Stallman: If you want freedom don't follow Linus Torvalds
- 12 September, 2007 12:00
- Comments 6
"Please don't call GNU 'Linux'," says Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation. In this interview, he also asks readers whether they will fight for freedom or be too lazy to resist.
You launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to create a free Unix-like operating system, and have been the project's lead architect and organizer since then. Why did you start it in the first place? Back then it was already clear that software was becoming proprietary?
Stallman: In 1983, all operating systems were proprietary, non-free software. It was impossible to buy a computer and use it in freedom. Proprietary software keeps the users divided and helpless, by forbidding them to share it and denying them the source code to change it. The only way I could use computers in freedom was to develop another operating system and make it free software. I announced the plan in September 1983, and began development of the GNU system in January 1984.
On Feb. 3, 1976, Bill Gates wrote his famous "open letter to hobbyists" where he stated that software should be paid [for] just like hardware. Did you read that manifesto at the time? What was your impression back then?
Stallman: I never heard of it at the time. I was not a hobbyist, I was a system developer employed at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. I had little interest in 16-bit microcomputers, because the lab's PDP-10, with a memory equivalent to 2.5 megabytes, was much more fun. Pascal is both weak and inelegant compared with Lisp, our high-level language, and for things that had to be fast, assembler language was more flexible.
I don't know how I would have reacted at that time if I had seen that memo. My experience at the AI lab had taught me to appreciate the spirit of sharing and free software, but I had not yet come to the conclusion that non-free (proprietary) software was an injustice. In 1976 I did not use any non-free software. It was only in 1977, when Emacs was ported to the non-free Twenex time-sharing system that I started to experience the nastiness of proprietary software. After that, I needed time to recognize this as an ethical and political issue.
What do you think about intellectual property?
Stallman: I am careful not to use that confusing term in my thoughts, because it does not refer to a coherent thing, although it misleadingly appears to. The term lumps together laws that raise totally different issues, as if they were one subject.
Copyrights exist, and I have opinions about copyright law. Patents also exist, but patent law is almost completely different from copyright law. My opinions about patent law are also completely different from my opinions about copyright law. Trademark law exists too and it has nothing at all in common with copyright law or patent law. If you want to think clearly about any of these laws, the first step is firmly insisting on treating them as three different subjects.
If you say something about "intellectual property," you are trying to generalize about three laws that are totally different. Whatever you say will be a foolish over-generalization, because that term only leads to such. I've decided to avoid that pitfall by never using the term. [See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.]
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Comments
Ali Kouhzadi
I just don't get it! Why would I want to change the source code?! I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 right now, I have never felt like "changing its code"!! and how is this related to "freedom"?!!! I just dont get this guy! statistically, nobody does!
"By 2000, ironically, every version of GNU/Linux included non-free software and thus invited users to surrender their freedom by installing some."
WHAT FREEDOM?!!! How many people do you think even understand what the "code" is in this context?! let alone changin' the code!!
i just dont get it.....!!!! what's his problem?! what's the real reason behind his hatred and biased ideas?! i just dont get it!! and I dont care really...!
i hope you "freedom"(!) freaks publish my comment !!!
Ladislaus
@Ali and everyone who don't get it.
it is very good to have the chance to be on a free OS. maybe you don't want to chance, or even understand the code. But there are People who does, and that those people now are able to chance the code of the Operatinsystem they are using is not the only reason why freedom is important.
So, there are People who understand the Code, and there are many people who help to improve the Code. for example your Ubuntu! Many People are improving the Code of Debian, and with the Freedom, Ubuntu copied Debian. without the freedom of Debian, there is no Ubuntu. And without the freedom. only a group of people are able to edit the code. and those People have the power to control the system you are using. but with the freedom, there is now group of people who have the power to control your system. Freedom is very important. And even if you don't care. i hope some people who are reading this do.
best regards --Ladislaus
Ladislaus
Bye the way, my Text above was only a freestyle explanation trying. If you realy interested why freedom in Software ist imported, listen to Richard Stallman at UofC. There, and in many other Videos he ist Talking about that topic. Very interesting!
Yaro Kasear
RMS is an idiot. I understand what he's saying, I'm just outright disagreeing with him. To RMS "freedom" means doing everything mindlessly his way.
Sorry, I'm with Linus Torvalds on this, I'd much rather use what works, not what's "free according to Stallman." There's big reasons why RMS is increasingly irrelevant these days. It's because guys like Torvalds did what Stallman tried to do but didn't because he got sidetracked trying to make himself look like a fantastic person.
It's Linux. Not GNU. Using the GNU toolchain doesn't magically make Linux itself into GNU. The OS core itself isn't GNU, and the distribution itself is whatever the makers of the distribution want to call it.
Linux is not GNU. No matter how much RMS doesn't want people to think that, Linux is *not* GNU. If RMS wants people to use GNU, maybe he should stop this BS and get the HURD finished and put out the *actual* GNU.
Faith+1
Stallman has never had a realistic view of the real world. He's always worked in an academic environment where others have worked to make money allowing him to chase the "freedom" nonsense. A brilliant computer scientist in some rights, but a blithering idiot in others. If the world had gone his way would have held back computing by decades.
Thank the computing gods he passed into irrelevancy years ago and never had a significant impact on the market. Yes, he started GNU, but it was the work of others that made it what it is.
He doesn't like Linus because Linus actually produced something more people could use. Stallman just lived in a dream world.
Steve
Stallman is starting to sound like those scary religious fundies who can only see the world one way and will stick their fingers in their ears shouting "LA LA LA" if you try to reason with them.
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