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Richard Stallman Answers Your Questions
samzenpus (5) writes "A while ago you had the chance to ask GNU and Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman about GNU, copyright laws, digital restrictions management, and software patents. Below you'll find his answers to those questions."
RMS: By way of explanation, I launched the free software movement; what I
say about software issues is based on our values of freedom and
community for the users of computers. We classify programs as either
"free" or "nonfree".
A few of the questions asked about "open source software" in such a way that, responding to them directly, I'd be classifying programs as "open" or "closed". That I will not do, because those terms presuppose a different philosophy based on different values.
Rather than give no answer to those questions, I modified them to say "free software" instead, and answered them that way. (Square brackets show these changes.) I hope the answers to these modified questions are of interest to readers. They are rather different from what an open source supporter would say.
NSA/GCHQ
by click2005
What are your views on the recent NSA activities and how do you think it will change free software & the internet?
RMS: Nonfree software is likely to spy on its users, or mistreat them in other ways. It is software for suckers.
Awareness of this is spreading, which helps us make the case for free software to people who are not computing experts.
As for the internet, it has been turned into a spy network. A considerable fraction of the massive surveillance (but not all!) applies to the internet. Most use of the internet involves web sites that snoop on users, which is poisonous. That's in addition to the snooping by ISPs themselves.
Massive surveillance of people in general endangers human rights and democracy; but we should remember that US snooping agencies do this mostly by piggy-backing on businesses that massively collect data about people.
Therefore, it is not enough to legally limit the government's access to the digital dossiers about us. We must prevent those dossiers from being made, either by business or by government. We must legally require digital systems to be redesigned so that they do not accumulate data about people in general.
Here is my full position on massive general surveillance.
Opinion?
by Anonymous Coward
What is your opinion on cryptocurrencies?
RMS: In general, I am in favor of ways to pay each other cash on the Internet without going through a payment company that keeps track of all payments. I would like to be able to pay an on-line service with cash the way I pay cash for all the things I buy today.
However, Bitcoin payments are not anonymous. To serve this need requires anonymity at least for the payer. People are working on trying to improve Bitcoin in that way.
I am not an expert on encryption, and I can't judge the security of any particular cryptocurrency. What I do know, and what is illustrated by the recent collapse of several exchanges (banks, in effect) due to robbery, including MtGox, demonstrates that, here as in any field, the security of a practical activity that uses encryption is a very different question from the mathematical validity of the encryption system or the correctness of the software. It may take years to develop cryptomoney exchanges we can have confidence in.
These currencies raise economic issues, too; but not necessarily the way many people think. The number of bitcoins is capped, but new cryptocurrencies can always be created, so that the total number of Xcoins for all values of X has no particular limit. Does this mean that the value of all cryptocurrencies will inevitably tend towards zero? Not necessarily; that depends on how much people accept various other cryptocurrencies -- a sociological question, not an economic one.
I don't enjoy risk, so I will not do speculation in cryptocurrencies any more than I do in other commodities. I may use them for payment if and when it becomes possible to use them anonymously to buy something that I can't get with cash. To resist surveillance, I do buy goods with cash in a store, so that no data base knows what I bought -- therefore, I don't pay over the internet. But I would use an anonymous cryptocurrency to pay for services and downloads.
Cell phones
by Anonymous Coward
I read a little on your website about your take on technology that uses non-free software. Do you still not own a cell phone?
RMS: I certainly do not! A cell phone is Stalin's dream: its movements are tracked, and it can be converted (through the universal back door) into a listening device.
AC: If not, I'd love to hear your perspective on life without one these days, where its just assumed that people own one.
RMS: Please help teach everyone that this assumption is false!
There is a way to make a cell phone acceptable _for occasional communication only_: put a one-way pager in the phone, so people can page you if they are trying to reach you. That way, you can keep its radio connection off most of the time. When you get the page, you can decide when and where to reveal your location by connecting the phone to the network.
Of course, the software in the phone's main computer should also be free, but that is a separate issue. In other words, nonfree software in that computer is one assault on your freedom, and the phone system's location tracking is another.
The software in the baseband (phone radio modem) processor can't be free, at least not as things stand now. So the phone needs to be designed so the baseband processor can't talk to anything (peripherals, antenna, etc) unless the main processor permits it, and so that the baseband processor can't change the software in the main processor. Ideally the software in the baseband processor should be immutable, so we can treat it as a circuit.
AC: As a follow-up, where exactly do you draw the line concerning [freeness of software] and whether or not you use software. For example, do you toast bread in a toaster that runs proprietary code? Obviously we're talking about different things here, but I'm curious to know at what point you say "no thanks!" when it comes to locked down technology.
RMS: The case of the toaster is very clear: we can't tell, except by taking it apart, whether it has a processor and software or a special-purpose chip. Since that we can't tell the difference, it makes no difference: therefore, a program that will never be changed is equivalent to a circuit. I don't care whether a toaster or microwave oven contains software.
A very common design approach nowadays is an appliance or peripheral that contains software that could be changed, but normal use does not include changing it. I think we can still disregard that software, as regards the ethical issue of free vs nonfree software; it is just a short way into thr gray area. However, such devices can be a terrible security threat, because a corrupted computer can install malware in them that will propagate. Devices which have this problem include USB sticks, microSD cards, disk drives, and the cameras that go in computers.
Where is the other side of the line? If the device has an "update firmware" button, that firmware is software meant to be changed, so it is unacceptable.
GTK future?
by Anonymous Coward
Dear RMS, I for one am very interested in what your view is concerning the future of GNOME and specifically GTK. In the past there were concerns over licensing between GTK and Qt and there seems to be a rise in uptake of Qt. My question is whether you see there being a future in GTK and should developers consider moving their projects to Qt?
RMS: I can't see the future, because nobody can. I hope that GNOME and GTK will be very successful. Please help make it so.
GNU/Hurd
by mrflash818
Please share your vision for where you would like to see GNU/Hurd, and GNU software over the next 25 years, and what people would be doing with it.
RMS: I regret to say I have no response. I never try to think about what computing might be like 25 years from now; it would be a waste of time, since I know that I don't know.
I can tell you something about free software 5 years from now: most of it will be the same as today. Free software does not change rapidly. (I think that is a feature; our society teaches people to overvalue innovation so as to distract them from more important things such as freedom, democracy, and giving everyone a comfortable life). Most of the GNU/Linux system in 5 years will be the same as what we have now; some components will be new, but they will be a small change compared with the system as a whole.
The GNU Hurd kernel (and the GNU/Hurd system, which is GNU/Linux with the Hurd instead of Linux) is not a high priority for us any more, because it would be a replacement for the free parts of Linux, and we don't need to replace those. Volunteers continue to work on the Hurd, because it is an interesting technical project.
The parts of Linux we need to replace are the nonfree parts, the "binary blobs". But replacing those has nothing to do with the GNU Hurd. The main work necessary to replace the blobs is reverse engineering to determine the specs of the peripherals those blobs are used in.
That's a tremendously important job -- please join in if you can.
Free hardware? Why not?
by jkrise
In my experience; it is far easier to obtain; install and work with Free Software than with Free Hardware. I asked you about this in person 2 years back; but you brushed it aside saying hardware is not trivial to copy. Recent events have proved me right; I feel. We simply do not have access to Freedom Hardware at low cost - even the Raspberry Pi has proprietary components in its hardware.
RMS: When you say "free hardware" I think you mean hardware whose specs are known, so we can develop free software to run it. I call that "documented hardware". When I say "free hardware", it means to transpose the concept of free software to hardware. This means People are free to copy and change the hardware; if it is made from a design, that design must be free, with the same four freedoms that define free software. But that is mostly an issue for future technology. Documented hardware is what we need now.
The scarcity of documented hardware is indeed a tremendous problem. In general I don't see any way we can fix it except by reverse engineering to figure out the specs.
jkrise: Why can't the FSF pool resources; license technology from ARM Holdings; and build a truly Free Tablet, Free Cellphone and Free PC running Free GNU/Linux instead of the pseudo-free Android? I am sure the community will pay any money to buy truly free Hardware from the FHF.
RMS: This would cost millions of dollars, and we have no skills or experience in hardware manufacturing, so we couldn't do it.
We could try to raise funds to pay for reverse engineering of the VPU in the Novena laptop -- if we could find skilled reverse engineers ready to take the job. Can you introduce me to any?
Shorter copyright
by oneandoneis2
I believe you're in favor of much-reduced copyright terms - a few years rather than the endless decades of today. If copyright were reduced to, say, five years, then the vast majority of GNU code would become public-domain - copyleft depending on copyright as it does, this would mean anyone could create a [proprietary] fork of, say, emacs. How do you feel about that?
RMS: For this very reason, I oppose shortening copyright to 5 years without making some other change to prevent this harmful consequence. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html.
With the 10-year copyright term I propose, this problem would not be significant.
People often identify proprietary software with copyright; there was a time when I did, too. However, that's a mistake. The two principal methods used to make programs proprietary are (1) EULAs (a legal method) and (2) keeping the source code secret (a technical method). Two secondary methods are (3) copyright (a legal method) and (4) putting the executable in a tyrant device (a technical method, see below). Patents are used too, but only to reinforce the others.
To defend our free software from being made nonfree, the only one of these four that we can use is copyright.
People like apps
by thetagger
There is an entire generation of people out there for whom mobile apps, mostly on iOS and Android, are the way in which they do their computing. The more successful apps are usually very well-designed with incredible user interfaces, an area where free software has not achieved much success, and sold at very low prices and,
RMS: These "advantages" can seem impressive to those who don't see what they cost in freedom. The most basic thing we must do is say, "I'd rather have nothing than have that," and then act accordingly.
thetagger: in many cases, also monetized through stolen personal data.
RMS: Please don't use "monetized" to mean "make money from". That word stinks of the attitude that "Profit justifies anything". See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.
Besides which, the word's correct meaning is "to use something as a currency."
thetagger: It appears to me that the GNU project is mostly ignoring this important area - I am aware of Replicant and F-Droid but these are well behind their proprietary counterparts at the moment. What should we do? Ignore mobile and hope it goes away,
RMS: I personally will ignore it, because there is nothing about it that I want. Even if we assume it is has no phone radio connection, so it is not Stalin's dream, a computer with a small screen and no keyboard is so inconvenient as to be useless for me.
However, we need to try to bring freedom to mobile computer users. We must not ignore them.
thetagger: try to get onboard with Replicant and F-Droid,
RMS: If you want to use mobile computers, please contribute in this way.
But we will never have, in the free world, the sort of "social" snooping apps that so many internet users spend their time in. We can't compete in terms of the misguided values that our adversaries promote in order to ensnare people, and if we did, we would be doing wrong. We have to set an example of rejecting those values.
thetagger: try to bring in a new generation of free software developers that is native to the mobile environment,
RMS: If this is meant as an alternative to the previous two, I don't understand what it means. We welcome people of any and all generations in everything we do.
thetagger: or avoid the mobile "ecosystem" completely
RMS: In general, I avoid the word "ecosystem" in connection with computing because of its amoral premises.
In this case I'm at a loss for what it means. I don't understand how this option differs from the first option, "Ignore mobile and hope it goes away."
thetagger: and try to work on the hardware side and try to make free hardware that is not inherently trackable/centralized and then run free software on top of that instead?
RMS: When you say "free hardware", I think you mean documented hardware. (See above.)
We can in principle make our own documented hardware, but the only way that would directly help is by avoiding the need for reverse engineering to figure out how to run the peripherals. In practice, though, I think reverse engineering is probably easier.
However, preventing the tracking is another matter. The only way I can envision to prevent the tracking of geolocation of mobile phones is if you have them disconnected from the network nearly all the time. (Well, in theory it might work to carry a parabolic antenna so you can communicate with just one tower. Maybe that would prevent the use of triangulation to figure out where you are located. I don't know whether this could be made to really work. Does anyone want to try it?)
Fundamentally, privacy-preserving computing has to be done mainly in your own computer. We have to reject the dependence on servers that the proprietary world is pushing people into. Freedom requires local application programs, rather than "web apps" or server-backed "mobile apps".
Do you foresee a viable Free Car OS?
by Medievalist
Automobile user interfaces have become increasingly complex and de-standardized as computerization reaches into the driver's seat. The major vendors don't seem to care about possible legal liabilities of designing inherently dangerous UIs. Google has enticed Honda, GM and Audi to join the Open Automotive Alliance, but that project seems more oriented towards selling android and nVidia products than providing an objectively better car OS. Do you see a future where a real Free (or at least Open Source) car operating system is a reality, or do you think the car makers will just continue to create unsafe and unstandardized vehicle UIs indefinitely?
RMS: I don't see the future, so I can't tell you what will happen. I can comment on the problems I know about now in the automotive field, but I can't tell you whether we will win, because that depends on you.
It will be a hard fight to free the software in our cars, but it is essential for drivers -- and not just those that might wish to soup up or customize their cars. The issue affects everyone.
Proprietary software is an injustice in itself, but it also leads to further secondary injustices, such as malicious functionalities. In the case of cars, those can include surveillance and back doors, as well as DRM in the entertainment system.
To exclude those malicious functionalities, the users need to have control over the software. In other words, if you want to have even a chance to make sure that the only back door in your car is the one that lets you reach into the trunk, the software must be free/libre. Anything less is inadequate.
The question asks whether open source software might be almost as good as free software. The main difference between open source and free is in the values they are based on: free software raises the issue as a matter of right or wrong, while open source studiously avoids saying that. However, what's relevant to this question is the practical extensions of the two criteria. Those are _almost_ equivalent; nearly all programs that are open source are free software.
Source code that is open source but not free is rare. On GNU/Linux you will probably never encounter any. In a car, however, you really may find programs that are open source but not free. The main case of nonfree open source programs today is when you can change the source but you can't change the executable.
How is that possible? In such cases, the source is released under a free license; it is free software, and it is open source. You can change this source, but that doesn't do you much good, because you can't run your changed version. The executable comes signed by the manufacturer, and the processor it runs in is designed to reject any executable not signed. (We call such processors "tyrants".)
In the cases I know of, this program is a version of Linux, and the reason they can make its executable nonfree is that Linux is distributed under GNU GPL version 2. If it were under GPL version 3, the seller would be required to give you the signature key to sign executables for your car.
Android uses Linux (but not GNU; the only thing in common between the Android system and the GNU/Linux system is the kernel, Linux). If Android is used in a car, its executable is very likely to be made nonfree in this way.
Of course, tyrant processors can contain software whose source code is nonfree, even secret, and this too occurs in cars. However, those programs are not open source either, so they are not a difference between free software and open source.
What this shows is that we must insist that car software be free/libre; open source is not good enough. It is not enough to be allowed to play ineffectively with source code.
See here for more explanation of the difference between free software and open source. See Evgeny Morozov's article on the same point.
Projects not being done
by mwvdlee
Ignoring preference of [free software] license for a minute, the [free software] landscape has lots of software to satisfy a wide range of users. What piece of software is still sorely missing from the [free software] landscape that isn't yet being seriously attempted by any project? Short version; what [free software] projects still need to be started?
RMS: The most important missing programs are firmware for various peripheral devices, to replace the "binary blobs" found in the vanilla versions of Linux. Linux-libre deletes the blobs, and all the free GNU/Linux distros use deblobbed versions of Linux; that gets us a totally free system but it can't operate those peripherals.
It is also important to develop Gnash enough to handle the current version of Flash. People like to imagine that Flash is dead, but reports of its death are premature.
Look here for other things we would really like people to do.
free software into law?
by paulpach
You argue that it is unethical for someone to distribute software in a way that limits any one of the 4 freedoms to users. If you had the option, would you make it illegal to do so? In other words, if you had the option would you make it so that software developers were forced by law to use a free software license? or would you leave the option to the developers and try to convince them (without coercion) that it is the right thing to do?
RMS: In an ideal world, there would be no nonfree software. I think it is possible to get pretty close to that. But I don't propose to make nonfree software illegal under today's circumstances, because it is a leap too far; the public is not ready for it. Most users do not think that nonfree software is an injustice. A law that does not have public support is going to meet resistance.
What I advocate, for today, is to ban some egregious practices found in many proprietary programs, including digital restrictions management (see DefectiveByDesign.org), censorship of applications (jails) or works that can be viewed, or requiring code be signed with a key the user does not have (as in Restricted Boot; see fsf.org/campaigns).
Of course, there are other measures governments should adopt to recover computational sovereignty and lead society towards freedom.
We should also ban the practice of asking users of digital works to agree to contracts (EULAs) that give them less rights than copyright law allows to users.
A few of the questions asked about "open source software" in such a way that, responding to them directly, I'd be classifying programs as "open" or "closed". That I will not do, because those terms presuppose a different philosophy based on different values.
Rather than give no answer to those questions, I modified them to say "free software" instead, and answered them that way. (Square brackets show these changes.) I hope the answers to these modified questions are of interest to readers. They are rather different from what an open source supporter would say.
NSA/GCHQ
by click2005
What are your views on the recent NSA activities and how do you think it will change free software & the internet?
RMS: Nonfree software is likely to spy on its users, or mistreat them in other ways. It is software for suckers.
Awareness of this is spreading, which helps us make the case for free software to people who are not computing experts.
As for the internet, it has been turned into a spy network. A considerable fraction of the massive surveillance (but not all!) applies to the internet. Most use of the internet involves web sites that snoop on users, which is poisonous. That's in addition to the snooping by ISPs themselves.
Massive surveillance of people in general endangers human rights and democracy; but we should remember that US snooping agencies do this mostly by piggy-backing on businesses that massively collect data about people.
Therefore, it is not enough to legally limit the government's access to the digital dossiers about us. We must prevent those dossiers from being made, either by business or by government. We must legally require digital systems to be redesigned so that they do not accumulate data about people in general.
Here is my full position on massive general surveillance.
Opinion?
by Anonymous Coward
What is your opinion on cryptocurrencies?
RMS: In general, I am in favor of ways to pay each other cash on the Internet without going through a payment company that keeps track of all payments. I would like to be able to pay an on-line service with cash the way I pay cash for all the things I buy today.
However, Bitcoin payments are not anonymous. To serve this need requires anonymity at least for the payer. People are working on trying to improve Bitcoin in that way.
I am not an expert on encryption, and I can't judge the security of any particular cryptocurrency. What I do know, and what is illustrated by the recent collapse of several exchanges (banks, in effect) due to robbery, including MtGox, demonstrates that, here as in any field, the security of a practical activity that uses encryption is a very different question from the mathematical validity of the encryption system or the correctness of the software. It may take years to develop cryptomoney exchanges we can have confidence in.
These currencies raise economic issues, too; but not necessarily the way many people think. The number of bitcoins is capped, but new cryptocurrencies can always be created, so that the total number of Xcoins for all values of X has no particular limit. Does this mean that the value of all cryptocurrencies will inevitably tend towards zero? Not necessarily; that depends on how much people accept various other cryptocurrencies -- a sociological question, not an economic one.
I don't enjoy risk, so I will not do speculation in cryptocurrencies any more than I do in other commodities. I may use them for payment if and when it becomes possible to use them anonymously to buy something that I can't get with cash. To resist surveillance, I do buy goods with cash in a store, so that no data base knows what I bought -- therefore, I don't pay over the internet. But I would use an anonymous cryptocurrency to pay for services and downloads.
Cell phones
by Anonymous Coward
I read a little on your website about your take on technology that uses non-free software. Do you still not own a cell phone?
RMS: I certainly do not! A cell phone is Stalin's dream: its movements are tracked, and it can be converted (through the universal back door) into a listening device.
AC: If not, I'd love to hear your perspective on life without one these days, where its just assumed that people own one.
RMS: Please help teach everyone that this assumption is false!
There is a way to make a cell phone acceptable _for occasional communication only_: put a one-way pager in the phone, so people can page you if they are trying to reach you. That way, you can keep its radio connection off most of the time. When you get the page, you can decide when and where to reveal your location by connecting the phone to the network.
Of course, the software in the phone's main computer should also be free, but that is a separate issue. In other words, nonfree software in that computer is one assault on your freedom, and the phone system's location tracking is another.
The software in the baseband (phone radio modem) processor can't be free, at least not as things stand now. So the phone needs to be designed so the baseband processor can't talk to anything (peripherals, antenna, etc) unless the main processor permits it, and so that the baseband processor can't change the software in the main processor. Ideally the software in the baseband processor should be immutable, so we can treat it as a circuit.
AC: As a follow-up, where exactly do you draw the line concerning [freeness of software] and whether or not you use software. For example, do you toast bread in a toaster that runs proprietary code? Obviously we're talking about different things here, but I'm curious to know at what point you say "no thanks!" when it comes to locked down technology.
RMS: The case of the toaster is very clear: we can't tell, except by taking it apart, whether it has a processor and software or a special-purpose chip. Since that we can't tell the difference, it makes no difference: therefore, a program that will never be changed is equivalent to a circuit. I don't care whether a toaster or microwave oven contains software.
A very common design approach nowadays is an appliance or peripheral that contains software that could be changed, but normal use does not include changing it. I think we can still disregard that software, as regards the ethical issue of free vs nonfree software; it is just a short way into thr gray area. However, such devices can be a terrible security threat, because a corrupted computer can install malware in them that will propagate. Devices which have this problem include USB sticks, microSD cards, disk drives, and the cameras that go in computers.
Where is the other side of the line? If the device has an "update firmware" button, that firmware is software meant to be changed, so it is unacceptable.
GTK future?
by Anonymous Coward
Dear RMS, I for one am very interested in what your view is concerning the future of GNOME and specifically GTK. In the past there were concerns over licensing between GTK and Qt and there seems to be a rise in uptake of Qt. My question is whether you see there being a future in GTK and should developers consider moving their projects to Qt?
RMS: I can't see the future, because nobody can. I hope that GNOME and GTK will be very successful. Please help make it so.
GNU/Hurd
by mrflash818
Please share your vision for where you would like to see GNU/Hurd, and GNU software over the next 25 years, and what people would be doing with it.
RMS: I regret to say I have no response. I never try to think about what computing might be like 25 years from now; it would be a waste of time, since I know that I don't know.
I can tell you something about free software 5 years from now: most of it will be the same as today. Free software does not change rapidly. (I think that is a feature; our society teaches people to overvalue innovation so as to distract them from more important things such as freedom, democracy, and giving everyone a comfortable life). Most of the GNU/Linux system in 5 years will be the same as what we have now; some components will be new, but they will be a small change compared with the system as a whole.
The GNU Hurd kernel (and the GNU/Hurd system, which is GNU/Linux with the Hurd instead of Linux) is not a high priority for us any more, because it would be a replacement for the free parts of Linux, and we don't need to replace those. Volunteers continue to work on the Hurd, because it is an interesting technical project.
The parts of Linux we need to replace are the nonfree parts, the "binary blobs". But replacing those has nothing to do with the GNU Hurd. The main work necessary to replace the blobs is reverse engineering to determine the specs of the peripherals those blobs are used in.
That's a tremendously important job -- please join in if you can.
Free hardware? Why not?
by jkrise
In my experience; it is far easier to obtain; install and work with Free Software than with Free Hardware. I asked you about this in person 2 years back; but you brushed it aside saying hardware is not trivial to copy. Recent events have proved me right; I feel. We simply do not have access to Freedom Hardware at low cost - even the Raspberry Pi has proprietary components in its hardware.
RMS: When you say "free hardware" I think you mean hardware whose specs are known, so we can develop free software to run it. I call that "documented hardware". When I say "free hardware", it means to transpose the concept of free software to hardware. This means People are free to copy and change the hardware; if it is made from a design, that design must be free, with the same four freedoms that define free software. But that is mostly an issue for future technology. Documented hardware is what we need now.
The scarcity of documented hardware is indeed a tremendous problem. In general I don't see any way we can fix it except by reverse engineering to figure out the specs.
jkrise: Why can't the FSF pool resources; license technology from ARM Holdings; and build a truly Free Tablet, Free Cellphone and Free PC running Free GNU/Linux instead of the pseudo-free Android? I am sure the community will pay any money to buy truly free Hardware from the FHF.
RMS: This would cost millions of dollars, and we have no skills or experience in hardware manufacturing, so we couldn't do it.
We could try to raise funds to pay for reverse engineering of the VPU in the Novena laptop -- if we could find skilled reverse engineers ready to take the job. Can you introduce me to any?
Shorter copyright
by oneandoneis2
I believe you're in favor of much-reduced copyright terms - a few years rather than the endless decades of today. If copyright were reduced to, say, five years, then the vast majority of GNU code would become public-domain - copyleft depending on copyright as it does, this would mean anyone could create a [proprietary] fork of, say, emacs. How do you feel about that?
RMS: For this very reason, I oppose shortening copyright to 5 years without making some other change to prevent this harmful consequence. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html.
With the 10-year copyright term I propose, this problem would not be significant.
People often identify proprietary software with copyright; there was a time when I did, too. However, that's a mistake. The two principal methods used to make programs proprietary are (1) EULAs (a legal method) and (2) keeping the source code secret (a technical method). Two secondary methods are (3) copyright (a legal method) and (4) putting the executable in a tyrant device (a technical method, see below). Patents are used too, but only to reinforce the others.
To defend our free software from being made nonfree, the only one of these four that we can use is copyright.
People like apps
by thetagger
There is an entire generation of people out there for whom mobile apps, mostly on iOS and Android, are the way in which they do their computing. The more successful apps are usually very well-designed with incredible user interfaces, an area where free software has not achieved much success, and sold at very low prices and,
RMS: These "advantages" can seem impressive to those who don't see what they cost in freedom. The most basic thing we must do is say, "I'd rather have nothing than have that," and then act accordingly.
thetagger: in many cases, also monetized through stolen personal data.
RMS: Please don't use "monetized" to mean "make money from". That word stinks of the attitude that "Profit justifies anything". See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.
Besides which, the word's correct meaning is "to use something as a currency."
thetagger: It appears to me that the GNU project is mostly ignoring this important area - I am aware of Replicant and F-Droid but these are well behind their proprietary counterparts at the moment. What should we do? Ignore mobile and hope it goes away,
RMS: I personally will ignore it, because there is nothing about it that I want. Even if we assume it is has no phone radio connection, so it is not Stalin's dream, a computer with a small screen and no keyboard is so inconvenient as to be useless for me.
However, we need to try to bring freedom to mobile computer users. We must not ignore them.
thetagger: try to get onboard with Replicant and F-Droid,
RMS: If you want to use mobile computers, please contribute in this way.
But we will never have, in the free world, the sort of "social" snooping apps that so many internet users spend their time in. We can't compete in terms of the misguided values that our adversaries promote in order to ensnare people, and if we did, we would be doing wrong. We have to set an example of rejecting those values.
thetagger: try to bring in a new generation of free software developers that is native to the mobile environment,
RMS: If this is meant as an alternative to the previous two, I don't understand what it means. We welcome people of any and all generations in everything we do.
thetagger: or avoid the mobile "ecosystem" completely
RMS: In general, I avoid the word "ecosystem" in connection with computing because of its amoral premises.
In this case I'm at a loss for what it means. I don't understand how this option differs from the first option, "Ignore mobile and hope it goes away."
thetagger: and try to work on the hardware side and try to make free hardware that is not inherently trackable/centralized and then run free software on top of that instead?
RMS: When you say "free hardware", I think you mean documented hardware. (See above.)
We can in principle make our own documented hardware, but the only way that would directly help is by avoiding the need for reverse engineering to figure out how to run the peripherals. In practice, though, I think reverse engineering is probably easier.
However, preventing the tracking is another matter. The only way I can envision to prevent the tracking of geolocation of mobile phones is if you have them disconnected from the network nearly all the time. (Well, in theory it might work to carry a parabolic antenna so you can communicate with just one tower. Maybe that would prevent the use of triangulation to figure out where you are located. I don't know whether this could be made to really work. Does anyone want to try it?)
Fundamentally, privacy-preserving computing has to be done mainly in your own computer. We have to reject the dependence on servers that the proprietary world is pushing people into. Freedom requires local application programs, rather than "web apps" or server-backed "mobile apps".
Do you foresee a viable Free Car OS?
by Medievalist
Automobile user interfaces have become increasingly complex and de-standardized as computerization reaches into the driver's seat. The major vendors don't seem to care about possible legal liabilities of designing inherently dangerous UIs. Google has enticed Honda, GM and Audi to join the Open Automotive Alliance, but that project seems more oriented towards selling android and nVidia products than providing an objectively better car OS. Do you see a future where a real Free (or at least Open Source) car operating system is a reality, or do you think the car makers will just continue to create unsafe and unstandardized vehicle UIs indefinitely?
RMS: I don't see the future, so I can't tell you what will happen. I can comment on the problems I know about now in the automotive field, but I can't tell you whether we will win, because that depends on you.
It will be a hard fight to free the software in our cars, but it is essential for drivers -- and not just those that might wish to soup up or customize their cars. The issue affects everyone.
Proprietary software is an injustice in itself, but it also leads to further secondary injustices, such as malicious functionalities. In the case of cars, those can include surveillance and back doors, as well as DRM in the entertainment system.
To exclude those malicious functionalities, the users need to have control over the software. In other words, if you want to have even a chance to make sure that the only back door in your car is the one that lets you reach into the trunk, the software must be free/libre. Anything less is inadequate.
The question asks whether open source software might be almost as good as free software. The main difference between open source and free is in the values they are based on: free software raises the issue as a matter of right or wrong, while open source studiously avoids saying that. However, what's relevant to this question is the practical extensions of the two criteria. Those are _almost_ equivalent; nearly all programs that are open source are free software.
Source code that is open source but not free is rare. On GNU/Linux you will probably never encounter any. In a car, however, you really may find programs that are open source but not free. The main case of nonfree open source programs today is when you can change the source but you can't change the executable.
How is that possible? In such cases, the source is released under a free license; it is free software, and it is open source. You can change this source, but that doesn't do you much good, because you can't run your changed version. The executable comes signed by the manufacturer, and the processor it runs in is designed to reject any executable not signed. (We call such processors "tyrants".)
In the cases I know of, this program is a version of Linux, and the reason they can make its executable nonfree is that Linux is distributed under GNU GPL version 2. If it were under GPL version 3, the seller would be required to give you the signature key to sign executables for your car.
Android uses Linux (but not GNU; the only thing in common between the Android system and the GNU/Linux system is the kernel, Linux). If Android is used in a car, its executable is very likely to be made nonfree in this way.
Of course, tyrant processors can contain software whose source code is nonfree, even secret, and this too occurs in cars. However, those programs are not open source either, so they are not a difference between free software and open source.
What this shows is that we must insist that car software be free/libre; open source is not good enough. It is not enough to be allowed to play ineffectively with source code.
See here for more explanation of the difference between free software and open source. See Evgeny Morozov's article on the same point.
Projects not being done
by mwvdlee
Ignoring preference of [free software] license for a minute, the [free software] landscape has lots of software to satisfy a wide range of users. What piece of software is still sorely missing from the [free software] landscape that isn't yet being seriously attempted by any project? Short version; what [free software] projects still need to be started?
RMS: The most important missing programs are firmware for various peripheral devices, to replace the "binary blobs" found in the vanilla versions of Linux. Linux-libre deletes the blobs, and all the free GNU/Linux distros use deblobbed versions of Linux; that gets us a totally free system but it can't operate those peripherals.
It is also important to develop Gnash enough to handle the current version of Flash. People like to imagine that Flash is dead, but reports of its death are premature.
Look here for other things we would really like people to do.
free software into law?
by paulpach
You argue that it is unethical for someone to distribute software in a way that limits any one of the 4 freedoms to users. If you had the option, would you make it illegal to do so? In other words, if you had the option would you make it so that software developers were forced by law to use a free software license? or would you leave the option to the developers and try to convince them (without coercion) that it is the right thing to do?
RMS: In an ideal world, there would be no nonfree software. I think it is possible to get pretty close to that. But I don't propose to make nonfree software illegal under today's circumstances, because it is a leap too far; the public is not ready for it. Most users do not think that nonfree software is an injustice. A law that does not have public support is going to meet resistance.
What I advocate, for today, is to ban some egregious practices found in many proprietary programs, including digital restrictions management (see DefectiveByDesign.org), censorship of applications (jails) or works that can be viewed, or requiring code be signed with a key the user does not have (as in Restricted Boot; see fsf.org/campaigns).
Of course, there are other measures governments should adopt to recover computational sovereignty and lead society towards freedom.
We should also ban the practice of asking users of digital works to agree to contracts (EULAs) that give them less rights than copyright law allows to users.
Is he the father of Snooki's baby?
RMS: By way of explanation, I launched the free software movement
Uh, no Stallman, you didn't. Get over yourself.
did RMS just admit to having a hard time finding skilled reverse engineers?
RMS: Nonfree software is likely to spy on its users, or mistreat them in other ways. It is software for suckers.
Yes, because insulting people who make or use proprietary software is a surefire way to convert them, right? The FLOSS community as a whole could use just a little bit of tact overall (RMS chief among them).
http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4836163&cid=46347549
> Mr. Stallman, do you ever play computer games (video games)?
> If so, which ones?
From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Slashdot ask RMS what you will
Date: Tue, 06 May 2014 02:46:49 -0400
The answers will be published soon, but the questions I got did
not include anything about what video games I play.
I won't have nonfree software on my computer, and that includes games.
But in fact I would not have time to play video games even if they are
free.
Why didn't my question of what he was eating off his foot in that video get asked?
RMS supports some form of copyright. I still think copyright is an idea that is long past its time, if it was ever a good idea. Copyright and patents should be killed off, preferably by Constitutional Amendment. More specifically, the monopoly exclusion part of copyright and patent law should be repealed. No more exclusive rights.
I think what RMS is really interested in is one effect of copyright, not the whole package. That good part of copyright is, in my opinion, not worth the vast harm of all the other effects of copyright law. Is there no way to defend the freedoms of free software without copyright? Perhaps an EULA? Or if not that, how about a new law? For instance, I certainly don't want plagiarism to be legal. We can outlaw plagiarism without outlawing copying. Should be possible to outlaw other undesirable behavior without a blanket ban on all forms of copying.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Just kick the fucking bucket already you fat retard! I'm surprised you're living this long after eating your own toe jam in front of others. I expected to see you under a bridge already as a homeless nobody.
captcha: condom, which your father should've worn when having sex with your mother
RMS points out, in regards to paid apps:
These "advantages" can seem impressive to those who don't see what they cost in freedom. The most basic thing we must do is say, "I'd rather have nothing than have that," and then act accordingly.
the when asked about developing free hardware says:
This would cost millions of dollars, and we have no skills or experience in hardware manufacturing, so we couldn't do it.
To me , those two comments gets to the crux of free softwares challenges:
Without tangible rewards that allow people to do thing they like to do many things would not get done nor would we get many new innovative things. Sure, some people will code for the fun of it but that doesn't mean they will develop as complex and useful systems as the for profit world generates. Free software is nice and a lot of it is useful and as polished as non-free apps but a lot isn't. In the end, it is neither a better nor worse solution, just a different one.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I recently saw Mr. Stallman give a talk. He has lost a little bit of energy over the years, but it was still pretty good. He has done something amazing, and he has changed the world. He is also a spokesperson for a movement that he helped create, and he is willing to take on that role.
At the end of his talk he took off his socks (he was not wearing shoes), and he started to apply a lotion to his feet and hands. I know it is petty to try to impose personal habits on other people, but it reflects badly on him and hence the movement. Earlier in his talk he complained bitterly about people using non-free software because it is inconvenient. Yet, he is not willing to forgo a small amount of inconvenience to hold to basic societal norms. If he wants us to accept a small amount of inconvenience, then he should be willing to make the effort to make the very small effort to keep his feet covered and give some small though to his own appearance and habits.
RMS mentions his list of words to avoid, with political reasons to avoid them, and sometimes alternative words.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/....
Libertarian political correctness?
He is like a Tea Party supporter or a vegan PETA member, far off the mainstream and living in a fantasy world.
Well I came late to the party and it's already filled with Trolls and the flames are rising.
Call it karma whoring or whatever. I don't have enough mod points to make the AC's disappear so at the risk of it turning into ash in this thread I'll just simply say:
Richard, thanks. You are a big part of why I became a GNU/Linux user.
I still won't use emacs though! :-)
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Begone already.
So I have that going for me. I don't subscribe to ideologies, they are too confining and dividing.
.. but I assume questions were given before it occurred. I would have like to have asked RMS, what happened to his assertion hat source code transparency will protect us from very bad code, because many people's eyes are on it. But everybody could look at OpenSSL source for years and see the potential for Heartbleed and it never got caught until it was too late.
Thank you for taking the time to reflect on and respond to these questions. In a world consumed with pragmatism and acquisitiveness, it is inspiring to see a person put so much thought and effort into reconciling his principles with his actions.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I have always been a staunch supporter of RMS against those who attack him just because he holds so strictly to his values. You may not agree with him, but I think you have respect his tenacity in sticking to his position and the personal sacrifices he makes to do so.
That being said, how absolutely boring it is to read essentially the same message ("all software should be free and you should refuse to use any software that isn't free") repeated about 15 times with 15 minor variations. Surely RMS isn't this one-dimensional. I wish there had been some more interesting questions that weren't just prompts to repeat the free software mantra over and over again.
I met Stallman in 1999 or so, at a conference and went along with him and a bunch of his 'cronies' (people who seemed to know him well and defended him like rabid dogs) to dinner. I was honestly surprised to learn that he wouldn't use passwords on any of his computer accounts (somehow this topic came up when someone else asked him a question); I never learned exactly his feelings on the matter because when I tried to ask for some clarification I was immediately shouted down by his cronies who thought I was trying to hassle him or something (I assure you, I wasn't; I just wanted to understand his position better since I had never heard of someone refusing to use passwords and didn't understand why).
Now 15 years later I read his responses to these questions and it all feels very much the same. He's apparently super paranoid (worried about the government eavesdropping on your cell phone calls and tracking you? Wishing for a pager so that you could perfectly control how much tracking information you give when you answer your phone? Jesus christ, get over yourself!) and thinks everyone else should be too.
Honestly, my opinion of RMS was knocked down a notch or two by this interview. I can still appreciate in a sense someone who is so true to their values, but this level of one dimensionality is disappointing. Perhaps the questions are to blame though, they didn't give him alot of opportunity to talk about much else besides the FSF party line.
I think the assertion of a mobile phone listening device "universal back door" requires a citation. Anyone? Google only finds sensationalist journalism and not any real research, eg http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2006/12/can_you_hear_me/ from 2006...
of the crazy hippie cat lady who quotes randomly from every eastern religion, is afraid of the aura vibrations of electricity, and won't cook broccoli because "letting the soul out of the vegetable means that it can't protect you any longer, and that's the first step toward THEM getting YOUR soul, and that is the first step toward them getting Gaia's soul, and that's their plan to rule the Astral plane like STALIN did." [pets cat]
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Why did he keep assuming that the free hardware questions referred to "documented hardware" and not free hardware as he stated? When I think of free hardware I think of free designs that I can build myself with the right tools. In effect, it is documented hardware by default. Why assume the commenter didn't know what they were talking about? It seemed kind of mean-spirited.
-SaNo
ssl? nothing when compared with MS patches which fixed 'remote exploits' which could take over the entire system if exploited.
Lots of good, important, clever, nice, etc people do share RSM's tendency to ignore a question, make up a somewhat similar question and mis-attribute it. But really, they're decent *despite* doing that, not because of it. Which should be made very much clear when someone does it while championing their horrible mix of prehistoric deontological and virtue ethics, since it only serves to make them even worse.
I read what he has to say because I have respect for his accomplishments regardless of his point of view. I do not have to agree with everything he believes in. I want software that works. I am as likely to use a blob (non-free) driver if it works as to use a free one that works.
I personally benefit more from having a mobile phone than I fear being monitored or tracked by it. I am aware that having this phone does allow for this to happen. I was joking about "TV watching us" more than 10 years ago. It was actually funny, and I got "picked on" for saying it. That joke isn't funny anymore these days.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
This guy and his followers just irk me so much I'm about ready to give up the flexibility of Linux and just move to BSD. Some more pain, but gains too.
He's got decades of this under his belt. Ask him about whether red sauce or green sauce is better for drive-through tacos, he'll talk about freedom and oppression the same confounding ways.
As for myself, I'm much more in the Torvalds camp. Substantive freedom is a practical freedom as well as a prophylactic one; it's the freedom not just *from* things but *to do and participate in* things.
Sure, I want the freedom to protect my data or change my software. But I also want the freedom to buy and use a device that I think is great, or to participate in the mobile ecosystem (sorry, RMS) because I find it to be useful.
RMS can't distinguish between the two, or between the different kinds of restrictiveness at issue—the commercial software restrictiveness that is certainly annoying and terrible for our world, but also the FSF-styled restrictiveness that shoots itself in the foot and ends up being exactly the same.
In both cases, the end result is that I can't do what I want with my software/hardware. The commercial interests are at least open about it: we don't want you to do that because it would hurt our profits. The FSF is less open about it: we're not responsible for this, it's their fault—you're free to do your own thing.
Yes, maybe in theory I could rewrite the entire GNU codebase from scratch or get a world of developers together myself to do my own thing, but substantively speaking, in terms of actual opportunity structures available to me right now, today, or next week, or indeed for most people *as themselves, during their regular lives*, there is about the same amount of substantive freedom and restriction involved.
If I want to do X with my tech, and company X won't allow it with their toolchain, and the open computing world won't support it for ideological reasons, the net result is still that *I* am *practically* unable to do X with my tech.
Part of the FSF problem is that they often delegitimize X. RMS's answers about, say, "cloud" computing or the mobile ecosystem are instructive here, and mirror common answers in free software developments from techs. "That is not a real thing, it's just marketingspeak, you are a victim of ideology, and no, we won't help you."
Operating under the Thomas theorem and using the well-respected argument made by Rawls, I'd say that RMS fails to distinguish between summary rules and rules of practice. For RMS, there are only summary rules—things that we decide or don't decide to do, and espouse for utilitarian reasons. All of his arguments are utilitarian in nature (though often convolutedly so). Even when they involve other people or "society," his arguments boil down to rational self-interest calculated according to a very narrow range of values and goods, discounting the rest.
He ignores the dimension of rules and practices that are oriented toward social life—toward behaving in ways that others understand and that enable one to substantively participate in public and group life by virtue of conceding them as ordering principles for "how the world works right now."
The FSF vision of computing is, ironically, radically individualist and lonely in this regard—it is all about "what I can accomplish on my own." The only "we" that it acknowledges is one that is made up entirely of people that have precisely the same ideological outlook, goals, desires, and summary rules as the self. All other forms of "we" are reimagined as secretly selfish people that *claim* to be a public, but are in fact actually seeking to dominate one another. For RMS, "we" hasn't happened yet and he is trying to bring it about through summary means—as a rational self-interest calculation.
But a world of identical "free-people" in which the "we" finally comes about by virtue of the universal embrace of FSF values simply doesn't and won't exist—people are different, desires are different, and that which is in one person's self-interest is never necessarily in everyone's self-interest.
To believe in
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
RMS, Why not you help BSD family to be fully free? The GNU/Linux monopoly is ridiculous.
So... if you can't refute his ideas then your fallback position is to attack the man himself?... pathetic.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
been done outside of free software.
I'm with you—his brand of activism isn't helping. It also isn't hurting. It's just irrelevant at this point.
That's sad because there's definitely room for forces to be aligned against DRM and proprietary-ness, and the FSF ought to be on the front lines of making important contributions in this regard.
But FSF advocates often simply write off most of what regular people actually care about. It's not "let's create a society in which you can watch your Hollywood blockbusters in a more free and equitable way," it's just "we won't watch this Hollywood blockbuster and if you care about your freedom, neither will you."
There is no recognition of the fact that the freedom that the user seeks is *precisely* the freedom to watch *this Hollywood blockbuster,* and that as a result, the FSF position comes off as nonsensical to most people:
"We would like you not to be able to do the things that you want to do. After all, if you do them, you'll lose your freedom!"
For the average person, this is paradoxical at best—after all, the freedom that they seek is *precisely* the freedom to do the things that they want to do. What other freedom could these FSF people be referencing?
The argument is often framed as a kind of "big picture" calculation, i.e. short-term gratification vs. long-term thinking. But in practice, the desires at issue aren't addressed in the long-term frame; they're simply dismissed (Why would you want to do that anyway?), undermined (There is no such thing, you'd actually be doing something else, you've been lied to!) or mocked (Oh, I see, we're dealing with the sorts of people that watch Hollywood blockbusters. We don't talk to people like you or care to hear anything that you have to say, and with good reason!)
I was once an FSF fan (back when it was Emacs under SunOS and the GNU tools seemed so powerful in comparison to vendor-supplied equivalents) but the political dimension of the project has overshadowed—and not in a good way—all the coding that the FSF has ever done, and that code is now simply obsolete.
It doesn't matter if Emacs is a great. The best Emacs ever is, at this point, still an anachronism. The world is busy innovating in the mobile computing and networked services/informatics space. RMS is busy building the best hand-cranked butter churn the world has ever seen.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The ideas themselves are bizarrely non-sequitur in nature, and often attempt to circumvent basic norms of colloquial language use.
When asked about the issues of the day, say cloud computing and the mobile ecosystem, he pretends to argue that both don't exist instead of addressing the question directly in the terms that are presumed.
The same with "freedom," which lies at the heart of the FSF movement. His definition of freedom (as others have routinely argued, including some very prominent people) does not coincide with the connotations that most people hold.
It's a language game in the Lyotardian sense. RMS isn't talking about ideas, or about systems, or about industries. He's talking about how we ought to define these things in the first place as a matter of the practice of language and conceptualization.
They're normative positions—value statements—and thus can't be "refuted," only debated with respect to value orientations. But these, as Weber most famously argued over a century ago, aren't subject to empirical testing. They're personal matters, matters of preference. The debate is neverending and, in fact, probably pointless.
And by making value statements in terms that he explicitly acknowledges are not the terms in common use—with the actual statements at issue beneath this running largely contrary to social norms once decoded according to his arcade language—he comes off, yes, as crazy.
That is to say, disconnected from social reality and social norms. Like the cat lady.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
RMS is a nice counterweight to Larry Ellison and Steve Ballmer.
But that's not to say that any of these people are particularly multidimensional, or particularly sane.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
why it's still not the year of free software on the desktop.
Which is no doubt fine for you—you'd just as soon deny it to all of those boneheaded idiots.
But lots of them would like to have it do things for them, if it can do the things that they actually want to do well, and do them at lower cost, and do them in ways that actually do increase freedom.
It just seems—rightly so, for most people—that it can't, along any of these measures. And so long as this remains the attitude, it won't.
Which, as I acknowledge, is no doubt fine for you.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If openssl were closedssl, do you think we would have learned about the exploit sooner? I don't.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Did RMS ever claim that free software was a protection from very bad code? I think you're confusing him with Open Source proponents like ESR. RMS is very clear in his writings: free software is a political movement, not a way to make high-quality software.
Also, is proprietary code any better?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
RMS has totally failed. No one cares about freedom. All they care about is "open source" which Apple, Google, and the rest can exploit to make billions, none of which is ever shared with the people who write "open source". Freedom does not matter in 2014. No one cares. They're too busy working for Apple, Google, and the rest, for free. I don't know why, but I am almost at the point where I respect Microsoft's hard line on "open source" more and more.
You guys are supposed to be smart but are quibbling about b***s***. RMS by the accounts of those who like and dislike him sounds like a smelly gross weirdo. His own comments make himself out to be a jacka**.
Take a whiff of your odor. You're just a bunch of lazy-thinking Marxist programmers. I'm sure you could code around me, but I wouldn't want you near any levers of power. You don't know what you don't know.
Does this mean that anyone who wishes to do so can log into his hotmail account without using a password?
There was one theme to his answers that I've never noticed before:
I regret to say I have no response. I never try to think about what computing might be like 25 years from now; it would be a waste of time, since I know that I don't know.
I found these responses severly disappointing for that reason. Agree with him or not, it's sad to see the responses be essentially "I don't have a vision for the future of FSF, because I can't know the future." That sounds needlessly self-limiting.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
If you want to see something RMS was right about, then go and read the Right to Read.
Everything he said in there is either coming true or is true already.
What a lunatic. If you can update it's firmware it's unacceptable? Come on...
It is difficult to appreciate the breadth of the free software movement and all its derivatives (open source variants) today because we take them for given. The influence of the free software movement has been subtle but longstanding and profound. Obviously, taken to its extreme and purest form, the ideology is restrictive. On the other hand, people who do this kind of stuff are expected to be passionate about their ideas, just like artists are passionate about their art and athletes are passionate about their training. I know I won't be getting up at 5am to run 10km, but those who do are not necessarily sick psychopaths and, in a healthy society, we need passionate people even if they seem to deviate from "normal".
In the end, I learned to code with Emacs and GCC and some of my favorite software is GPL. Even if the free software advocates did not give us facebook and twitter, they gave us a lot of good shit and this contribution must not be drowned in the noise.
To get back to some more specific points, I think that relying on free software for privacy (against government or other intrusion) makes much more sense than relying on guns. There can be no easy solution against government surveillance or other forms of spying, but free software is probably the most legitimate defense against abuse.
Finally, the push for "open" standards and documentation has given good results (open source GPU drivers are way better than ten years ago), but must certainly continue. Similarly, the push against DRM has given distributors like GOG (gog.com). I suppose, many of Stallman's ideas are worth fighting, even if in a very specific moment most of us look at more practical non-free options (yes, I own a phone, for example :-)).
That was ESR, not RMS. RMS has always promoted free software as a moral thing, and not been concerned about practical arguments (beyond those that are tied up in freedom, not software development methodologies.)
Ironically for me I've always considered RMS's "You should have the right to read the code you're using and change if you dislike it" the ultimate practical arugment, with the "software should be collaborately developed" thing a little silly and ideological.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Despite being socially obtuse and offputting, Stallman is not only litterate in his correspondence, uncompromising in moral character, and keen at percieving threats to our freedoms.
Most Americans are not. Instead most Americans look to the TV, we look to celebrities. We look to proffesional PR men, and "Event organizers" more concerned about their own social capital and position on the ladder. We've become a nation of 12 year old girls, more concerned about appearance than substances. This is why America is rotting.
If more people had principles, we wouldn't have to worry about SOPA/PIPA, the DMCA, and people might vote for canidates that made a diffrence.
Between him and Schiener, I say is this generations two defining intellectuals.
i sure would support and appreciate open software, such as for cars rather than the nasty OBCDII.
Good to argue, and work to get some of theses things.
however, reality is, for every utopia, there is dystopia. so rather than a blanket call to arms for the singular world of never to exist free and open software, be specific to current actions to enhance your points and strategy.
i want world peace, will continue to work for it, but, homo sapiens are destined to never live it.
Getting paid up-front ensures that the artist gets paid while freeing up our culture so that anyone can use it without restrictions. In fact, with a kickstarter-like model, it will be in the artist's best interests to make everyone share as many copies of his work as possible, as the more people enjoy it, the more will be willing to contribute to his next project. That's exactly the opposite of the copyright model, where it's in the artist's interest to persecute sharing.
I've written more about this on slashdot previously. I host a copy of that here if anybody's interested.
I would love to see Stallman speak about his rather extensive comments on pedophelia and other such acts. He has quite a history of pushing ideas I find to be completely repulsive, including backing forms of sexual abuse in public schools. http://trw.gallopinginsanity.c...
you were saying?
It is also worth mentioning that "Linus's Law" was not coined by RMS, and that RMS's defintion of "bad code" is probably much different, and more nuanced, than yours or mine. That's taking into account that he's likely several orders of magnitude the code-programmer than most here will ever hope to be.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
There is no need for a free phone. Even RMS thinks it is ok to pay for the hardware. The free phone happened already, see openmoko.
So if a car was to be made with Libre operating software, I guess that the buyer would have to at least sign a waiver, which states that in case the car is operated on modified software, the warranty is voided (at least for issues conceivably linked to control/monitoring system changes) and the car maker from liabilty for any damages caused even partially or conceivably by operation of the modified software.
Other than that sort of concern, I generally applaud the good fight for software user rights. Where would we be without this sort of tireless advocacy?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
We could try to raise funds to pay for reverse engineering of the VPU in the Novena laptop -- if we could find skilled reverse engineers ready to take the job. Can you introduce me to any?
A quick search turns up this product description which points to the Freescale i.MX6Q specs.
Does anyone know what he means with "VPU"?
The GPU is a Vivante GC2000, which has been partially reverse engineered already; support is being added to etnaviv, which is a user-space driver -- the part connecting Mesa + Gallium to the kernel driver -- for the Vivante graphics cores (support older cores like the GC860 is good enough for everyday use). The kernel driver itself (galcore) is available under GPL, although it could use a cleanup. So there is no need to reverse engineer everything from scratch, but the etnaviv project could certainly use more contributors.
There is also a video decoding acceleration block in the i.MX6, but like all things H.264 that is likely a patent minefield, so I'm not sure it would be worth spending a lot of resources on reverse engineering that.
Whole time I read this I could hear Stallman's voice. This might be why I skimmed through the second half.
It's not that I don't like him or support him, it's that I think his insistence on "GNU/Linux" as a mouthful whenever referring to Linux is childish and ridiculous and, more to the point, egotistical/annoying.
The correct link for the FSF's high priority project list is
http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/
The chorus of criticism for Richard's willingness to repeat his point of view here is far more repetitive and tiresome than RMS has ever been.
I mean, say what you want about the tenets of Free Software, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
I've not read much about RMS aside from a few comments on here over the years. I would like to know how far is he really willing to take this:
Since hospitals use some form of non-free software to run various medical devices, does he forbid these devices to be used on him? Or have his medical information stored in a non-free database for future visits? Or use medications developed and created by machines that run non-free software? Or sending rovers to other planets - how much of the code in these machines is non-free? Or having a vehicle with a modern control system running the engine? Or any number of other examples of technology used to help humanity.
I understand sticking to your guns for what you believe, but I'm not sure that this is thought out completely.
freedom. I'd venture to say that I value the kind of freedom that they provide me more highly than I do the freedom from any one free software instance.
If I had to choose between "you never see the source, and have to pay big bucks, but Google continues to work as-is" and "no Google, but you get the source and the ability to control your own devices," I'd go for the first option in a second, because it enables me to do more things—not in theory (in theory, of course, the opposite is true) but certainly in actual everyday practice.
As I've outlined elsewhere in this discussion, but perhaps not so explicitly, the problem with RMS and the FSF is that they care only about one kind of freedom directly: the freedom to control one's own hardware and software.
This freedom is seen as being logically prior to all others. In a bizarre, historical sense, that may be true—if hardware and software had always been completely and entirely locked down, we wouldn't have the computing world that we have today.
At the same time, most people can not and do not take advantage of this freedom, don't care much about it, and might even have a great deal of trouble imagining what it amounts to.
But the list of things that they are able to do thanks to Apple and Google that they couldn't do without Apple and Google is quite long and quite clear to them.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to protect openness, but FSF discussions always manage to carry this to the logical extreme: you shouldn't use Apple and Google because they may eventually, someday lead to the end of open computing (e.g. the end of Apple and Google). So, even though Apple and Google radically expand the list of choices that you have at every moment of your life relative to not having them, you should forego them and have neither. Not to worry, though—since you have the more fundamental freedom (the freedom to control your software and hardware), you can just remake Apple and Google!
This is not going to fly with the average consumer. They won't be getting a free and open Apple or Google anytime soon—and thus, not using Apple and Google represents a net loss of freedom for them.
The best analogy I can think of is that of dropping someone in the middle of a wilderness with no other people in it and over which no state has control, then flying away and yelling down to them as you depart, "Congratulations! You're the freest person on earth! Enjoy the rest of your life in the wilderness, where nobody will ever control you again! And don't worry—if you get bored or lonely, you can always build civilization anew, this time with More Freedom[TM]!"
For the wilderness explorer that likes a solitary existence (or, say, the RMS-styled software developer), this may all indeed be true. But most people would find this kind of freedom less desirable than, say, the freedom that comes with a management job, a million dollar bank account, and an apartment in a major city.
The wilderness explorer cries out, "But you're not free! You have to go to work! You have to use a bank! You have to pay the rent! You have to pay your taxes! A policeman could write you a ticket for any number of things!"
Everyone else says, "You poor thing—living in the wilderness all alone like that, with no amenities, no friends, and nothing to do!" (Think RMS in his no mobile phone, doesn't use anything but Emacs, has never seen another email client world.)
Which one is "freedom?" It's a silly question. They both are—or they both aren't. Because freedom isn't an objective quantity.
As I mentioned in another post, society doesn't come to us as an empty field of possibility. It comes to us with conventions and practices that are well-established and well-understood at any moment in time. These open up new possibilities for individual life—that is, in fact the benefit of "society" in the first place, and why we bothered to evolve the capability—it enables us to build New York City, or create an
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Mandatory Access Control, or "application censorship" as Stallman calls it, is just a refinement of earlier security practices. His own GNU system enforces Unix's user/group access controls. A process running on a user's behalf is not allowed to interfere with other users in the same system. It turns out that programs can do undesirable things to the user's own stuff (mostly from accidental security vulnerabilities), so it's helpful to limit what a program can do. The only alternatives are for you, the user, to limit yourself to running programs that you can study and verify that they simply do not do bad stuff, or to disconnect yourself as Stallman has done. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Have a nice time.
This Q&A reminds me a lot of that Tom Cruise interview about Scientology. Stallman's language is very evocative of cult indoctrination. "We" are the correct ones, "they" are trying to "get us", "their" method is an injustice against "us", hyperbole like "Stalin's dream", and demanding full commitment, i.e. "The most basic thing we must do is say, 'I'd rather have nothing than have that,' and then act accordingly."
It's funny, because this is how Stallman has always spoken of his gospel, and yet his followers have the gall to refer to Apple's customers as "sheep".
It's not RMS's fault that he was asked similarly un"interesting" questions that each came with the repetitive prejudices (asking about the younger movement he didn't start instead of the older movement he did start, framing issues in terms of amorality and not questioning what non-free software entails). Looking at the questions, it's clear that they were asked by people who didn't bother to read the essays linked to in the original /. story soliciting questions for him. I remember when /. used to criticize behavior like that. A lot of what people bump into are issues where software freedom has a practical response that can liberate users from dependency on untrustworthy programmers, but thanks to an amoral stance on these issues the public is never taught to see how a technocratic/developmental stance (open source, focus on features and price, focus on slick interfaces) can run contrary to their interests (preserving their privacy, retaining and exercising their civil liberties, not being beaten or killed). It's convenient to see a movie when you wish, but certainly not as important as avoiding being spied upon everywhere you go.
That's probably because you haven't been paying much attention to what Edward Snowden has been telling us, nor have you been thinking deeply about the consequences of those revelations. I suggest watching Eben Moglen's insightful talks on this topic for some historical perspective on how "one-dimensional" your take is and how much under threat the entire world is these days. That is, if you're not too busy dismissing Moglen for being an FSF lawyer and former FSF board member who deeply appreciates software freedom for its own sake.
I'd be more likely to believe you on this claim if the rest of your opinions were better defended. But it's awfully hard to take someone too seriously when they're so easily dissuaded by stylistic matters over substantive examination of pertinant issues.
Digital Citizen
It's so convenient to argue against yourself isn't it? No need to ask him what he actually thinks (his email address is readily available) or read any of his many essays. You might be particularly interested in a list of surveillance examples found in proprietary software including one pertinant description for a program you just mentioned—"Angry Birds spies for companies, and the NSA takes advantage to spy through it too.".
Digital Citizen
Your post is a perfect example of tact that many in the FLOSS community lack. According to you, any criticism of the FLOSS community is just a defense of Microsoft made by an astroturfer. I suppose you're the type of person who thinks that it's ok when a politician in a party you support does wrong, but it's terrible when a politician in the other party does wrong.
You look like a fool.
any "Left wing" person in US political terms would absolutely hate totalitarian dictators like Stalin because Stalin was an authoritarian regime's totalitarian dictatorial leader...
"left wing" means **anti-totalitarian**
but yeah, Stallman's explanations put him in a bad light, that I agree with
Thank you Dave Raggett
the idea of correcting a question is fine...or at least could be acceptable...and it is done by unscrupulous politicians constantly
the problem is *how*...he said enough to indicate that he has *some* capacity for human interaction and what is considered socially acceptable
he didn't have be a dick about it and correct the text of the question in that manner...nor was a preamble explanation needed...
he should have just corrected it like this: "If you are asking {new nomenclature} then X...if not then Y"
whether or not you agree with that, it's clear that the overall tone was a bit pompous and overly self-aware...
like most neckbeards
Thank you Dave Raggett
Yeah, that bothered me too...
It shows reductive thinking...over-simplifying into a binary some behavior that is more complex
Here are RMS's options for users of software:
1. Use all free software
2. You are a sucker
choose one
It's kind of pitiful actually...right?
It's like the notion that someone could understand how non-free software can be anti-user yet still choose to use the software is not possible in RMS-land
Does anyone know him personally on here?
Can any /.'ers talk some sense into the man? He seems awesome wrapped in neckbeard
Thank you Dave Raggett
From 2006 "FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool"
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029...
~"functioned whether the phone was powered on or off."
Today is more about gov malware in your modern mobile OS.
So yes the telco software/hardware layers are fair game to any gov and have been for years with court docs mentioned in the US press.
The journalism going back years was the result of US court documents.
Now just get it all http://www.wired.com/2014/03/s...
Also see the http://www.reuters.com/article... ideas around domestic phone records.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
http://richard.stallman.usesth... has a hint under "What hardware do you use?"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
BoomBoom wrote:
> So what's the incentive to create works? How is an author paid?
The author proposes a work. He finds customers who want it made. He sets a bounty level. The customers pay the bounty (if not, author revises his bounty or moves on to another idea). The bounty is held by an independent third party (escrow). The author makes the work. The author releases the work TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC and receives the bounty.
https://www.schneier.com/paper...
I'm not saying it's a perfect model (in particular there is controversy about non-paying users benefiting from other's payment), but unlike RMS, I am at least answering your exact question. ;-)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
RMS can both be oversimplifying a complex issue AND a major contributor to FOSS software....BOTH CAN BE TRUE
yeah...no shit sherlock
***anything*** we do on a networked computer is vulnerable
ANYTHING
I've understood that since my dad (who was a cryptographer in the Navy in the 70s) explained how punch-card authentication works during the first Reagan Administration
So...yes...I fscking understand it
What I **don't** understand is the BINAR
1. use only free software
2. you are a "sucker" (aka you're an idiot)
It's bullshit........I like using the damned internet....I fscking *know* how trackable everything is...I used to be a network admin....
Just like we put our lives in other driver's hands every time we drive....using a networked computer is inherenly risky
If RMS wants to be consistent then HE COULDN'T EVER DRIVE ON A CITY STREET
b/c...you know..."risk"
Thank you Dave Raggett
Uh, I saw him go through an airport metal detector once to board an airplane, so at some practical level he does understand the freedom/convenience tradeoff.
RMS, I appreciate the time you spent organizing your responses.
To others... I see a lot of "he's a jerk" and "...his selfish agenda" comments. Exchanging a few emails with RMS years ago and reading/listening to his writings and public speeches isn't sufficient for me to know whether I'd want to maintain a personal friendship with him, given the opportunity, but it is sufficient to see how he respects others. "Selfish agenda?" Looks like one of the least selfish agendas ever to me. Short, frank, blunt, terse? You bet. We asked questions, we got answers. "Changes the questions?" Some people, consciously or not, try to shape conversations with the terminology they use. He refuses to play along. Uncompromising? Apparently. Who better to defend Free Software from all threats and publicly identify those threats? One other thing I noticed: he readily admits to having changed his views based on experience and new information. I can think of a lot of folks that either 1) don't change their minds no matter what and/or 2) won't admit they did even if they did.
...do you have the physical hygiene of a punch drunk dung beetle, and the social grace of a blathering baboon on spanish fly.
"We could try to raise funds to pay for reverse engineering of the VPU in the Novena laptop -- if we could find skilled reverse engineers ready to take the job. Can you introduce me to any?"
Already happening: https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop/stretch-goals