1. corevette: If you could have one proprietary package/software released as Free

Software, which would it be and why?

RMS: I have not made an effort to study the possible candidates, since

unless a genie offers me a wish of that kind, the results wouldn’t

enable me do anything constructive. Thus, I can only respond based on

the few proprietary programs I happen by chance to know about.

Of the programs I know of, I think freeing Autocad would give the

biggest boost to the free software community. It is used in a wide

range of activities, and our CAD software lags quite a bit,

———————————————————————–

2. stdout: At the 1999 Atlanta Linux Expo, I was standing there chatting with

you and a group of people. A very young boy (around 14 years old) very

timidly approached you to thank you for your work and what you have

done. He was obviously very intimidated and spoke only a couple of

sentences, but unfortunately made the mistake of referring to “Linux”

instead of “GNU/Linux”.

You ripped into that boy and tore him a brand new asshole, and I

watched as his face fell and his devotion to you and our cause

crumpled in a heap. You destroyed that boy with your harsh words.

Someone in the FSF told me a year later that you had changed for the

better and you were much calmer.

My question to you now is: do you regret the harsh tone you’ve dished

out to so many people over all that time?

RMS: I have no memory of that conversation, so I’ll take the questioner’s

word for it that I spoke with a teenager who called the system

“Linux”, and I told him it should be called “GNU/Linux”. Perhaps I

really lost my temper, or perhaps I just showed some irritation and

the questioner has exaggerated it.

Either way, I shouldn’t have. The boy was just misinformed by all the

other people who call the GNU system “Linux”. What I should have done

was explain the truth patiently and without criticizing him.

The repetition of this error hampers the work we do for users’ freedom

today. People who think the system is “Linux” assume it was started

by Torvalds and that it comes from his views on life. Then they often

follow him in devaluing their own freedom.

I will try my best to keep my good humor as I explain that the system

is GNU/Linux. You can help me succeed by joining in the work. If you

make a point of calling the system “GNU/Linux” and explaining why, the

error will gradually become less common.

———————————————————————–

3. atomic_rabbit: In the GNU Manifesto, you envisioned the GNU system as a hybrid of

UNIX and a Lisp machine system, with Lisp as a system programming

language alongside C. In reality, aside from Emacs and a handful of

projects that use Guile as an extension language, Lisp is nowadays a

negligible part of GNU.

RMS: That is true. I initially intended to give Lisp more of a role in the

GNU system, then abandoned that goal as it took years to get the

system running at all.

As a Lisp hacker, do you regret the marginalization of Lisp? Do you

think that more efforts should be made to introduce Lisp into the GNU

system, or is that an idea whose time has passed?

I am not sure it is correct to say that Lisp has suffered

“marginalization”. Lisp is not widely used now, and wasn’t before.

But we do have various Lisp platforms in GNU, and we are still

improving Guile which offers a Lisp-like extension facility for other

programs.

———————————————————————–

4. miserlou: I’m a person who makes my living by porting and writing free software

and then selling it for a profit. Unfortunately, I have to use

proprietary, corporate controlled markets (Android Market, iPhone App

Store, etc) to do this. How do you feel about digital software markets

as a financial support structure for Free software?

RMS: I don’t think of them under the rubric of finance, because what

preoccupies me is the restrictions they impose. For instance, Apple’s

terms for the iGroan/iBad app store have the effect that any

executable received through the app store cannot be free software.

There are free software source licenses that permit you to distribute

an executable through Apple’s app store, but that executable won’t

itself be free.

As far as I know, there is no such problem with Android Market.

If you want to release a version for the iGroan and iBad, I suggest

that you stop dealing with iTunes. Instead, distribute it youself and

invite people to jailbreak in order to install it.

Why hasn’t GNU or

the FSF tried to make a market (“app store”) for Free Software?

Would it even be possible? There is no platform that directs users to

get their free software from our app store. We don’t make such

platforms. In general, each GNU/Linux distro has its own package

system and repositories. Each has its own developers’ group which

maintains them.

In general, the existence of a controlled market for applications

suggests that the operating system is not free software. For

instance, I’m told that Android is nonfree in some phones, since users

are not allowed to alter the operating system software. The source

code of most of the software for this phone is free, but in these

phones the executables are nonfree.

I won’t claim it is impossible to have a corporate controlled app

store for a system which is free software. I don’t see how, but if

someone manages to do this, more power to her. I hope that she will

give some of the funds to free software development.

According to this:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html you guys are fine with it,

but in practice I’ve received quite a bit of flack from free software

people. What say you?

When you meet people who think free software is supposed to be gratis,

tell them “It’s free as in freedom; it doesn’t have to be gratis.”

Then refer them to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html , and you

should be able to educate them with very little effort on your part.

When you get practiced in doing this and you see how easy it is,

you won’t feel annoyed when the need arised.

PS. What’s your favorite movie?

I have liked some movies, but I can’t call them many of them to mind

just now, so I can’t even try to choose a favorite. Even if I could

remember them all to compare them, I might not be able to determine

which one I think is best.

Meanwhile, I am very angry at the Hollywood movie companies for buying

laws such as the DMCA to attack our freedom. I hope you are angry

too. I suggest adopting the following not-quite-boycott of Hollywood:

never pay to see a Hollywood movie unless you have specific indication

from a trustworth source that it isn’t crap.

Since nearly all Hollywood movies are crap, due to the system that

produces them, this will have practical results almost equivalent to a

total boycott of Hollywood.

———————————————————————–

5. qrios: What’s your stance on proprietary closed-source software that is

created with the goal of being released under the GPL once a

pre-specified profit margin has been met?

RMS: I think all proprietary software is unethical, even if it meets the

definition of open source. (Some proprietary programs do.) So even

though the question asks about “proprietary closed-source software”,

my response is about proprietary software, whether it is closed-source

or not.

Once this hypothetical program is released under the GNU General

Public License, or some other free software license, it is as ethical

as any other free software.

Before that point, I would not consider using it or recommending it to

anyone, because it is nonfree software. However, that raises the

question of what to do or say about it instead.

Normally, if a proprietary program is widely used, we try to recruit

people to develop free replacements for it. But if the proprietary

program seems likely to become free soon, I would not encourage people

to start projects to replace it. When waiting seems likely to be

faster than writing a replacement, as well as less work, we may as

well wait — we have plenty of other ways to use our time.

What bothers me about this sort of scheme is that it might lead people

into trying to promote the nonfree product in the hope of making it

succeed and get released as free software. If you do that, it means

you have been led to promote proprietary software. We must not treat

a proprietary program as the solution because our main point is that

it is the problem.

This particular kind of scheme is rare, so it doesn’t weaken our

community much, but other ways of presenting proprietary software as a

solution do a lot of harm. For instance, most GNU/Linux distros

include them, and that greatly weakens our campaign for freedom.

———————————————————————–

6. ZorbaTHeHut: Ten years ago, GNU/Linux was pulling itself out of the depths,

supported on the shoulders of the FSF. GCC was the compiler of choice

and people looked forward to Hurd. The GPL seemed to be the future – a

network of GPL-licensed software was rapidly spreading across the

software ecosystem. Today, relatively few people care about the Linux

kernel itself. The focus has moved towards the operating systems built

upon GNU/Linux, with Ubuntu at its forefront. Meanwhile, the Linux

kernel, while impressive, is Mostly Good Enough – there have been few

must-have improvements in the last few years, with the majority of work

going towards software that runs on it. The BSD kernels are catching up

rapidly, to the point where some “Linux distributions” now have BSD

kernel options. The Linux kernel itself is stuck on a GPLv2 license,

the GPLv3 Hurd is near-stagnant, and even GCC is finding itself

threatened by the BSD-licensed LLVM+Clang.

RMS: That states many claims, some of which I think are true, while others

seem exaggeratedly negative. My overall response is that I don’t see

anything that all these points are particularly relevant to.

I am not claiming, in any way, that the FSF was not a critical force

in the growth of the software packages we know and love today.

However, given all of these recent changes, do you believe that the

GPL is the inevitable direction of things in the future, or will

software packages start gravitating towards the BSD license?

In summary: have we hit Peak GPL?

RMS: Nobody can see the future, and I have no way of knowing whether there

will be more or less GPL use in 10 or 50 years. But it is clear that

people are releasing lots of software under the GNU General Public

License nowadays. So there is no reason to think GPL use will go

down in the near future.

Anyway, the question that matters to a software developer today is not

speculation about the future, it is whether they want what GNU GPL

does. Using GNU GPL version 3 is the way to block all the known ways

of turning your program into proprietary software. (See

———————————————————————–

7. z4srh: I feel like certain software such as tax software or high end video

games can only exist with a profit motive, due to the huge expense and

wide variety of disciplines required to create them (lawyers, artists,

writers, musicians, developers, etc.), along with the rapid

consumption of the products (ie. over the course of a week figuring

out taxes or playing the game). Indeed, the free software community

hasn’t come close to releasing anything in either category. Can this

be changed, and what is the root of the problem?

RMS: Tax software can and should be released by the state under a free

license. But when the state fails to do its duty, the community

do the job.

In Brazil, FSF Latin America releases free software for filing tax

returns, and this year managed to release the free program before the

state released its nonfree program. So don’t say it’s impossible.

I don’t like to talk about “consumption” of these programs because

that term adopts the narrow mindset of economics. It tends to judge

everything only in terms of practical costs and benefits and doesn’t

value freedom.

The reason I don’t use nonfree software is that it would take away my

freedom. I don’t want to let that happen. So I don’t consider

installing nonfree program, even as an possible option. I treat them

as poison. I hope that you will too.

I don’t know whether our community will make a “high end video game”

which is free software, but I am sure that if you try, you can stretch

your taste for games so that you will enjoy the free games that we

have developed.

———————————————————————–

8. Vaselinetimes_Day: Looking back over the last 25-odd years, what is the FSF’s biggest

success (and mistake)?

RMS: The Free Software Foundation was started to advance the free software

movement, and it is hard to separate the FSF’s contribution from the

contribution of others. For instance, in the early years, FSF

employees developed crucial parts of GNU while volunteers developed

other crucial parts. All of these parts were necessary for the

movement’s principal success: a complete free operating system,

GNU/Linux, and a large community built around it.

I can’t identify one particular large mistake, but the movement’s

principal setback lies in the fact that most of this community does

not appreciate the value of freedom, talks of free software as “open

source” with a totally different philosophy (see

is not aware that we in the GNU Project are the reason why it exists.

I don’t know of any simple way we could have averted this.

———————————————————————–

9. egonSchiele: What things would you like to see CS students learning? What books

are on your “recommended reading” list?

RMS: I would like to see students reading textbooks that are free and using

reference works that are free. All textbooks and reference works

should be free. Making this true is the next challenge, after free

software. Wikipedia is a big start.

But, as for the nonfree textbooks that exist now, I cannot recommend

any of them.

———————————————————————–

10. enkiam: At what point will you consider yourself to have “won”? To put this

another way, I hear that you don’t hack anymore because you’re too busy

advocating for free software. What events would have to arise for you to

be able to go back to hacking?

RMS: The free software movement will have won when proprietary software is

a dwindling practice because the users value their freedom too much to

accept proprietary software.

I don’t know whether we will reach that point in my lifetime (or ever

— victory is not certain). You can help us win by joining the FSF

(see fsf.org ) or contributing in other ways (see http://www.gnu.org/help ).

If we do reach that victory, I doubt I will go back to hacking. I am

getting old, and I doubt I could write large programs the way I used

to.

Meanwhile, there are many other injustices in the world. (See the

stallman.org political notes for some of them.) So if we ever win the

battle to end proprietary software, I will turn my attention to

another cause.

———————————————————————–

11. RoastBeefOnCHimp: How do you deal with the seemingly endless stream of ad hominem

attacks relating to your communication style, choice of clothing,

grooming, etc., instead of the substance of the issues you’re

addressing?

RMS: Usually I ignore them and continue talking about the more important

issues that go beyond my own personality.

If somoene asks a question in a nasty tone, I may decide to answer it.

I often start with something like, “A nasty question isn’t entitled to

an answer, but I’ll answer it anyway.” Then I try to extract a

meaningful question out of the hostility, and give it a straight,

non-hostile answer. Sometimes this leads people to reconsider their

hostility.

———————————————————————–

12. doobyscoo42: I saw you speak nearly 10 years ago, and I nearly asked a

(philosophical) question that has been burning in my mind since. The

reason I didn’t ask is that the question is long-winded and you would

have started dancing while I was asking it, which would have

distracted me from thinking clearly while formulating it. So maybe

this is a better forum!

Here is the long-winded prelude: in a liberal worldview, you could

argue that there is an understanding that society and/or government

should not intervene in a private agreement between two adults which

benefits each of them… with some exceptions. These exceptions arise

namely when someone else is affected by their agreement, and in

particular when their human rights are violated due to the agreement

(the standard example being that hiring a hitman should not be allowed

as it violates the right of the target to live).

That seems to describe the viewpoint called “laissez-faire” or

“Libertarian”. Where business is concerned, I disagree with it

very throughly, because I’m a Liberal, not a Libertarian.

I think it is good to regulate businesses in any way necessary to

protect the general public well-being and democracy. For instance, I

support consumer protection laws, which are needed precisely to stop

business from imposing on their customers whatever conditions they can

get away with in the market. I support rights for workers which

companies cannot make their employees sign away. I support the laws

that limit the conditions landlords can put in a lease. I support the

laws that help employees to unionize and strike.

All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people’s rights with one

hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option

to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together

impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That’s what

democracy was invented for!

And we should abolish the “free trade” treaties that obstruct the use

of democracy for this purpose.

Now, in a society when everyone who uses a computer is technically

adept, you can make a convincing case that having access to software’s

source code is a human right, and society is worse off for allowing

non-free software as this would be a violation of our human rights.

This is the society you lived in the 1970’s, and one could argue that

this was the society when you founded the free software foundation in

the 1980’s. Before going on, let me say that I truly believe that the

world is a better place for having you in it, and having made the

decisions you have made.

But society has changed. These days, a great many people who use

computers are not technically adept and do not know how to program. It

is clear that their human rights are not directly violated by the

existence of non-free software.

Nonfree software starts to violate our human rights when it gets into

our lives. (Its mere existence somewhere else in the world doesn’t

hurt us if we don’t use it — at least, it does not hurt us yet.)

That applies to all users, whether they know how to program or not.

Free software means the users control the program. With proprietary

software, the program controls the users. So all users need free

software.

See http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.2/stallman.php for more

about this issue.

The rest of this question presents an argument based on the premise

that the principle goal is faster technical progress. I disagree with

that goal, because I value freedom more than technical progress.

———————————————————————–

13. Joeboy: Are you still at all optimistic about HURD, or would you agree that

that ship has sailed?

RMS: I am not very optimistic about the GNU HURD. It makes some progress,

but to be really superior it would require solving a lot of deep

problems. However, mainly what I think about the HURD is that

finishing it is not crucial.

When we started the HURD, it was for a simple reason. The GNU system

needed a kernel, and no usable free kernel existed. We set out to

write one.

That problem does not exist today. Linux works ok as a kernel.

The main shortcoming of Linux is at the level of device support. The

obstacle there isn’t a lack of ability among Linux developers, but

rather the use of devices whose specs are secret.

Finishing the HURD would not advance us at all in supporting these

devices. The work that is needed is at the driver and firmware level.

That’s why our high priority task list includes items relating to free

drivers, but not the HURD.

That’s also why fsf.org has hardware resource pages. Your help in

updating them would strengthen us in this important battle.

Sure, it would be nice to see a GNU kernel succeed — but there are

many successful GNU packages, so having one more is not crucial.

———————————————————————–

14. puredemo: How can we apply the concepts of free software development to the

upcoming biological revolution of synthetic and hybrid organisms?

RMS: I don’t think these ideas are applicable to biology at our current

technological level.

The free software movement is based on the recognition that nonfree

software gives the program’s developer unjust power over the users.

Free software prevents that by giving the users control over the

software they use.

Free software achieves this because users can change the software and

recompile it, then use their own versions. Even in 1969, when

computers were rare and only a few people used them, we who used them

had the practical means to change and compile software, not merely to

run it.

The situation for genetically modified organisms is totally different.

There is no general tool for performing a genetic modification

comparable to using a text editor (or a 1960s card punch) to alter the

source code of a program, then compiling it and running it. Today’s

genetically engineered organisms were made by the equivalent of using

`sed’ to patch an executable which was mostly a black box.

We can understand and change programs because they were designed.

Good designers know how to make a design understandable so others can

change it later. Natural organisms are a mess; any designer, seeing

the myriad kludges, each one different, recognizes these systems were

never designed.

Natural organisms never had anything like source code. The genetic

code of an organism is more comparable to a binary (in fact,

quaternary) executable. Imagine a C compiler made by patching the

binary of hello.c a billion times in a genetic algorithm and you’ll

see how hard this is to understand.

Now that we have a quaternary dump of the human genome, it will take

decades of reverse engineering by tens of thousands of biologists to

figure out what it does.

If some day the technology for changing organisms predictably is as

mature as changing programs predictably was in 1958, then the freedom

to change and share and use genomes will be an important political

issue comparable to that of free software today. As long as large

research teams struggle with tasks a little beyond “Hello World”,

whether we are allowed to change the organisms we use will be a

question of little practical significance.

Genetically modified organisms today raise totally different issues:

for instance, damaging human health, damaging the environment, and

polluting other farms with patented genes through natural

cross-pollination.

———————————————————————–

15. MendaSpain: Hi Richard. I love all GPL software, but I have a dilemma:

I’m writing a program which needs a lot of time to be coded but at the

same time it’s really easy to be used. I could license it as GPL and

wait for donations, but from other people’s experience just almost

nobody make donations to free software projects. Support is not

necessary because as I’ve said before, it’s a really easy to use

software and nobody would pay for a 3 page manual.

For “big” software it’s easy to get money using any GNU license, but

for “little” software the only option I see is selling it using the

Apple App Store approach.

What can I do in this case?

RMS: You have a choice between deserving a reward and not getting a

material reward, and getting one but not deserving it.

I faced the same question at the beginning of the GNU Project. I

decided that I would rather do something good with no monetary reward

than profit by mistreating people. I hope you will do the same,

because that way your program will be a contribution to society

instead of a social problem.

———————————————————————–

16. fuzzyman: Outside of technology, do you find yourself applying some of the

same measures used to evaluate products or services? For example would

you rather shop for food at a local co-op rather than a big mega mart?

Clearly most businesses in our country cannot operate with a free

model so how do you evaluate whether to do business with them?

RMS: When this question says “a free model”, I wonder what that could

possibly be. Free software means it respects the users’ freedom to

run, change, redistribute and improve software. (See

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html .) For most of the physical

products you might find in a store, these issues do not arise at all.

In fact, almost all physical products are free, in this sense, as much

as their physical nature allows them to be.

So I suspect that this question is based on the misunderstanding

that ‘free” means “gratis”.

I frequent local non-chain bookstores, though I don’t reject the

national chains totally. I don’t buy a lot of groceries because I

don’t cook much and I’m usually travelling; what I do buy is usually

packaged foods rather than generic ingredients. Thus, food co-ops

are not useful for me. I like them in principle.

Do you place a value on a company’s “openness” with their customers and transparency or do you shop by price as many of us do?

I have a feeling that whoever wrote this question thinks that I am

a supporter of open source. Actually I disagree with that.

I don’t judge software issues based freedom, not openness.

I would probably refuse to deal with a store that I thought

was tricking me somehow. But the issue rarely arises.

Lastly, do you have any pets?

No. I spend most of my time travelling, so I could not have any pets.

If it were possible, I would like to have a friendly parrot.

———————————————————————–

17. dbzer0: In the past, when you were asked if the GPL and Free Software is

like Communism, you explicitly denied it, however in the course of that,

you showed that you conflated Communism with State Socialist regimes

such as the former USSR. Fair enough. However I would like to suggest

that Free Software is instead extremely compatible and indeed

conductive to Anarchism. I.e. it follows anarchistic principles of

Mutual Aid and Direct Action. I do not know how familiar you are with

Anarchist theory but what do you think of this connection? Are you

aware of it and if so, do you think that the political implications of

Free Software are a bug or a feature?

I would also like to point out the fact that Anarchists of all

tendencies but especially Anarcho-Transhumanists and Mutualists are

generally some of the most vocal and unshakeable proponents of free

software. Just something to mull over in case you didn’t know.

RMS: I am not very familiar with the literature of Anarchism, but free

software clearly does have Anarchist aspects. It also has Capitalist

aspects and Socialist aspects (not Communist, though).

I have an Anarchist streak, in that I resent being given orders and

enjoy being in a community that functions well with nobody giving

orders. But I am not an Anarchist: I don’t want to abolish the state,

or even reduce it. (Perhaps this is because I have a prostate

gland. 😉 I support state welfare programs, and regulation of

business.

Billionaire Polluters presents a fine example. The oil spill

illustrates that the US government failed to do its job of stopping

oil companies from taking crazy risks to save money. But if we did

not have a state, what else would do that job? The oil companies

would have private armies and shoot anyone that protests, much as BP

has done in Colombia in recent years. (See

My conclusion is that we need a state, and we need to exercise

democracy so firmly that companies scream and whimper about all the

money they didn’t make because we didn’t grant them dominion over our

society.

When a company says, “Don’t inspect our plant, just trust us to

maintain safety standards”, we need to respond, “You’re probably

trying to cheat, so we will inspect you on a random day each year and

charge you what it costs.”

When a company says, “We want to merge with competitor XYZ, since we

are too small to compete in this market, and by the way the merged

company will become the biggest in the field,” we need to respond, “We

won’t let you merge. However, we just split your biggest competitor

into 5 pieces; maybe now you will find it easier to compete.”

When a company says, “Give us what we want or we will move our plant

to that other state/country”, we need to respond, “Produce elsewhere

if you wish, but you can’t take the factory equipment — and we will

put a heavy tax on anything you try to sell here later.”

We need to make it so hard to move production from one country to

another that each company will be stuck in one country, so that

country will be able to regulate it.

If we don’t make business squeal, we are not taking away enough

of its power.

For more about my views on political issues, see stallman.org;

urgent action suggestions are in the left column, and the most

recent political notes are in the middle.

———————————————————————–

18. lendrick: I’m the founder and proprietor of OpenGameArt.org, the

purpose of which is to archive freely-licensed works of art for use in

Free computer games. A frequent complaint that I hear from artists is

that, while you can’t include a piece of GPLed code in a non-Free work,

it’s still possible to include a piece of GPLed (or CC-BY-SA) art in a

non-Free work. For instance, if an artist were to create a GPLed

character for Battle for Wesnoth, someone could still use that character

in a non-Free game, provided the distributor follows the terms of the

GPL for that piece of art. In contrast, if a programmer writes a piece

of GPLed code for Battle for Wesnoth, that code could not be included in

another project unless the whole project is GPLed.

Is there any way that this issue can be addressed to the satisfaction

of both artists and coders?

RMS: It is not always true that the GPL’d character can be used in a

nonfree game. I think it depends on the circumstances whether the

character (by “character”, do you mean character art?) can be treated

as a separate work from the nonfree game.

It is the same for software. It is –sad to say– quite common to

distribute free software, even the GNU/Linux system, as part of larger

systems which are not entirely free. It is a major weakness of our

community that most of the copies of GNU/Linux that you will encounter

are not entirely free software. See http://www.gnu.org/distros for

more information and a list of those distros that are entirely free

software.

Whether or not it would be good to try to stop this with a license, it

can’t be done. Copyleft is based on copyright law. Trying to use the

copyright on work A to restrict its distribution alongside some other

work B is called “abuse of copyright”. (I can’t give legal advice —

if you are concerned about a specific real case, please consult a

lawyer.)

———————————————————————–

19. OsamaK: What’s the best book you have ever read?

RMS: I can’t remember now all the books I have read and loved. And even if

I could, I would not be able to pick one to call it best.

If you like fairly hard Science Fiction with a big vision, I recommend

A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge, and Diaspora, by Greg Egan. If

you like something a little less hard, I recommend The Jehovah

Contract by Victor Koman. If you like detective fiction, I recommend

Laura King’s books about Mary Russell, starting with The Beekeeper’s

Apprentice, and Steve Saylor’s Roman mysteries about Gordianus the

Finder.

In other areas of fiction, I have enjoyed Jane Austen and Paul Auster,

Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allen Poe, among others. In Spanish, Jorge

Luis Borges, Arturo PÃrez Reverte (especially La Carta EsfÃrica and El

Club Dumas), and Alejandro Dolina.

If you are interested in linguistics, I recommend

The Origin of Language by Merrit Ruhlen.

A few suggestions in history and anthropology:

Burning Water Laurette SÃjournÃ

Popol Vuh Translated by Dennis Tedlock

Lords of Sipan Kirkpatrick

Courtesans and Fishcakes James Davidson

Life and Death in Shanghai Nien Cheng

Buddhism in India Gail Omvedt

also her biography of Dr. Ambedkar, leader of the Dalits

A Vietcong Memoir Truong Nhu Tang

The Forbidden Bestsellers

of Pre-Revolutionary France Robert Darnton

It is interesting to compare these two:

Marquesan Sexual Behavior Suggs

The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead Derek Freeman

(I.e., the Samoan girls lied to Mead, claiming a life style

which in fact is rather Marquesan than Samoan.)

If you buy some of these books, or any books, I recommend

yu do it in a way that doesn’t identify you to Big Brother.

Pay cash, in a store.

For the sake of your friendships, please don’t get a copy

with digital handcuffs (DRM, Digital Restrictions Management).

See DefectiveByDesign.org for more explanation.

In particular, don’t buy them from Amazon unless/until Amazon

gives you a way to buy anonymously and without DRM.

———————————————————————–

20. n8f8: Should the FSF play a bigger role in promoting software developer

education in the primary school system in order to enculture Free

Software ideals?

RMS: It would be great if we could do this. but I don’t know how the FSF

could possibly do it. If you have experience working with a school

system and you have an idea, please contact me.

———————————————————————–

21. bobysmith007: Where do you feel proprietary software still has advantages over its

closest [free] competitor and what should we be doing in free software

to overcome this?

RMS: The two main application areas I know of are CAD and cell phones. In

addition, there is also the matter of device drivers and firmware. As

for how to address the problem, the way I know of is that some capable

programmer starts writing the free program that will do the job.

I read a book of advice for activists, in the late 80s or early 90s,

which had advice I can rephrase as follows: “Don’t start by trying to

raise funds for the activity. Start by doing the activity, and then

funds may come. And if they don’t, at least you will be doing some

of the job rather than getting nowhere.”

———————————————————————–

22. two_front_teeth: Suppose your doctor told you that you needed a medical procedure to

survive but that the procedure would require inserting a device inside

of your body which ran proprietary software. Would you be willing to

have the procedure done to save your life?

RMS: The only way I could justify this is if I began developing a free

replacement for that very program. It is ok to use a nonfree program

for the purpose of developing its free replacement.

———————————————————————–

23. dballing: I was reading your positions on “how you do your computing” at

http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html and wondered about

something. You won’t use Skype, because it’s a “non-free” means of

communication.

RMS: More precisely I said using Skype encourages other people to use

nonfree software.

But the phone you probably have on your desk right now probably has

copyrighted code on it for doing speed-dial functionality, how to make

the blinkenlights light up on it, what to put on the display and how

to display it, etc. This isn’t the ‘transient-kiosk’ situation or the

“someone else’s computer briefly” where you don’t own the device. In

this situation, you own and use non-free code (unless, of course,

you’re still living with a rotary phone, in which case, this is moot).

Just about every modern appliance today comes with software loaded on

it, burned into chips, and you’re given no rights to alter it in any

way… so no matter how much you might wish your oven had a pre-heat

cycle or something, or you wish your microwave had one of those

“popcorn bag” pre-determined-cook-cycle buttons, you couldn’t do so.

Now, I’m assuming for the moment that you have a home with at least

somewhat modern appliances made in the last twenty years, which raises

the question of how you justify ownership of those non-free products?

Around 1984 or 1985, I considered the question of a microwave oven

like the one in the MIT AI lab that I used. Maybe it contained a

computer (“microcontroller”) running a fixed program. Maybe it

contained a circuit. I could not tell from using it how it was made,

because installation of software was not part of its job.

I concluded that in such cases it makes no difference whether the

device has a microcontroller running a program or just a circuit.

Since installation of software was not a feature, a computer embedded

inside it might as well be a circuit. How the product was made was

internally a question we need not pay attention to.

When installation of software becomes one of the functions of the

device, then part of its job is to be a computer, and then we should

insist on having only free software on that computer.

If a device does not function as a computer, it can still be

malicious. Malicious features such as surveillance and digital

handcuffs (DRM) can be implemented in software or in hardware. When

it is done in software, putting free software in the device would

enable us to fix the problem. So in these cases, we might want to

put free software into the device even though its job doesn’t include

being a computer.

For your freedom’s sake, you should reject any product designed to

attack your freedom, unless you personally possess the means to defeat

the attack (for instance, to break the DRM). And please join

DefectiveByDesign.org and join our campaign against DRM. Don’t take

for granted we will succeed in defending your freedom without your

participation.

———————————————————————–

24. [deleted]: I have read that you try your best to keep your identity offline

(i.e., away from popular social networking sites, forums, etc.). I was

surprised to find out that most of the time you don’t access the web

directly but rather through an email daemon. Why such caution? Are

there reasons for everyone else to be this cautious about our online

presence (besides the regular caution when using Google, Facebook,

etc.)?

RMS: I do this mostly for personal reasons that don’t apply to anyone else.

However, if you use a search engine from your own computer, it is a

good idea to route your queries through something like Tor so that the

search engine cannot associate them with you (or even with each

other).

The European Union threatens to require saving people’s search engine

queries for the police to look at. This step towards the total

surveillance state calls for people in Europe to organize politically

now.

———————————————————————–

25. meeiw: What is vim doing better than emacs?

———————————————————————–

RMS: Sorry, I have never tried using vim.