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Richard Stallman Interviewed By Bryan Lunduke (youtube.com)
Many Slashdot readers know Bryan Lunduke as the creator of the humorous "Linux Sucks" presentations at the annual Southern California Linux Exposition. He's now also a member of the OpenSUSE project board and an all-around open source guy. (In September, he released every one of his books, videos and comics under a Creative Commons license, while his Patreon page offers a tip jar and premiums for monthly patrons). But now he's also got a new "daily computing/nerd show" on YouTube, and last week -- using nothing but free software -- he interviewed the 64-year-old founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman. "We talk about everything from the W3C's stance on DRM to opinions on the movie Galaxy Quest," Lunduke explains in the show's notes.
Click through to read some of the highlights.
"Instead of the DMCA, which makes it a crime to show people how to break DRM, it should be a crime to make, import or lease or sell devices with DRM," Stallman says. "Both the players and the media. It should be a crime. The executives of the companies that are now pulling the strings of the W3C, they should go to jail for doing DRM. "
Asked about Sir Tim Berners-Lee's endorsement of DRM in HTML5, Stallman quipped that "The fact that he's a knight means he was of service to the empire. And now he's being of service to another empire...What's happening here is that Berners-Lee and Jeff Jaffee have convinced themselves that by making this a standard, they will make the injustice of DRM smoother and less annoying in minor ways. And they've convinced themselves that that's the purpose of their lives... "
"He should handle it by saying no. But he can't really. And the reason is he set up an organization which is controlled by the businesses that want to put in the most money... By structuring it so it's controlled by the businesses, they've structured it so it wouldn't defend us from those businesses."
Stallman calls Skype "a non-free program with a network effect" whose users are "victim co-perpetrators," and also says that "Nobody uses Facebook, Facebook uses them. Facebook doesn't have users. It has useds. If you have a Facebook account, Facebook is using you to get information about you and about other people you know..."
Stallman pans mobile devices "that are full of peripherals that require non-free software at the system level. So there's no way to free them and have them work, except lots of painstaking reverse engineering, which is proceeding slowly."
And Stallman reserves a special bile for "the internet of Stings", saying "I personally wouldn't tolerate anything in my home that was talking to the internet except for my computer. They're designed to mistreat you. And part of the way they're designed to mistreat you is that they contain non-free software. And as happens often in the non-free software world, they have malicious functionality... It's the act of folly to use such a device."
Citing evils including surveillance, DRM, and back doors, as well as censorship and tethering to a remote server, Stallman says "If any proprietary program nowadays has no malicious functionality, that's basically luck."
"With free software you can remove any malicious functionality [or] a few other users can get together and release their modified version, and you just have to use it. With free software the community of users can defend itself from malicious functionalities. With proprietary software, the users are defenseless. This is why the mere fact of being proprietary software is an injustice." At one point he even says that proprietary software is like a dangerous drug, and "we've got to teach people to get off of it."
His advice to others? "Reject products with DRM. Never use any product designed to restrict you unless you have, immediately to hand, what it takes to break the handcuffs."
Stallman says he's running Trisquel's GNU/Linux distro on a ThinkPad x60, "one of the models of computer that can run a free BIOS with no binary blobs in the BIOS or in Linux, no proprietary software at any level of the GNU system. This is basically what we were aiming for 34 years ago."
Lunduke asks Stallman how a staunch proponent of free software -- and a man who doesn't agree to EULAs -- gets his entertainment media? Stallman replies, "No movie or show or song is worth giving up my freedom for. So I don't. So the only ways I will get copies of publications is when there's an ethical way to do it, one that doesn't mistreat me, doesn't do injustice to those who are using it..." "I buy music on CDs from physical stores... The problem is in the U.S. it's hard to find such stores any more!"
As a recovering teenaged TV addict, he no longer owns a television -- he went cold turkey when he went to college -- but he loved The Prisoner, and quotes it. " 'I'm going to escape and come back and wipe this place off off the face of the earth' is an inspiration to me. You might say that spirit is the base of the Free Software Movement. I'm going to escape from proprietary software, and come back, and wipe proprietary software off the face of the earth."
Finally, Stallman says we need more free software champions to help with this great work, and when Lunduke conveys the thank-yous of many free software fans, Stallman replies, "The best way to thank me and the thousands of other people who've worked on GNU is by helping us advance. So look at GNU.org/help, and you'll see see dozens of different kinds of work you can do or contributions you can make. And it's not all programming..."
Click through to read some of the highlights.
"Instead of the DMCA, which makes it a crime to show people how to break DRM, it should be a crime to make, import or lease or sell devices with DRM," Stallman says. "Both the players and the media. It should be a crime. The executives of the companies that are now pulling the strings of the W3C, they should go to jail for doing DRM. "
Asked about Sir Tim Berners-Lee's endorsement of DRM in HTML5, Stallman quipped that "The fact that he's a knight means he was of service to the empire. And now he's being of service to another empire...What's happening here is that Berners-Lee and Jeff Jaffee have convinced themselves that by making this a standard, they will make the injustice of DRM smoother and less annoying in minor ways. And they've convinced themselves that that's the purpose of their lives... "
"He should handle it by saying no. But he can't really. And the reason is he set up an organization which is controlled by the businesses that want to put in the most money... By structuring it so it's controlled by the businesses, they've structured it so it wouldn't defend us from those businesses."
Stallman calls Skype "a non-free program with a network effect" whose users are "victim co-perpetrators," and also says that "Nobody uses Facebook, Facebook uses them. Facebook doesn't have users. It has useds. If you have a Facebook account, Facebook is using you to get information about you and about other people you know..."
Stallman pans mobile devices "that are full of peripherals that require non-free software at the system level. So there's no way to free them and have them work, except lots of painstaking reverse engineering, which is proceeding slowly."
And Stallman reserves a special bile for "the internet of Stings", saying "I personally wouldn't tolerate anything in my home that was talking to the internet except for my computer. They're designed to mistreat you. And part of the way they're designed to mistreat you is that they contain non-free software. And as happens often in the non-free software world, they have malicious functionality... It's the act of folly to use such a device."
Citing evils including surveillance, DRM, and back doors, as well as censorship and tethering to a remote server, Stallman says "If any proprietary program nowadays has no malicious functionality, that's basically luck."
"With free software you can remove any malicious functionality [or] a few other users can get together and release their modified version, and you just have to use it. With free software the community of users can defend itself from malicious functionalities. With proprietary software, the users are defenseless. This is why the mere fact of being proprietary software is an injustice." At one point he even says that proprietary software is like a dangerous drug, and "we've got to teach people to get off of it."
His advice to others? "Reject products with DRM. Never use any product designed to restrict you unless you have, immediately to hand, what it takes to break the handcuffs."
Stallman says he's running Trisquel's GNU/Linux distro on a ThinkPad x60, "one of the models of computer that can run a free BIOS with no binary blobs in the BIOS or in Linux, no proprietary software at any level of the GNU system. This is basically what we were aiming for 34 years ago."
Lunduke asks Stallman how a staunch proponent of free software -- and a man who doesn't agree to EULAs -- gets his entertainment media? Stallman replies, "No movie or show or song is worth giving up my freedom for. So I don't. So the only ways I will get copies of publications is when there's an ethical way to do it, one that doesn't mistreat me, doesn't do injustice to those who are using it..." "I buy music on CDs from physical stores... The problem is in the U.S. it's hard to find such stores any more!"
As a recovering teenaged TV addict, he no longer owns a television -- he went cold turkey when he went to college -- but he loved The Prisoner, and quotes it. " 'I'm going to escape and come back and wipe this place off off the face of the earth' is an inspiration to me. You might say that spirit is the base of the Free Software Movement. I'm going to escape from proprietary software, and come back, and wipe proprietary software off the face of the earth."
Finally, Stallman says we need more free software champions to help with this great work, and when Lunduke conveys the thank-yous of many free software fans, Stallman replies, "The best way to thank me and the thousands of other people who've worked on GNU is by helping us advance. So look at GNU.org/help, and you'll see see dozens of different kinds of work you can do or contributions you can make. And it's not all programming..."
You opened the article, and even posted in it. You care!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Awwwwwwww.......you're such a caring person! 3
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He's harsh on Tim Berners-Lee for supporting DRM. I can't say he's wrong, though.
Also he's harsh on Facebook.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Judging by your reaction something is making you angry. Would you like to talk about that?
Shut up, Emacs Doctor!
Ezekiel 23:20
IMO, he does that so that he doesn't have to shake hands with people.
sag
I sympathize with his ideals, because the truth is that a lot of DRM sucks ass and big companies like facebook are screwing their users in unethical ways. But it's still hard to take Stallman seriously because he doesn't provide practical solutions to these problems. The reality is, we live in a world choke full of DRM and information harvesting megacorps - the free software idealism has lost and will never win - and Stallman seems like a radical extremist that advocates blowing up parlament and engaging in civil disobedience by opting out of all the services modern life offers. This is not a practical or tolerable solution for 99% of the population. Most people want to watch Netflix, connect with their friends on facebook and perform Google searches. If you just tell them they can't have all that, you'll never win them over.
... that Lunduke would even interview RMS again after RMS telling Lunduke that he should go broke rather than develop software... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=radmjL5OIaA
I have enjoyed every interaction I have had with him because he doesn't bend his principles. He becomes a modern prophet of sorts to us calling out the truth we already know but are maybe too lazy to actually apply to life without being reminded.
Now my wife would call him and quite often me a real Sheldon Cooper but we need a few dorks around calling us to do the right thing to shepherd us against those motivated by personal or corporate gain and 'free' not libre systems which actually just use us as farmed cash crops.
He did like my suggestion for the next openmoko/Neo900 which included a POCSAG pager module though he disagreed on the agreed upon modem module implementation in that design. He would own a phone if it was one which didn't abuse him, having a pager on passive alert and only connecting to the phone network when he chose to to answer/call back his calls sounded good to him.
I suppose the problem is there is less commercial pressure to produce a phone or computer which fully respects the user when even a little abuse spread among thousands or millions of units can enrich a small number of executives. I think well over 90% of users in our endless September could care less about the mostly invisible abuse going on and like airline passengers just care about the price no matter how bad they are treated.
Stallman is correct in some things he says, like Facebook owns you. But this guy is a total nutjob in other ways.
He still can't drop the "GNU" which I find funny. It's been like 2 decades now.
"I'll just have my Linux. Thanks."
"But... But... But it has GNU software too."
"We don't care."
Stallman may not have a TV set, but he does have the only computer with a psychedelic bus.
You mean like Shakespeare used to do ?
It's still a product people want to pay for, otherwise there wouldn't be any patrons, it's just the method of payment that's changed.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Free software is winning.
Too broad a brush unless you specify where it is winning. Some places it very much is succeeding, others not so much. Some types of software are absolutely dominated by free software and in some other categories it is, near as makes no difference, non-existent. Good luck finding any company with accounting software or CAD software that is free (speech or beer) and better than the closed source options. (spoiler: none exist) Proprietary software is in no danger of extinction any time soon no matter how much we all might wish for such a state of affairs.
Is there a modern computer or mobile device that doesn't run GNU software?
Pretty sure there is basically no GNU software on an iPhone. I'm sure you can hack/jailbreak the device to get it to run but a good approximation of nobody actually bothers to do that.
So, after 34 years, in a world of on-demand entertainment, mobile devices, in-home electronics, video conferencing, etc., Stallman is using a decade-old laptop, watching no entertainment at all, presumably has nothing in the line of other devices (e.g. tablets, phones, CCTV, etc.) and can't talk to anyone who doesn't use the same kind of software as him (e.g. everyone on Skype, WhatsApp, etc.). And he also thinks you should go to jail for wanting to put a restrictive licence on things you own?
And we're supposed to follow this guy's ideals?
The guy's a moron. And that's coming from someone who does do an awful lot of things the open-source way, including my own programming.
If you want to fix this problem, rather than mouth off, try and fix some of the primary problems identified by the FSF - which has included open-source video conferencing for years. Hell, they're still talking about an open-source alternative for Flash which has lived and died in the time they've been trying to create one.
The sentiment is overblown, the direction is a good one, but the reality is so poor that everyone gave up waiting (e.g. for Hurd which only recently got SATA functionality...). And you're seriously advocating a years-old laptop as the way to live? That laptop stopped manufacture before millions of the users of things like iPads and WhatsApp were even born.
Not only are you bad at fixing the problem, you're bad at finding interim solutions, and bad at making suggestions, and nothing but bad press for people who DO still want free and open kit.
I'm incredibly disappointed that NOBODY with these large organisations with tons of skilled people on board has thought to monetise the exact thing they can do : Make a series of machines that are free and open from top to bottom. You can use sales from them to develop further. People would buy one just for a certified "open" tag.
But, no, the closest you can get is System76 who recycle old IBM laptops still and who have just thought about getting into the game of end-to-end production.
We could have been doing that since the 386 era when this guy first started mouthing off publicly, but nothing has been done in that direction.
I'm all for free software but, you know what, I have to talk to real people. That means a mobile phone. I have to use computers. That means ones I can buy in a shop today. I have to live and enjoy. And that means playing games on Steam and watching movies on Amazon.
Because there are precisely ZERO viable alternatives, short of a 10-year-old laptop and giving everything else up.
And yet if you go back to some of the recent Android articles, you'll find people saying that Android isn't really Linux, because it doesn't contain the GNU stuff that they expect on a 'real Linux' system.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
> Stallman replies, "No movie or show or song is worth giving up my freedom for. [...]"
It seems to me like he is giving up a lot of one kind of freedom in order to attain his kind of it. Having limited options, even if self-prescribed, is a lack of freedom.
Accents as in diacritical marks, or accents as in I should read your post like the frenchman from monty pythons holy grail? Or both? ;)
Stallman pans mobile devices "that are full of peripherals that require non-free software at the system level. So there's no way to free them and have them work, except lots of painstaking reverse engineering, which is proceeding slowly."
Thanks for reminding me: how is that Replicant project (or should it be GNU Replicant?) coming along? Are we likely to see it any sooner than HURD? Or will that too be a HURD like project - abandoned by you after going through an odyssey of experiments by the devs?
"I buy music on CDs from physical stores... The problem is in the U.S. it's hard to find such stores any more!"
Don't you still get CDs in the mail from BMG or Columbia House, like I used to, in the 90s? Here's what I consider mistreatment: having to put down anything from $7-15 on a CD w/ 11 songs, only 1 or 2 of which I like. And being spammed by them every other week, only w/ actual physical mail, as opposed to email.
I have 2 ways of getting my music. Since I prefer music videos, I just download them from YouTube, and by now, have quite a collection. Unfortunately, in my car, I can't control that from my steering wheel on anything but an iToy, and that doesn't allow me to upload my freely obtained music. So I did buy something like 10 of my favorites on iTunes, but for some of them, iTunes did not have the music video available (even though I had it from YouTube, usually from the artists' Vevo channels). So I am forced to make do w/ less. I do wish my car navigation system could simply work w/ Windows 10 Mobile's Groove and Movie apps, so that I could control that from my steering. That, and I wish that Groove could make itself look like an iPod to any external device, and that it could handle music videos, instead of handing that function over to movie.
Anyway, I digress. Bottom line: I prefer the current system, where I only pay for each song I actually want and like, and not for arbitarily selected groups of songs that the record company selects. Since everybody's tastes vary, this is easily the best way to distribute music.
I do agree w/ RMS on TVs: I too no longer have a TV at home, although I do watch some news programs over YouTube live. While he makes some good points, his goal at the end - eviscerating proprietary software from the face of the earth - just reveals his evil Stalinist tendencies that have never left him, and never will.
It's what people see. Like if I have a microwave oven or washing machine that has Linux underpinnings and someone asks me whether I run Linux, my answer would be no, since this computer that I'm typing on is TrueOS, and so Linux ain't what I do my computing on.
Mr Stallman, you shouldn't count yourself in the plural
I thought that his special BO cologne is what guarantees that
But, am I really a slave, in that case...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It takes a special kind of stupidity to think that any technology that people have to be forced to use is going to be successful.
You can stick your fingers in your ears and go "neener neener neener" if you see me coming down the street, and stop reading websites where I post things.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I think this is a great example of the situation. I used to think of RMS as a nutcase, and over the years I've come to agree with him on nearly everything. (Though yes, I do make some compromises.) Fighting for peoples' rights does win hearts and minds. Maybe you're not a programmer, but to a programmer, it is extremely offensive to have laws that prohibit me from doing what I want, especially when those laws don't even serve the interests of society. It is, quite simply, the fight against evil.
Yes, creating DRM ought to be a crime. If this sounds extreme to you, you need to remember that it's already a crime to make software that works with DRM. So this modest proposal is not government expansion beyond the current status quo. The 2017 premise with DRM is that the government is already taking sides, and the public approves of the government spending money to prosecute and imprison people on the issue of DRM.
They just happen to take sides against the people and liberty, and (IMHO) the long-term viability of copyright itself (since DRM causes piracy). So given the premise that we must draw our guns and point them at people's faces (the essense of law), why not point our guns at the right faces?
However horrible and overreaching you think it is, that you could be sent to jail and lose your family and fortune over DRM issues, you already live in that world today! The proposal is merely to punish evil people instead of good people.
Until DMCA's anti-circumvention stuff is repealed, it is totally reasonable that DRM be outlawed. If you repeal DMCA (so that people aren't risking fines or jailtime by trying to work with the content) then you could repeal the prohibition against DRM too -- I'm all for getting government out of this decision. But until then, it should be illegal to use DRM. There should be fines and prison time for authorizing the use of technical measures which limit access to copyrighted works.
Please understand: I'm not saying this isn't extreme! I'm just saying it's no more extreme than the status quo: DMCA itself. And outlawing DRM would be an improvement and overall less extreme, so it'd be a step in the right direction.
So, hell yes, it's practical. Why not?
Isn't it kind of better though? Rather than trying to shove your product down people's throats to convince them they should pay you for it, they get to use your product and evaluate its worth TO THEM and give to you freely as they see fit.
Actually he does: opt out. It won't kill you to only buy entertainment which is DRM-free
True but a bit of a dodge really. That's like arguing that I always have the option to leave the US if I don't like the president. Technically true but highly unrealistic for all but the most severe cases of oppression. DRM is a problem (whether they realize it or not) but for most people it isn't something that they care about on a deep level so long as it doesn't conspicuously interfere with their daily lives. It's one of many little bits of friction in our daily lives which we have to work around. Fortunately we have some people fighting the good fight so there is hope.
This is not anticipated to be tolerable by 99% of the population. They don't actually know, because they'll never try it
I'm not about to try all sorts of things that I'm pretty sure I won't enjoy. To be sure I'm probably wrong about some of them but I am quite certain I've got a better idea about what I am willing to tolerate than anyone else.
This is how powerful corporations control people: by manipulating their unexamined assumptions of what they can tolerably live with.
Where do you get the idea that people do not examine what matters to them? People do this all the time.
They reasoned more or less thus: if happiness is having all your wants satisfied, the surest path to happiness is to want less.
Argument from a false premise. Happiness demonstrably does not arise from having all your wants satisfied and it's not automatic that wanting less will result in having more of your wants fulfilled.
If we want to do sound bite philosophy I think a better version is thus: Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
Shut up, Emacs Doctor!
I thought that Emacs was a church (or a mosque), not a hospital
Yeah, they are just switches, wise guy! But they are easily accessible switches, which is not so important if I'm sitting on a sofa doing nothing, but is definitely much more important if I'm driving and shouldn't be getting my attention diverted from the road.
And no, they didn't force me to buy an iPhone: FaceTime did (and that's another story). But I like watching music videos while listening to them on my phone or tablet, I want the music to be local to the device and not have to be online for Vevo or YouTube to access it, and I don't want to have 2 copies of the same song on any device - one in mp4 and another in mp3. So I choose to just have music in mp4 format. Which works beautifully at home, but creates an issue in the car. That is - to smoothly change what songs I'm listening to w/o having to turn to my phone and go into it, which would take my attention off the road.
What they did force me to buy was a few songs from iTunes, so far amounting to ~$20. Those switches are not controlling me, but to my disappointment, the only things they properly control are my iToys, but not my Lumia.
Eric Raymond would be the Trump of the tech world. Or maybe Linus might be. RMS is more like the Bernie Sanders of the tech world
Except, he's the one that's generally all talk. HERD, for example, is the Trump University of OS kernels.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Maybe it's a witch doctor? Or a faith healer? Unless the difference is lost on you like it is on me.
Ezekiel 23:20
No, the Pat Buchanan of tech would be Woz
Ummm, Linux is similar enough to Unix - POSIX compatible shells, commands w/ some few variations. Granted, it doesn't have the Open Group's certification, since nobody though it worth the money. But the fact that IBM, Oracle, HP have all pretty much abandoned their proprietary Unixes in favor of Linux (in case of IBM, even on their p-Series) is enough evidence that Linux is more often than not a good enough replacement for Unix in a way that Windows ain't
I'm going to escape from proprietary software, and come back, and wipe proprietary software off the face of the earth.
Calm down there, Mr. Ahmadinejad
More people use MS Windows than Linux for the same reason that more people use English than Esperanto. Not because it's better, but because it's entrenched in society. MS-DOS for the IBM PC wasn't remarkably good. What was remarkable about it was that it hacked together very quickly. Copyright gave monopoly control and massive profits to whoever got something out the door first in an emerging market. (Although control over "the desktop" is now becoming less important than control over "the cloud".)