2002.05_Sam Williams-Richard Stallman's Biographer.pdf

INTERVIEW

FREEDOM

Sam Williams

UNBOUND

Linux Magazine

caught up with

Sam Williams,

author of “Free as

in Freedom”, a

biography of

Richard Stallman

and his crusade for

Free software

Linux Magazine – How long did it take you to write

the book?

Sam Williams – About a year from start to finish, a

time that was full of love and treachery, some of the

baser human emotions. About 18 months ago I was

approached by an agent from a publishing company

who was interested in doing a book about Richard

Stallman, and negotiations were started.

Unfortunately the book project fell through because

of some of the unique licensing issues involved, but

not the relationship that developed with the agent

from the publishing company and me, we were later

to get married.

O’Reilly was the only publisher that could

accommodate the content licence that we required in

terms of the digital realm. About June last year they

agreed, then from August until Christmas the main

writing took place, although most of the main writing

had already been organised in the form of research, I

just had to go through my log. I spent about 30 days in

a row writing everyday all day.

LM – What did you know of Richard Stallman before

you were asked to write the book?

SW – I had interviewed him about three or four times

before. My first encounter with him would have been

the LinuxWorld trade show, March 1999, where the

initial launch of GNOME 1.0 took place, with full press

coverage. I was just clueless at the time, and I asked

him “What does this mean for the Linux operating

system?” and I remember him jumping down my

throat for not calling it GNU/Linux, reminding me that it

was disrespectful to all of those that had worked on

the GNU project to not give it the more full title of

GNU/Linux.

At first, he seemed to me to be a prima donna, but

as I got to know him more I came to realise that this

was just how I was interpreting his quirky personallity.

LM – Do enough people see past his quirky

personality?

SW – That was my approach to the book. The idea

running through my head was that will people see RMS

differently in a hundred years in the future, when his

personality is not around to get in the he way. I felt

that it would be a complete disservice not to focus on

that personality and how it has hampered him in some

ways and given him strength in others. RMS will say it

about himself that his primary asset is that of

stubbornness, not everybody could say “I’m never ever

going to use proprietary software again for the rest of

my life”. Well, he said it, has the will to back it up, and,

more importantly has the coding skills to go and write

some thing and do that every day to build something

that he can use and that other people can build upon.

LM – Did you know about GNU before your

introduction to RMS?

SW – I knew about it but only in a general way, as part

of doing research into Linux. I only got to know about

it at the ‘99 LinuxWorld show. Here he really made his

comeback, with all the tech media gathered, they

called it the coming out party for Linux. He really used

that platform skilfully, to make people aware that there

had been work going on since ‘85 and the Linux OS

wasn’t something that Linus Torvalds had pulled out of

his brain, being disrespectful to the GNU project and

not acknowledging how much effort is involved in

developing an operating system of this size. So I knew

a little about GNU by listening to some of his speeches,

but it really was in the course of writing the book that

my respect, both for him and the project, was raised.

LM – What were the licensing issues that halted the

book originally?

SW – I was approached by a company who were

interested in doing an electronic book about RMS, they

wanted a subject that was going to appeal to the

Internet community. I said I would do it, but then,

during the course of researching the book I realised

that RMS really detested the electronic book and its

proprietary formats, with the texts of such books being

‘rented’ in a restricted form. The whole RMS argument

was that software should give you liberty, and we were

creating a product that would give readers less liberty

than a paper book.

Unfortunately, the publishers were not in the

business of giving away their content. The subject

matter would have made it a prime target for the

cracker community, taking the challenge to make sure

the text was made available. We couldn’t reach

agreement on this, so the book deal fell through.

Info

Author Sam Williams

Publisher O’Reilly

( www.oreilly.com )

Price

£15.95

ISBN

0-596-00287-4

LINUX MAGAZINE

Issue 20 • 2002

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