April 21st, 2017

Bryan Lunduke Interviews Richard Stallman

Last Friday, the Linux Tycoon (as well as the guy who’s been known to say “Linux sucks”), Bryan Lunduke, sat down for a free form interview with Richard Stallman. We figured that no dyed-in-the-wool FOSSer would want to miss that.

The Screening Room

Thanks to user friendly distros such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, PCLOS and Mageia, the use of GNU/Linux on personal desktops and laptops has been on an uptick for the last five years or so. It occurs to us that many of those who started using Linux during this time don’t know that not only is Linux and the GNU stack great technology, it’s also supported by an underlying philosophy about software freedom that is even more important.

That’s a problem, because using Linux without understanding the basic ideas that brought about the GNU Project and the GPL, which makes Linux free to use and distribute (and insures it will stay that way), is key to understanding why everybody should be using free and open source software.

That’s why we were pleased to discover that Bryan Lunduke sat down for an hour interview with Richard Stallman, the man behind GNU, the GPL, the Free Software Foundation and more. The unstructured interview was made available last Friday on the popular video podcast The Lunduke Hour.

We think this might be a great introduction, both to Stallman and the ideas behind Linux and free and open source software (Stallman prefers the term “free software”). Watching it might give newer Linux users an even deeper appreciation of Linux and all of the software it supports.

This doesn’t mean that those of us who’ve been working and playing with Linux for years — even decades — won’t benefit as well. If you haven’t seen the interview yet, we invite you to kick off your shoes, grab yourself a cup of Joe (or the beverage of your choice), and watch the video.

We guarantee you, it’ll be time well spent.