Richard.M.Stallman calls for vigilance to safeguard ones Freedom

Richard M Stallman the father of GNU in a whole hearted interview with Peter Moon of ComputerWorld publication exhorts all Freedom loving community members to be aware of and vigilant about the pitfalls of turning a blind eye towards the less obvious details such as the version of GPL license used in various open source software.

Here are some of the quotes from the very interesting interview...

On difference between Free software and Open source...

In terms of ideas, Free software and Open source are as different as could be. Free software is a political movement; open source is a development model.

On where and why he opposes Linus Torvalds ....

The fact that Torvalds says "open source" instead of "free software" shows where he is coming from. I wrote the GNU GPL to defend freedom for all users of all versions of a program. I developed version 3 to do that job better and protect against new threats.

Torvalds says he rejects this goal; that's probably why he doesn't appreciate GPL version 3. I respect his right to express his views, even though I think they are foolish. However, if you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him.

Will free software community win the war against Microsoft ?

Nobody knows who will win this fight, because the outcome depends on you and the readers. Will you fight for freedom? Will you reject Windows and MacOS and other non-free software, and switch to GNU/Linux? Or will you be too lazy to resist?

On the deal between Microsoft and Novell ...

Microsoft's aim, in the deal with Novell, was to make people scared to run GNU/Linux without paying Microsoft for permission. That is why we designed GPLv3 to make it backfire.

Read the full interview here.

A talk by Richard M Stallman - Youtube video

This is a very interesting concise talk (or rather, answers to a set of questions) by Richard.M.Stallman the father of GNU movement. The video was shot by Arturo Di Corinto for Candida TV. This is one of the best video clips of talk by RMS I have come across in recent times.

Nearthwort Obtain interviews Richard M Stallman - a transcript of the interview

Nearthwort Obtain is a website with a difference. While most websites concentrate on providing content in the form of text and graphics, this site's principal content is in the form of podcasts. That is right, it features interviews with famous personalities which you can listen to. And the quality of the content is also quite high. Nearthwort obtain is the brain child of Marc Fiszman who calls his podcast website the "Multidimensional Adventurer's Handbook".

Marc recently interviewed none other than Richard . M . Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement. This is the transcript of an excerpt from this interview - made available with prior permission from Marc.

Interview with Richard . M . Stallman

Nearthwort Obtain interviews Richard M Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Movement and the man who put the GNU into GNU/Linux. There are two main parts to this interview. In part I, Richard introduces Free Software and explains what that is all about. And that leads into some quite heavy criticisms of the popular tech heroes, well they are probably heroes of quite a few you out there certainly not of Richard's. The first is lord of Linux, Linus Torvalds and next stop is Steve Jobs of Apple who, Richard claims, is as evil as Microsoft. In the second part of the interview, we move into some multidimensional discussions which focuses on the impact of freedom on the evolution of consciousness.

Marc : Could you briefly explain what you mean by the definition of Free Software ? There may be a lot of tech savvy people who will be listening to the show and they won't be aware of what that means and your involvement with that.

RMS: First of all, Free refers to Freedom here and not price. So you should think of Free speech and not free beer. When you understand the proper meaning of the word Free, you understand Free software. Free software means software that respects the user's freedom. It is not a matter of what the program does in the technical sense, but it is a matter of the social system that the program's developers use. In fact the social system respects your freedom, then it is free software. It is decided by the program's life and not it's code. Any program could be free software but most of them are not. So specifically, Free software means you the user has four essential freedoms.

Freedom 0 : Run the program as you wish
Freedom 1 : the freedom to study the source code and change it to do what you wish
Freedom 2 : the freedom to distribute the copies of the program to others.
Freedom 3 : the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions as you wish

If the program gives you these four freedoms, it is Free software. If one of them is substantially missing, then it is proprietary software or user subjugated software and that shouldn't exist.

Marc: And what is the difference between Free software and open source software ?

RMS: The term open source was coined many many years later by people who were in the Free Software community and liked Free software but they didn't like the ethical and political approach of the Free software movement. They liked Free software in a practical sense. They appreciated it , they enjoyed the benefits of these freedoms. They didn't want to use the term freedom, they didn't want to look at these as an ethical question. they didn't want to ask whether it is wrong for a program not to respect your freedom.

So they coined another term more or less saying category software. That which enabled them to take a purely practical approach to the question. So they have an official definition of open source which is pretty similar to the definition of Free software in its practical resolve of those differences and they encourage the saying 'practice' but they don't say it is an ethical area instead they present practical benefits only. they present the question as purely practical.

They don't say that ethically speaking, software should be open source but we say that ethically speaking software should be Free.

Marc: Are you saying that Free software is a political movement where as open source is not ?
RMS: Absolutely.

Marc: But I have listened to another interview that you gave to about a year ago. I think you were talking about the development of the famous project Linux developed by Linus Torvalds.

RMS: He is in the open source camp.

Marc: Do you have beef with him or do you get along with him ?

RMS: Well we still have some disagreement because in the past few months he has been actively ridiculing the idea of freedom as something that shouldn't exist.

Marc: And that is your main problem with him...
RMS: Absolutely.

Marc: He claims that he doesn't take a political stand. Right?

RMS: He calls himself apolitical. I call him amoral.

But when you say that you are apolitical, that is itself a kind of political stand that is, ignore all those political questions.

Marc: Why should we care about Free software.

RMS: If you are using computers and using software and if you are using software which is not free, then you don't control what it does. Not you personally and not your whole community. A non-free program is controlled by its developer. The developer decides what it will do and also decides what it won't do. And so it is a tool for the developer to maintain control over society, to gain a power of the kind nobody should have. It is dangerous for the society to allow people, to allow anyone that kind of power. Someone I am not sure who it was, said code is law. What it means is that if you are doing software then the software decides what you are allowed to do. So that has the effect of being laws. These laws are being written by software companies which they can arbitrarily decide by fiat, the laws that are bound to you if you use that non-free software. I don't.

You can listen to the rest of this interesting interview where RMS apart from talking about Free software explains why Apple is as evil as Microsoft.

News: Richard Stallman convinces Cuba to embrace GNU/Linux

When you hear the name Cuba, it concocts in your mind a picture of bankruptcy, food shortages, drug shortages, rampant unemployment et al, at least some of them a direct side effect of the US trade sanctions [source BBC]. But one thing the Cubans can be proud of is their excellent health care system which rivals even that in the US. Believe it or not, Cubans boasts of a better life expectancy than the North Americans and Cuba has better infant and adult mortality rates than the US.

Being a communist state, it was only natural for Cuba to embrace GNU/Linux as the official OS of choice for all governmental departments. But what surprises me is why it took so long. AP news reports that in a recent visit to Cuba, Richard M Stallman was able to convince the Cuban government the advantages of using a Free OS in all government offices - definitely a big feather in the cap for RMS. He was visiting Cuba to speak at an International Conference on Communication and Technologies in Havana.

It might seem that RMS is only successful with governments which are predominantly socialist in their beliefs. But the fact is, many reasons he lists in favor of supporting Free software are valid and make perfect sense for all the governments the world over irrespective of their ideologies - including (I may add) the US government. The prominent reason being :

The inherent security threat in using proprietary software for mission critical situations or in matters of state security, for the simple reason that without being able to examine the code, users can't know what it's doing or what "back door" holes developers might have left open for future entry.

I feel happy that one more country has decided to embrace GNU/Linux in a big way. Kudos to the Cubans for their foresight.

Richard M Stallman talks on GPL version 3 at the 5th International GPLv3 Conference in Japan

The fifth international GPLv3 conference was held on 22nd and 23rd of November in Akibara Tokyo Japan. A couple of months back, RMS had spoken at the 4th GPLv3 international conference held at Bangalore India. These conferences are a part of a series of events organized by Free Software Foundation to enlighten the public about the upcoming new version of GPL, more specifically to make them aware how GPLv3 will help them better in safeguarding their freedom vis-a-vis the software they use.

In Tokyo too, RMS gave a talk which concentrated on the upcoming GPLv3 and the major changes that they are thinking of bringing to the license in its current form. fsfeurope.org is running a transcript of Mr Stallman's talk in Tokyo which is a must read for any GNU/Linux enthusiast.

He dwelt in depth on a variety of topics such as the differences between GPLv1 and GPLv2, The changes that are aimed at GPLv3 such as better support for internationalization, better license compatibility with the Apache license and the Eclipse license, preventing tivoisation, fighting software patents by carrying an explicit patent license and a few other things.

It is really simple when you look at the logic provided by RMS. He is not concerned about any particular OS or software... rather, his number one priority is to conserve the freedoms enjoyed by the people who use Free software in a way such that nobody will be able to hold the Free Software Movement at ransom. Today Linux is the darling of many corporates with many of the heavy weights jumping on the Linux bandwagon. For any business, the fundamental aim is to make money. And with Linux becoming a viable platform, businesses are slowly realizing the advantages of embracing Linux. The only irritant that is standing in their way is the GPL license which they could do without. RMS and Free Software Foundation is working towards safeguarding the GPL by plugging all its loopholes so that it is not possible to circumvent it and thus compromise any of the freedoms guaranteed by GPL.

What is Free Software? - an interview with Richard M Stallman

In recent times, if you ask me to name one personality in the free software community who has been as much reviled as being adored, I would say it is Richard M Stallman - the father of GNU. He has been bashed in the media as much for his dedication towards furthering the cause of free software and his firm stand against DRM. I believe that if not for GNU and GPL, the Linux movement would have been a non-entity. It was GNU which provided the wings to Linux to soar up and meet the competition head on. In many ways GPL gave it the moral edge over the BSDs which are also released under a free license.

Recently Robin Good had the honor of putting up RMS at his apartment in Rome and he used this occasion to ask him a couple of questions regarding free software. And RMS was good enough to clarify his doubts. During the course of the interview, he asks the following question :

RG: To support those, who like me, favor change over the control exercised by large corporations and media, what are the type of actions that individuals can take?

Richard Stallman: I wish I knew.
This is the greatest political question of our time.
How can we put an end to the empire of the mega-corporations and restore democracy? If I knew I would be the savior of the world.
What I think I can tell is that the media are crucial.
The power of the corporate media enables truth to be suppressed and lies to be passed as truth.
You’ve probably heard that a half truth can be worse than a lie. A lot of the things that our government’s and media say are one-tenth truths, nine-tenths lies. And it doesn’t take many of them together to create a completely fictional world view...
So I recommend that people stop listening to the mainstream media. Don’t watch television news, don’t listen to news on the radio, don’t read news on ordinary newspapers. Get [your news] from a variety of web sites, which are not operated under the power of business money, and you have better chance of not being fooled by the systematic lies that they all tell, because they’re all being paid by the same people to tell the same lies. Or nine-tenths lies.

Read the rest of this interesting interview.