over someone's name while friends / family are still grieving his death.
You know, respect and courtesy for your common man and all that.
Seriously, his comments couldnt have waited a month or two?
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.
Seriously, his comments couldnt have waited a month or two?
No, because the press were busy holding him up as some kind of Jesus figure. It was those comments that sorely needed countering at the time they were made.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
Not while you impose that one-sided, open-ended contract you portray as a 'copyright assignment'...
No it does not, but then again we don't need them to exist at all. There are times you must compromise, but there are times you must stand for what you believe. You don't need to compromise with big corporations. They are a cancer and should be purged.
Don't bite the helping hand.
He's not biting the helping hand: don't feed the trolls.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's just you. Remember, those four freedoms apply to the user of the software.
"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.
Right, so If RMS were to ask nicely then the evil companies would change their ways and totally destroy their money-making model?? How naive are you? At the very least his labelling will bring attention and then the people can make an informed decision.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
That's not what Tivoization is. Tivoization is when you put copyleft software on a piece of hardware, but then lock down the hardware so that the users can modify the software in practise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
What you are describing is legal even under GPLv3. You can distribute non-free programs along with free ones: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
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 think a country where spanish is practically the second language would have no problem understanding and incorporating 'libre'. Which backwater place are you from?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
TIL: Feelings and emotion are nonsense and can be utterly disregarded when interacting with other human beings.
You can still buy a used SNES, so used Xbox consoles should be available for many years to come.
And although emulators are a hack, they're a successful one. We just have to hope that the emulator community keeps up its DRM-defeating record.
Perhaps the PC systems of my youth have scarred me, but I wouldn't be 100% confident that PC games are futureproof. Will all future Windows releases do XP emulation? Can you run DOS games on Windows 8 (genuinely don't know)?
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.
what are you trying to say? How is he attempting to smuggle words into English? What does that even mean?
Now, just guessing so this may be way off, but are you objecting to "LibreOffice" because it uses a "non-English" word as part of its name? If so, why is this bad? Would your objection apply to something called "KOffice" because it also includes a "non-English" 'word' ('K' is certainly not a word") in it? What about using a non-word as a name, perhaps something that has immediate humorous and/or negative connotations on first hearing, such as "wii"?
On the first hand I don't understand the basis of the objection ("smuggling words") and on the second I'm not sure why you think it matters.
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.
Steve Jobs was an impostor, a thief, and a disgrace for the industry, he just managed to convince an horde of people into the contrary because of **ding ding shiny**
Well, its apparent that you have terribly little respect for the average computer user, but let me assure you that generally as adults they have the ability to make decisions based on what they want, and if they want a Mac that doesnt make them stupid. Possibly they are uninformed and unaware of "better" alternatives, but Ive long ago learned that it borders on arrogance to think that because Macs seem a waste of money to you, that a user is an imbecile for wanting one.
If what a user wants is primarily a device that doesnt put in front of them all the decisions about what kinds of programs to run and what sources to run from, thats their decision, and Jobs isnt "evil" for offering it. You can call it lock-in, sure, but evil? Are the users also evil for wanting (as evidenced by their continued patronage) these "evil" devices?
What both you and RMS are missing is that not everyone shares the same values when it comes to computing; and while you could make a case that certain values are long-term worse for "computing" as an open field, maybe "computing as an open field" isnt what the majority want. Calling it evil is arbitrary and an inability to see other's viewpoints.
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.
So at the risk of Godwinning myself, should the populace have avoided rejoicing after the overthrow or death of folks like Saddam, Pol Pot, or Hitler for fear of hurting their families feelings? Certainly Jobs' crimes against humanity weren't in anywhere near the same category, but he was also being publicly exalted after his death. Someone that stands up and says "Wait a minute - the guy you're all celebrating was perpetrating a not-inconsiderable evil on the world" seems to me to be in a pretty solid position. Perhaps it would be unjustifiable to do at a family wake or something, but not within the context of a media circus.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"he didn't mention Boldrine and Levine at all as a source of anti-copyright theory."
vs
"Boldrin and Levine present good arguments that patents..."
And the wisdom in RMS's half page into about why he likes to keep discussions of copyright and patents entirely separate becomes apparent.
You definitely have missed RMS' entire point on the thinking about patent law needs to be dealt with separately from copyright law. He specifically writes to credit Boldrine and Levine arguments on patent law - NOT copyright law.
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
Just want to say thank you to RMS for fighting for our freedoms!
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.
Je ne vois aucun problème à utiliser le terme "Libre", même en anglais.
aaaaaaa
That wasn't the problem. First off X servers were at that point frequently hardware, the issue was X clients. There were lots of workstation OSes where the X server was extra. OS/2 Lan, Novell Lans... could have used X as a way to remotely display applications. There were commercial X servers for Windows and Mac. And even after there were free OSes say around '94 it took about another 6 years till XFree86 caught up. And as I mentioned some of those features aren't in Linux today, 2 decades later.
No the issue was not just bad kernels.
It must just be you. Can you explain what you think is a contradiction?
And although emulators are a hack, they're a successful one. We just have to hope that the emulator community keeps up its DRM-defeating record.
"DOSBox, an x86 emulator with DOS"
Seems like DOSBox falls under the "emulator" category...
No, it has to do with the fact you and your kids have bought into the Apple closed system. Good luck with that.
... 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.
"press were busy holding him up as some kind of Jesus figure"
Never mind during the month of crying over the death of S. Jobs, two other figures of much more critical importance died(Ritchie and McCarthy). The stories(footnotes really) of their death were completely drowned out by the S. Jobs eulogizing by the media. The whole mess was embarrassing. Stallman's response was well deserved. Death does not get you "off the hook" and deservedly so.
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?
Also note that Tivoization is not non-free from a software perspective. It's non-free from a hardware perspective, which makes the overall package non-free.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
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.
You know that these people are "paid Apple shills" how?
Hint #1: Apple doesn't profit in any way at all from calling you a poor neckbeard. That's not going to get you to buy their shit.
Hint #2: not even genuine Apple fans benefit from calling you a poor neckbeard. That's not going to get you to join them.
Hint #3: Trolls, on the other hand... trolls love inducing meltdowns and illogical accusations of shilling.
In short, you have been trolled. HTH. HAND.
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
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.
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
Fuck Yes!
This, in a nutshell, is everything that's wrong w/ RMS and his worshippers!
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!
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).
I thought that Stallman was the pope - constantly preaching to the rest of us about good & evil
Because you didn't fix it.
You need a new translator. Yours is broken.
Why would anyone need a better comeback to this diarreah? You present yourself like a retard, you'll be treated like one.
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/
Can you run DOS games on Windows 8 (genuinely don't know)?
You can still run DOS under a VM/hypervisor or setup a dual boot and run it directly on an x86 PC.
Note how the two aren't related. They are talking about running on Win8 directly, not through a VM and certainly not by rebooting into plain DOS and back into Win8 when they're done.