Friday, February 23, 2007

Richard Stallman UC-Berkeley EECS Talk: "The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System"



Dawn and I visited UC-Berkeley again on Friday, February 23 to attend this second talk by Richard Stallman.

Abstract (from Internet):
Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide.
Rough outline of the talk (my notes, transcribing his thoughts, without comment):
  • Four Freedoms
    • Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
    • Freedom 1: The freedom to study and modify the program.
    • Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
    • Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
    • Use free software all of the time, not just part of the time
    • Result of four freedoms is democracy
  • Proprietary, Custom, and Free software
    • Proprietary software is choosing your master; free software means no master
    • Custom software not distributed; custom for a particular purpose
    • Proprietary software shouldn't be developed at all. It's an attack on society and betrays community
  • History of Free Software Movement
    • Reached ideas in 1983, at which time he had some fame as the creator of Emacs, but relatively unknown outside that community
    • Describes himself as selected by circumstance, and he thought he had a moral obligation to do something where others were not in his position
    • Product of hacker culture
      • Hackers: defined as using intelligence in a playful spirit
  • History of GNU
    • Started in 1983, based off of UNIX, though he had no practical experience with it at the time
    • No enemies at first. People laughed him off and then forgot about it since the project to replace UNIX seemed so big.
    • Naming of GNU
      • Hacker culture of 1970's frequently used humorous recursive acronyms to give credit to original program when porting it. For example, ZWEI stands for "ZWIE Was EINE Initially."
      • Mr. Stallman decided he wanted to honor UNIX with the name, and came up with the "Not UNIX" (NU) part of the acronym first.
      • He then began plugging in letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. He enjoyed the word GNU on several levels. First, because he found it humorous (because the 'g' is normally silent); second, because it represented a pun on the word "new."
    • Completion of GNU took ten years. Had finished everything but the kernel when Linus Torvalds adopted the GPL in 1992. GNU began development on a kernel in 1990 but Mr. Stallman says there's nothing to recommend it.
    • Today GNU/Linux has well-funded enemies
  • Copyleft
  • GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux
  • Open Source
    • Dislikes the term Open Source because it focuses on practical values rather than ethical values.
    • Defines those who label themselves apolitical as adopting a philosophy for shallow and practical reasons, while missing the most important bits. He names Linus as one person adopting this label.
    • "Value Added Programs" -- recommends calling them "Freedom Subtracted Packages" instead
  • Patent Law -- apparently one study found 283 US patents in GNU/Linux
  • Employment
    • Mr. Stallman claims that of all the jobs in IT, 10% of development is on proprietary code with the majority of the rest on custom code.
    • Dismisses idea that rejection of proprietary code will impact the IT development market
  • Schools
    • Not only a place for learning, but a place for moral education
    • Advocates teaching children four freedoms by using free software instead of teaching children proprietary software
  • Saint IGNUcious
    • Dons robes and pulls out old disc platter as halo and recites Church of Emacs bit.
  • Questions and answers last about 50 minutes. Talk ended at 19:35 (140 min)
One-liners:
  • "You can only distribute the video in OGG-Theora format...." -- Mr. Stallman before the talk to a student organizing the event. The EECS department seems to distribute by default in WMV format
  • "You can't distribute those here." -- in reaction to seeing a student with a stack of distros for distribution at the event which did not meet the FSF's definition of free software
  • "I'm a teetotaler" -- in response to pre-talk request for mug and boiling water for tea he brought with him
  • "Te quiero siempre" -- Mr. Stallman says this to waitresses in Spanish-speaking countries (apparently means both "I want tea, please" and "I want you, please.")
  • "When the US has a problem it doesn't try to solve it; it imposes the problem on the rest of the world" -- in regards to DMCA.
  • "Using the word pirate doesn't make any sense because it equates helping neighbors with attacking ships": In reference to the use of the label pirate to describe people who share software in violation of the licensing agreement.
  • "The US government is a violent terrorist organization."
  • "We can't make ourselves perfect but we can respect freedom" -- talking about freedom and four freedoms
  • "It's not like it's Bush who's drowning" -- As part of explaining his realization of the moral circumstance available to him in 1983, he said that it was like seeing someone drowning and you have to help them. He then followed this with "It's not like it's Bush who's drowning." He then mentions he can't swim anyway.
  • "I decided I had to do GNU because of moral circumstance, or die trying...of old age, most likely" -- regarding his decision in 1983 to begin the GNU project
  • "You have to start when you don't know whether you can win. Otherwise you miss opportunities. You can't start when the end is in sight." -- on starting GNU in 1983 and the enormous amount of code to be written
  • "Proprietary software means you choose your master. Freedom means you have no master."
  • "Escape from proprietary developers; escape to the real world; escape to the free world and live in freedom"
  • "Freedom can easily get lost. That's the reason for the GPL"
  • "School should be a place where students are expected to share software. Little Jimmy, if you bring software to school you have to bring enough for everyone."
  • (As Saint IGNUcius doing his Church of Emacs bit) "vi vi vi, while being the sign of the beast, is not evil. It can, however, be considered a penance."
Recommendations:
If anyone wants to watch the video of the talk, I believe the UC-Berkeley EECS department plans to post it to the EECS department homepage sometime within seven days:
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