2002.03_Richard Stallman.pdf

INTERVIEW

RMS

INTERVIEW

domination: the owner of the software

dominates the users.

LM - Marketing plays a vital role in their

stronghold. How can the Free Software

community challenge that?

RMS - Word of mouth. The more you talk about

the ethical importance of Free Software the more

people will see that there is something really

important at stake rather than short term

convenience and expense.

LM - Do you have a term for ‘the opposition’?

RMS - I refer to them as Software hoarders or

Software privateers. Privateers, originally, were

authorised by governments to attack the shipping of

another country. In this context, they have been

known to refer to their enemies as pirates, so it’s only

fitting that we can call them privateers.

LM - What are you most proud off?

RMS - The Free Software movement. With it I have

found a way to stand up for freedom. Before that I

cared about freedom, but I had never found a way to

stand up for it. And that, of all the things a person

can do is something to be most proud of. The heroes

I most admire have stood up in tremendous ways for

freedom. So now I’ve found a certain, smaller, way to

stand up for freedom. Now I feel I’ve done something

good with my life. Just developing software is good,

but not as good, not nearly as important.

LM - Has the GNU project gone as good as you

would have hoped?

RMS - I didn’t know how much to hope for, I always

imagined success and total failure. We have achieved

a substantial lot, but, at the same time there are still

real problems in the community, both internal and

external. In the community we have a weakness that

many people appreciate Free Software, but as an

ethical principle: they like having freedom, but they

are willing to use proprietary software for short term

convenience. Those people help in various ways but

they can be easily lost to us. It easy to tempt them to

leave our community and not support it. They are not

likely to fight hard to overcome an obstacle. Then,

externally we face dangers such as software patents,

DMCA, EU copyright directive and the Cybercrime

treaty. If we want Free Software we have to fight

against all of these things.

Another danger comes from the manufacturers

who don’t publish specifications. It prohibits us from

writing Free Software. So all of these things are

external threats to our community. So what we have

are threats and at the same time a lack of resolve of

many of the people in our community. That is why I

focus my efforts on showing people how to gain and

keep this resolve. If a person appreciates Free

Software that may be enough to convince them to

contribute to the community with code, but it may

not convince them to act politically to protect the

community from prohibition.

A t the recent FOSDEM conference in Brussels,

We were lucky

enough to ask

RMS, founder of

the GNU project

and author of

Emacs, a few

questions about

his work

Richard M. Stallman was good enough to

give up a few moments of his time to answer

some questions about the GNU project, GNU/Linux

and the freedom to know your code.

Linux Magazine - Did you find the people at

FOSDEM enthusiastic?

Richard M Stallman - Yes

LM - Do you prefer this type of event more than

an expo?

RMS - Absolutely. The expo is more commercial and

can be useful to spread GNU ideals to additional

people, but even at a meeting like FOSDEM it’s

necessary to do that. People come to FOSDEM

because they like the atmosphere of development,

being coders, and that’s good. But it is also important

to come here to hear political and ethical issues we

have. To get them to organise against software laws

such as the new European software patents.

LM - Do you feel passionate about hardware

specifications?

RMS - If the specifications for hardware are secret

the Free Software community cannot support that

hardware and this is a serious problem. Hardware

vendors that produce products with no Free drivers is

a very bad thing – people should not buy that

hardware – they should tell the manufactures that

they insist on hardware that can be run with Free

Software. Should hardware vendors think that it is

better for them to attack our freedom then it is they

who should suffer.

LM - Rich countries are donating hardware complete

with non-free software. Is this good or bad?

RMS - When Microsoft do this it can be thought of

as Microsoft colonialism. Microsoft is trying to

colonise the world, which is true for first world

countries as well as third world. They should not be

able to dominate anyone. They are not satisfied with

a market share, they want to dominate that share,

and they want that share to be the whole. There are

those that argue that it serves the economy. They are

wrong, it only serves a few people in that economy.

It is the nature of non Free Software that it creates

Richard M. Stallman –

Campaigner

Info

Richard Stallman -

www.stallman.org/

The GNU project -

www.gnu.org

Free Software

Foundation Europe -

fsfeurope.org/

LINUX MAGAZINE

Issue 18 • 2002

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