hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1116.txt

Episode: 1116
Title: HPR1116: Interview with Richard Stallman
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1116/hpr1116.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 19:19:39

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Is this going to be recorded specifically to be played back, or are you just going to interview me to have my answers to questions?
It will be recorded specifically to be played back on the hacker public radio podcast.
I better check with you about what distribution formats you use.
Closed podcast typically means MP3 and MP3 is bad news.
We distribute an MP3 in Aug Bourbus and in Speaks.
Well, that combination is okay. Do you give them equal billing?
No, no, of course not. We put Aug Bourbus at the top.
Ah, that's very nice. So, I'm happy with that.
So, I guess you should start by asking me a question.
Okay, well first we'll start by letting you know that I am recording this
and just want to make sure that I have your permission to record.
I'd be rather annoyed if you didn't.
Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Pokey and I'll be your host for today.
I am very excited today. You may even already hear it in my voice that it's making a little bit.
This is a very special show for me.
Today I have been granted an interview by Mr. Richard Stalman.
He is the author of the original Canoe Public License.
Excuse me, Canoe General Public License. He's the author of Emacs.
It's several other programs. He's done some great things for our community.
And I'd like to welcome him to Hacker Public Radio. Welcome Mr. Stalman.
Thanks for correcting the name of the license.
I should mention that the most important thing I've done is I started the free software movement.
Yes, that is indeed. I agree the most important thing that's gone on.
Now I'll leave it up to you Mr. Stalman.
Pretty much everyone who listens to Hacker Public Radio is fairly educated and as far as licenses go,
as far as the difference between proprietary software and open source software and free software.
I think everybody's got that clear.
But just in case we have any new listeners tuning in this one time or maybe for some new people,
would you like to briefly, and I don't know how much time you'd like this interview to go on for.
So it's up to you.
How much time do you want this to go on for?
I may never get another chance to speak with you all at this coin as long as you'll allow it.
Well, free software means software that respects the user's freedom.
So it's free as in freedom. It's not about price.
Price is just a minor practical detail, a side issue.
So we're not campaigning for software to be gratis.
We're campaigning for software to respect our freedom.
And sometimes we say, Libra instead of free to make it unambiguous.
Now, specifically, there are four essential freedoms that the user of a program should always have.
Freedom zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish.
Freedom one is the freedom to study the source code of the program and change it.
So it does your computing the way you wish.
These two give users individual control over the program.
But individual control is not enough, especially since most computer users don't actually know how to program.
They're not capable of exercising freedom number one because they don't know how.
So we need collective control as well.
Therefore, there are two more essential freedoms.
Freedom two is the freedom to help others.
That's the freedom to redistribute exact copies to make the copies and distribute them to others when you wish.
And freedom three is the freedom to contribute to your community.
That's the freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified versions.
Distributing them to others when you wish.
So if the program comes with all of these four freedoms adequately, then it's free software.
But if it doesn't, then it's proprietary software.
Fundamentally, with software either the users control the program.
That's free software where the program controls the users.
That's proprietary software.
But when the program controls the users, there's always some entity that controls the program,
the typically the owner of the program.
And through the program has control over its users.
Non-free program is an instrument of unjust power.
And that's why non-free software should not exist.
As for open source.
Well, in 1998, the people who had something to do with free software,
but they didn't like the word free.
And they didn't like presenting this as a matter of right and wrong.
They came up with another term to use.
And they meant it to be more or less the same set of software.
Except they started calling it open source instead.
However, the result of this was that they forgot.
They omitted the entire ethical level and presented it as merely a matter of practical convenience.
So they didn't say software developers, if you don't respect the freedom of your users,
you're doing wrong to them and you must stop.
Instead, they said software developers, it's in your interest to let the users change
and redistribute the software because they'll improve the code quality.
So you can see the tremendous philosophical gulf between the idea of free software
and the idea of open source.
Since they were different groups of people interpreting different definitions,
it didn't come out that they're the same set of software.
They're not too far apart, but there are occasional differences.
There are some licenses that the open source people accepted and we say are too restrictive.
So any program under those licenses is open source, but it's not free.
There are not very many programs under those licenses.
Those licenses are not used much, but there were at least some such programs.
Maybe there still are.
The big practical difference between free software and open source is that there are programs
whose source code is free, but the executable is not.
Many Android products are like this.
They come with software made from source code that's free and you can get the source code.
You could change it, you could compile it, but you can't run your version of that program in your machine
because the machine is designed to recognize that the software has been changed
and refuses to run modified versions.
Now I call those tyrant devices because of this restriction.
They treat their actions toward the user or the actions of a tyrant.
So in the free software movement we say those executables are not free.
Even though the source code they're made from is free.
But the open source camp only looks at the terms of the source code.
So they say it's open source.
They don't raise the issue of whether you can actually have control of what that program is doing in your computer.
This is the main practical case where open source and free disagree about particular programs.
But it's a pretty important case because there are millions of people using those.
The licenses that they accepted and we say are too restrictive.
Well, the programs under those licenses were never used by large numbers of people as far as I know.
So it was a difference. It still is a difference in principle.
But its practical effect is rare.
Okay, so then why do you believe there's still a debate as to which is right?
Free software side or the open source side?
There are two different philosophical ideas, two different political camps.
Such ideas don't disappear very easily.
As long as there are people who keep on thinking the open source thoughts.
I guess they'll keep on arguing for what they think.
They have a right to stand up for what they think.
One person asked me earlier today and I thought this was, he actually wanted me to ask you,
how is it then that companies such as Red Hat and Canonical can modify software
and recompile it and distribute it including trademarks and then be able to put the restriction on the binary
as to what you can do with that binary without removing the trademarks?
The reason they can do this is the trademarks will exist.
But the question is, is it right or wrong?
I don't think it's wrong for them to put a trademark on a GNU slash Linux distro
and say if you modify this you've got to change the trademark.
That's not actually stopping people from exercising their freedoms and controlling the software as such.
It just means that they may have to remove that trademark and replace it with their own name.
As long as that's not set up to be very hard to do, then it's not a real impediment to exercising the four freedoms.
Okay, so then there is nothing about the GPL that would annihilate or negate somebody's trademark.
No and we're not against trademarks in general.
Okay, so now that being said then, so it's clear that you feel that that violation of users' freedoms is wrong is a bad thing to do.
And you have created the GPL basically turning the proprietary world's rules against them and creating copy-left, yes?
Well, copy-left is a way of using copyright law to defend the freedom of all users of all versions of a given program.
I invented this technique because I recognized that if I released a program as free software in the simplest way, people would get copies of this free program
and would distribute modified versions and would make those modified versions proprietary so that the freedom would not reach the other users of my code.
Now, since my goal in developing the GNU operating system was specifically to give users freedom, that outcome would have been failure.
Therefore, I looked for a way to stop it and I came up with copy-left.
So what are your basic feelings then on copy-right? Is copy-right in your opinion right or wrong or how do you feel about that in general?
It's not that simple. First of all, recognize that copy-right is not the principle arm that proprietary software users employ to make software proprietary.
Their main methods are end-user license agreements which are contracts together with not releasing the source code of the program.
Those are the two main ways that they restrict the users. Copy-right is a third way which serves most often as a backup for the contracts.
And their other method is putting a software in a tyrant device.
So eliminating copy-right for software would not make all software free.
They would go on using the end-user license agreements and go on publishing binaries without source code.
And that wouldn't be free software. But copy-right is our sole weapon to use against those.
How can we stop someone from getting a modified, from getting a free program, making a modified version and distributing that as proprietary software with an end-user license agreement as a binary only?
Well, copy-left is the only known way and copy-left is based on copy-right.
So I'd like to see a world someday in which all software is free.
But we couldn't get there by abolishing copy-right and making no other legal change.
If we wanted to legislate that all software had to be free, we'd have to make a lot of other changes too.
Now, I'm not proposing to make such changes legislatively this decade.
Who knows if ever it basically that would only make sense if society someday is ready for it.
I do want to see a world in which all software is free. I reject completely non-free software.
But just keep in mind that abolishing copy-right by itself would not bring about such a world.
But I'm not completely against copy-right when it comes to some kinds of works.
I make a distinction between the works that are designed to be used to do practical jobs with and other kinds of works.
For instance, this interview.
In this interview, I'm stating my point of view, stating opinions and my personal thoughts.
Other works are artistic works.
And these are both not works designed to be used to do a practical job.
Programs, however, are generally written to do a practical job.
They're meant to be run, not just looked at.
What are other works meant for doing practical jobs?
Well, recipes for cooking, educational works, reference works,
text fonts for displaying bodies of text as opposed to decorative fonts that you might use for one word or two.
And also patterns for objects that to be made with a 3D printer if the objects are for doing useful jobs.
These works meant for doing practical jobs must be free.
However, I don't think it's necessary or ethically imperative for all the other works to be free.
It's enough for people who are free to share them and remix them.
So I don't advocate abolishing copyright for those works of personal point of view or art.
I advocate a smaller change, which is to legalize sharing.
And by sharing, I mean non-commercial redistribution of exact copies.
So people should be free to share any published work.
Okay, so then, is there any case that you could see where such a work like a work of art or this interview, for example, would have a practical use?
And as a specific example, I'll say that this interview might be used to educate people as to what your beliefs are on certain topics.
You can manage to get practical use out of anything.
There are shopping malls that play certain music because they have found that teenagers don't like it.
Well, I don't think that that's enough to convert an artistic work into a work of practical use.
Of course, if you read or listen to somebody's statement of personal views, you can see what that person thinks.
What it means for a work to present somebody's personal point of view.
But that doesn't make it an educational work.
An educational work teaches you about a body of knowledge or a skill.
Okay, all right. Thank you for making that distinction.
I appreciate that.
Let me ask you just as a personal question, is copyright violation stealing?
According to our legal system, it's not.
It's copyright infringement.
But it's definitely not theft.
And people accused of copyright infringement are not accused of theft.
Calling copying theft is just propaganda.
It's false propaganda and it deserves to be sneered at.
Is it as bad as stealing?
Sometimes it's bad.
I don't think it's quite like stealing.
But sometimes it's not wrong at all.
Of course, copyright law is too strict.
It forbids things that ought to be legal.
Such a sharing.
Okay.
So then, would you say that a copy left violation is worse than copyright violation?
Because there are cases where copyright should be violated, but copy left.
Never should, is that fair?
That's not logic.
Basically, violating the terms of a copy left license is copyright infringement.
It's a mistake to compare them as if they were two different things.
Remember, copy left and other free software licenses, both the copy left licenses
and the non-copy left licenses are based on copyright law.
All the conditions that they set up, whether there are many conditions or few conditions,
they're all set up under copyright law.
So, to violate those licenses is copyright infringement.
But that doesn't say whether it's good or bad.
However, when you violate a copy left license, most of the time what you're doing is
addressing the general public.
And that's very bad.
Okay.
And you said you feel that 3D items and patterns should be what copy lefted or open sourced.
How would you define that?
I don't use the term open to talk about what I'm in favor of.
And I don't use the term closed to describe what I'm against.
And the reason is that word open is the slogan of people who philosophically disagree with the free software open.
So I never participate in anything that waves the banner of open.
If I want to advocate something, I'll call it free.
Because if I'm advocating it, it's because of freedom.
And I want to make that clear.
Whereas they try to bury the idea of freedom.
I want to lift the banner of freedom and wave it so that everyone can see it.
So, whatever causes I'm going to advocate, I'm going to do so under the banner of freedom.
And not as part of an activity that uses the term, quote, open, unquote.
But in any case, what I said was that the patterns for utilitarian objects need to be free.
Because there are also decorative objects.
And their patterns are artistic works, not utilitarian works meant for doing practical jobs.
So I don't believe that those artistic works patterns need to be free.
But you should be allowed to share them.
Because that's the minimum freedom that there should be for any published work.
Okay, I can understand the minimum line there.
But that seems like a difficult line to draw if someone were to take a practical object and make it more decorative.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Yes. So clearly, we must not let people put restrictions on utilitarian objects just by putting on a little decoration.
So, if they put decorative aspects into something that's meant to be useful, it's still something meant to be used for doing a practical job.
And they'll just have to let people freely modify their decorations.
Or they should publish those decorations as a separate work.
And then since that work will be purely decorative, they could treat it as art.
I see. Okay, that's not so bad as a way to think of it and understand it.
Can we talk about Linux and GNU Linux for a moment?
Okay.
So, I know that you prefer to call, well, actually I shouldn't say no.
Do you prefer to call all Linux distributions, GNU Linux, or do you make a distinction as to?
Please, you shouldn't be talking about so-called Linux distributions.
Okay.
It's not what they are.
Those are variants of the GNU operating system with Linux also.
And it's not right for you to call them, quote, Linux distributions unquote.
Please don't do that.
If you call them that, you're giving the credit for our work and there were hundreds of us
to somebody else who came along later.
That's not right.
And it also works against the free software movement, which is doing real harm.
Okay. I'm sorry.
Where I'm going with that question is I know that there are distributions which are not approved by the FSF.
And...
Yes. Well, those are two untotally separate issues.
People need to first understand what GNU slash Linux is.
In 1983, I announced a plan to develop a complete free Unix-like operating system called GNU.
And I started working on it in 1984 and recruiting others to help.
Well, this was a giant project.
But in 1990, we had most of it done.
We didn't have to write every piece of it.
It was fine if we could find a piece that would fit.
But nobody else was trying to make a complete free Unix-like operating system.
So when we found other pieces we could use, they had been written for other purposes.
In 1990, the only major essential component missing was the kernel.
We started developing a kernel, but our project didn't work out.
Fortunately, we didn't have to wait for it.
Because in 1992, Mr. Torvalds liberated his kernel, Linux.
Linux, which he started in 1991, was initially proprietary.
But in 1992, he made it free software by releasing it under the GNU GPL.
At that point, Linux, the kernel, filled the last gap in the GNU system.
And the combination of GNU and Linux, which it seems appropriate to call GNU slash Linux or GNU plus Linux, was the first complete free operating system that you could run on a PC.
It's a confusion to refer to that as Linux.
And it spreads another confusion.
Because when someone says Linux, you don't know whether he's talking about Torvalds' kernel and calling it by the proper name or the GNU operating system with Linux and calling it by their own name.
So if we call the whole system GNU slash Linux, and we call Torvalds' kernel Linux, because he's entitled to name that, then there's no more confusion anymore.
So when these other GNU Linux distributions don't meet the free software foundation's definition of free software over a completely free distribution, you still prefer to call that GNU Linux.
That doesn't, you don't feel that tanks the name of GNU Linux.
Absolutely not. We want people to know that it's a version of our system, even though they've added non-free programs to it, so we can't judge it to be entirely ethical.
Still, it's a variant of our system, and we want people to know that.
We want people to know where it came from and why it exists at all.
Because that way, they'll find out about our goals of freedom.
You see, Torvalds doesn't advocate free software. He's an open source supporter.
He doesn't say that non-free software is unethical.
So people who think the system is Linux, they will be led towards those open source ideas.
And they'll never find out about ours, so unless, except by luck.
So that's not the way to boost the free software movement and spread the idea of freedom.
Okay, thank you for that.
When, getting back to your timeline there, when did you begin work on the herd kernel?
Well, I never worked on the herd kernel. We hired somebody else to do that in 1990.
Okay, so it was about two years of work then before the Linux kernel was applied to the GNU project.
Yes, or more like a year and a half of work.
There are still some people working a little on the herd, but it's not a high priority thing.
I would be pleased to see a GNU kernel become popular and people switch to that from Linux.
But it's not something we need. What we need is to replace non-free software.
So nowadays we don't implore people to contribute to the herd.
We have a list of high priority projects.
But those are things to do jobs that there is no free software for at the moment.
Okay, so they're just prioritized in what whatever takes priority.
It's a practicality thing.
Well, it's a matter of what advances our freedom.
There are some jobs that we don't have free software to do.
And some of those jobs are really important.
So those are the things we give priority to.
For instance, there are many devices that need reverse engineering to figure out how to write free software to run them.
And some of those are very important.
There are many hardware projects that almost can be used with free software, but it's a rather sad failure.
A miss is as good as a mile.
You've probably heard of Raspberry Pi.
Yes sir.
It won't run without non-free software to handle the display.
So that's really a shame.
It comes so close and falls short.
Well, if you want to make a big contribution to the free world,
reverse engineer the specs of that device.
And then someone will write free software to run it.
And then the Raspberry Pi will have been liberated.
Yeah, it's a really good point I agree with that.
Now let me ask you something before.
You said that you believe that recipes are along the same lines of software in that they should be free.
When you go out to eat and stuff at restaurants, do you ever ask for recipes to see if they feel the same way?
And have you ever avoided a restaurant because they didn't share a recipe?
Or is it just far less important than software so you don't bother?
Neither one.
You've made the wrong analogy.
Sorry.
You seem to be comparing the food with thinking of the food as a version of the recipe.
But that's wrong.
The food is the output of the recipe.
Okay.
All right.
Sorry.
I've got a bunch of questions here.
And I got a lot of them from friends online.
And I should be crediting these.
But I forgot to write down who they were from.
And that was from another person.
They were wondering, you know, if you'd ever called a restaurant and done research on a restaurant to see if...
No, I don't.
And I also, when someone sends me a file, I don't insist that he produced that file with free software.
Now, there may be there are some formats that I will refuse to use.
But if someone sends me, for instance, a text file or an HTML file, I'm just not concerned with what...
I'm not directly concerned with what software she used to make that file.
Now, if she used non-free software, well, I am sorry for her.
But that's no reason for me to feel that she has treated me wrong.
And I don't insist that she switched to free software.
And likewise, I don't have to make any criteria about the recipe that a restaurant is using to cook with.
By the way, if you write a program and you use it yourself and you don't distribute it, that is free software.
Because free software doesn't mean you're obliged to distribute copies to others.
It just means you're free to do so.
And likewise, if the chef comes in a restaurant, comes up with a recipe and is free to give it to me, but chooses not to.
Well, that recipe is probably free.
It's not available to me. That's a different question.
A proprietary recipe would be one that the chef gets and is allowed to use under certain conditions, but is forbidden to redistribute.
So there may be some proprietary recipes, but none of those things concern me because I'm not using the recipe.
I'm only eating the food, which is the output of the recipe.
Okay, I think that would satisfy the person who asked that.
In some sense, if I look at a monitor that lists flights in an airport, it doesn't directly affect me whether the software that they're using to display that list is free software.
It affects the freedom of the airport, but I have no reason to refuse to look at the monitor just because the airport is afflicted with not free software.
Okay, all right. That's perfectly understandable, I think.
Let me change pace a little bit here. I heard someone recently criticized you and I don't agree with this criticism, but one of the things that he said is he claimed that soft free software, excuse me, said the free software is not a social movement.
Now, I don't agree with that, but could you explain exactly why it is a social movement?
It's a political movement for software users freedom for computing users freedom.
What else needs to be said?
Nothing more. I'm glad to have it in your words because I just didn't appreciate hearing it from the guy, but I'm glad it's in your voice. Thank you.
Do you believe that the open source movement is producing anything of value at all?
I don't think there is an open source movement because they constructed their philosophy with the goal of not making it a movement.
There is an open source idea. There's an open source camp, but it's not a movement in the same sense.
Now, it does motivate people to develop free software, and some of that free software is useful. So, yes, it contributes something.
The problem with it is that it discourages people from formulating the issue in terms of freedom, and in the long term, people who don't value their freedom as such will lose it.
So, a lot of open source software is forked and relicenced under GPL. I personally see that as a net benefit.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. Much of that open source software was under the GPL all along.
There is a common misunderstanding where people believe that open source means not the GPL. This is simply mistaken. It was never so.
That was never what open source was supposed to mean. It's just a common misunderstanding.
Okay. Well, then it's licenses that you would specifically consider open source and not GPL. I believe there are a few, correct?
Why not say that these are licenses that are free software, but not the GPL? That's also true.
Why bring open source into this question? In this question, it's just a red herring.
No, I think I was trying to make the distinction between free software and open source because I mean, I like you believe that free software is good and open source software isn't necessarily good and is potentially harmful.
So I was trying to make a distinction. I don't think that it's a misunderstanding. Almost all open source software is free software.
And as far as we know, all free software is open source software. The place where they're very different is at the philosophical level.
So you're treating open source software and free software as if they were mostly different categories of programs, which is almost the opposite of the truth.
The truth is as categories of programs, they're almost equal, but not quite.
Okay, all right. Yeah, I just, like I said, thought there was a bigger divide.
The distinction you really want to make is between copy left licenses and non-copy left licenses, but that's orthogonal to the issue of free software versus open source.
In fact, all of those licenses are free software licenses and all of them are open source licenses.
The licenses that are open source, but not free are more restrictive. That's why we rejected them. We won't reject a license for being lax and permissive.
Any license that gives users the four freedoms is a free software license. So it doesn't have to be copy left.
So if it's very lax and permissive, we would say, usually this isn't the best license to choose, but clearly it doesn't deny you any of the four freedoms.
So it's got to be a free software license.
This particular misunderstanding is extremely common and it's totally wrong.
So the difference between copy left licenses and non-copy left is a different issue that there are people who choose to respect others freedom, but they don't choose to actively defend others freedom.
They use lax permissive licenses that allow modified versions to be made which are not free.
Now, I think that's unfortunate. It doesn't make the original program non-free. It is free. If you get that version, you do have freedom.
And we use such programs in the GNU system. They are free. They're useful. So why reject them?
But it would, in most cases, be better for the struggle for freedom if they were copy left.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Now, let me ask you. You don't program anymore, is that correct?
That's true. I stopped several years ago.
Do you have any programming heroes? Do you admire any programmers now?
No, and it's not clear that I ever really did. You know, there were programmers who I thought were good, but I never felt like tremendously admiring somebody for being a good programmer.
I'm more likely to admire somebody greatly for campaigning for freedom.
Okay. And let me ask you. I don't think it would be unfair to say that you're a very opinionated and outspoken person. Have you been that way your whole life?
Yes.
And have any of your major public opinions changed throughout your life?
Yes, to some extent, many years ago. But I'd rather not talk about that.
No, that's fair enough. Okay. Someone wanted me to ask if you ever hang out with Noam Chomsky.
I only met him once. I went to a speech of his, and at the end raised the issue of free software with him, and he rejected it immediately.
So I was disappointed. I still admire Chomsky's work. I wonder if he might perhaps have changed his mind about free software now.
Okay. I'm not particularly familiar with him. I was just asking the question for someone else, so I regret that I don't have a follow-up for that.
You should pay attention to Chomsky's work. For instance, he explained how the political system manages the public so that the views that the elite wish the state to follow don't get questioned enough to make any difference.
Without actually banning people from advocating changes in unjust and cruel policies, they prevent them from being reconsidered in any effective way.
Oh, yeah. That is pretty sneaky. That's pretty bad.
Okay. Another person in my IRC channel that I hang out in, they wanted me to ask your opinion on Steam coming to Linux.
Thank you for correcting that. Now, Steam is a platform that distributes non-free games.
It might conceivably have some free games in it, but I'm sure you can get them some other way.
So the only difference it makes is in the ease of getting non-free games to run on your GNU Slash Linux system.
But if you want freedom, you won't let those games be on your system.
So the only benefit, if you can call it a benefit that that could offer, is to people who are prepared to abandon their freedom.
So I don't see that as much of a benefit.
You know, if my main goal were the popularity of the GNU system, then I would conclude that Steam on GNU Slash Linux was great because more people would use GNU Slash Linux.
But popularity is not an aim in itself.
The GNU system was developed for a goal that goes beyond its own success.
The reason for developing the GNU system was so you can have freedom in your computing.
And I'm not going to praise or applaud something that might give us more success but doesn't respect your freedom.
That's a great answer. I've been trying to get that across just that way.
Now, how do you feel then about free software being compiled to be used on closed platforms, on proprietary platforms?
Please, I don't want, please don't use the term closed or open to describe things.
Because if you say those words, you're boosting the open source camp.
Now, compiling free software to run on non-free operating systems, well, it has good effects and bad effects.
If somebody's running Windows, say, and installs GNU EMAX on Windows, well, there's nothing wrong with that.
Windows is just as bad as it was before, but there's nothing wrong with GNU EMAX.
Why shouldn't we encourage him to install GNU EMAX on his Windows?
Of course, that won't bring him to freedom.
As long as there is non-free Windows in that machine, it's still trashing his freedom.
So he needs to defenestrate that computer.
But the fact that some useful free applications run on Windows, especially the applications that non-wizzards would run, makes it easier for organizations to switch their computers from Windows to GNU Slash Linux.
So that is a benefit for the advance of freedom.
Why do you think this is changing gears again? I'm sorry.
Why do you think that some developers of free software use proprietary and non-free platforms to develop to code?
Well, they may be thinking in terms of mere success as their goals. I can't speak for them, of course.
I hardly ever talk to them. So really, you need to ask them.
Okay, that's about what I was expecting for an answer there, but I thought I would ask.
Another person asked me a good question to ask you, if you lived in a world where proprietary software didn't exist, where everything was free software, right from the beginning, what career path do you think you would have liked to have taken?
Well, let's look at the one I chose. I became a software developer. I worked at MIT for over a decade developing operating systems.
And if all the software had been free, in fact, it was all free at the beginning. All the software I worked on was free software.
This is the career path I chose. And if the world had continued that way, I suppose I would have stayed with it. Why not? Why ever change?
What happened was my community got crushed and freedom got taken away. And I said, I'm going to fight this. I'm going to bring back the freedom that got smashed.
If it had never got smashed, I suppose I would have just gone along programming and contributing to technology, but I would have had no need to fight for anything.
Well, great, I suppose. Except, of course, there are other injustices in life. So the question really becomes in our counterfactual universe, how much change are we going to imagine?
If we imagine a world where there was justice and where there weren't lots of people who were horribly poor, while some others were tremendously rich, well, okay, with no political issues that need fighting about, I wouldn't be fighting about political issues. That would be great.
But if you just imagine, what if there were no non-free software, but everything else, we're just as bad as it is now? Well, I don't know what I would have been in that world.
I hope that I would have fought for freedom and justice in some other area, but really who knows if I would have?
So if it were to change now and say, you know, it became codified that all software must comply with the four freedoms.
What would you then change your career path to? What would you be doing tomorrow?
There are many other threats to the freedom of computer users, and I'm already trying to do something about those, so I would continue.
Meanwhile, of course, there are other threats to freedom and the survival of civilization. Global heating threatens to cause a disaster that most people have never imagined.
I saw that a study estimates that global heating will kill 100 million people by 2030, but global heating will get worse after that.
So I would expect it will kill billions in this century.
People simply are not imagining how devastating it's likely to be.
It occurred to me a few days ago that it might be good to start documenting the principal people responsible for making sure that the world does not act to curb global heating.
Because in a few decades, when lots of people are dying, they will want to know who killed them.
So it seems to me that some of your political views outside of those having to do with software and technology.
Do you find that sometimes people might disagree with those views and that their disagreement there might affect how they view you or your views on free software?
Well, certainly they can. That's why I keep these issues separate from the free software movement.
I'm a liberal in U.S. terms. I believe that letting people live their lives, however they wish to live them.
But in regulating business so that it can't crush trample people and in government social programs so that people who get bad luck don't have horrible lives.
However, there are lots of people in the free software movement who disagree with all of that.
And they are welcome in the free software movement. So the free software foundation doesn't take any position on most of those issues.
Okay, very fair. Do you view yourself as a tactful person?
I'm the wrong one to ask. Good answer.
Okay. How about this then? How important do you feel that tact is as a virtue in a leader or representative of a movement?
It's very important to avoid insulting somebody gratuitously when there is no particular reason to criticize that person.
On the other hand, if one is so tactful that one doesn't dare call evil evil, then one is not really leading.
And one is not going to fight for justice that way.
Okay. So you freely use the term evil as the opposite end of the spectrum is good.
How do you determine, because I know you're an atheist, so how do you determine where that line is between good and evil?
I consult my conscience.
Now, if there were a God that wouldn't tell us anything about good and evil, a God might have opinions about the question,
but that wouldn't compel us to agree with those opinions.
So really, everyone faces this question, how to decide what's good and what's evil.
There's no place you can get a guaranteed answer for that.
Okay. And then we have to, what, as a society, we have to agree where the line is, is that the next...
I mean, how do we function society if every person is making their own determination as to what is good and what is evil?
This question seems silly. Everyone is making those determinations. That's the way life is.
So how do you organize society? That's a difficult question that people have been struggling with for thousands of years.
Okay. Well, I guess the reason I'm asking, it seems to me as though we organize societies with laws and rules.
And it seems that we base those rules on pre-existing conditions.
You know, so I might use an example, as an example, like the Ten Commandments, being the basis of the Magna Carta, being the basis of U.S. laws.
If there were no, from an atheist point of view, where there is no deity and those things don't exist, what would be a better way to organize society, I guess.
Sorry. These are unrelated questions. I don't see that the Magna Carta has much to do with Christianity or the Ten Commandments or any sort of religion.
But more rarely he seems to be something in human nature which must have evolved because partly based on empathy, which is a human faculty.
But the question of how to organize human society is basically unrelated to religion.
There are religious people who might want to pretend otherwise, but they're mistaken.
Okay. All right. I won't chase that one any further.
Okay. So I heard someone, again, another person, I do not agree with this, but I'll present it as a devil's advocate here so I can get it in your words.
I heard someone claim that there should be a fifth freedom in the free software definition and that freedom being freedom of choice. Could you speak to that for a moment please?
It's too meaningless to be addressed.
I can try to assign some meaning based on my understanding of their point of view and I will say that they were...
I'd rather you didn't. I don't want to have to argue with a person who's not here.
Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. In any case.
Okay. I think what they were referring to was a freedom to run a freedom of choice to run proprietary software and I thought it was silly for them to say.
I point out to them that by doing so, they give up their freedom.
So is this person advocating the freedom to give up your freedom?
That is just a Russell paradox to destroy the concept of freedom.
But although it's an absurdity, in fact, the United States has had big problems when the Supreme Court interpreted freedom that way and rejected consumer protection laws, banned unions saying that people couldn't give up their freedom to sign any kind of contract no matter how much it might exploit them and mistreat them.
We're better off because that doctrine has been rejected.
Okay. I agree with that. I won't push that one either.
Can I ask you a couple things about the FSF?
No, something that I'll bring up because I've always had trouble with this and while I do agree with the FSF, I sometimes don't agree with the tactics that the FSF takes.
Such as some of the changing of names to other things or some of the more offensive things that it's done to get attention, like the Hasmat suits out in front of an Apple store or Microsoft, so I don't know.
Can I just explain that to me? Are you raising the ethical question? Are you asking, are you saying that they are not justified or do you think that they were not effective?
Okay. I think that they were justified. I wouldn't say that they're not just effective.
Those Hasmat suits got a lot of attention for the issue of digital restrictions management, so I am quite sure that it was a good thing we did that.
Okay. From my perspective, it seemed somewhat counterproductive because it seemed to offend a lot of the people who were already on the side of free software.
I didn't observe that.
Okay. I've spoken with several people who seem to have that opinion. I think I have that opinion too. I didn't think it put a good face on the free software foundation.
I think a better tactic is-
I ask you once again, are you saying it was wrong or are you just doubting whether it was effective?
Because you seem to be hemming and hoing, not able to make up your mind which one it was.
I'm not hemming and hoing. I'm trying to choose my words so that they don't offend and I can still get my point across, but-
Unless you make it clear whether you're doubting whether it was right for us to do this or nearly questioning what effect it had, I can't make sense of what you're saying and I couldn't possibly respond to it.
Okay, so I guess if an action is to be taken and on the one hand the action could be the hazmat suits out in front of the proprietary store or an action could be taken that instead of-
Instead of a negative action, instead of saying something negative about the other side, don't you think it would be more effective to say something positive about free software instead?
Not at all. When somebody is making malicious devices, we've got to call them that to fail to condemn evil.
If all you can say are nice things, then you're completely feckless in the situations where there is an evil that needs to be fought.
And sometimes when you do things like that and say things and do things that aren't nice to people who may have purchased these products or may be part of that, whatever ecosystem, I guess some people call it.
And they find that insulting and offensive or you're not worried about how they feel about it if you haven't changed their mind.
What is it to have them like us if they haven't heard the issue? It achieves nothing.
I can agree with that, but I think that sometimes some of the actions will turn people off so they don't want to hear the issue before they decide whether or not they like us and then make the decision to dislike us based only on that.
It's not worth worrying about. Those people are not likely to listen to us anyway.
And if you can only express positive emotions, you can't cope with a situation where an activity systematically threatens people's freedom.
I don't think anyone has ever succeeded in defending a freedom that's under threat by only saying nice things.
As for changing names, there are two reasons for that. One is it's fun.
Second, it refuses to support expensive and effective PR campaigns.
If you call something, call a product by its official name, you're helping the company that sells it.
So that's one reason why it's good to refuse to call nasty products by their official names.
But it's also just that it's fun.
Okay, fair enough. Now here's another question someone asked me to ask you.
Originally, was the primary goal of the GPL to be able to hack on software that you quote unquote own or was it to spread your own software as an active goodwill?
I don't understand. I'm just lost.
Okay, so I think what they were asking was, was the goal of the primary goal the GPL?
Was it more so that if you were to acquire software, you'd be able to get at the source code and work on it?
Or was it more as a way of protecting software that you authored so that no one could then modify it and redistribute it without giving out the source or those things equal at the time?
Well, initially I was the one releasing software under the GNU GPL.
So clearly it's the latter that was the initial goal.
However, I'm happy that nowadays other people have released software under the GPL, so I get the benefit of that.
Okay, and that's pretty much all the technical questions people had for me to ask you.
Some of the folks on our IRC channel were wondering what you do in your personal time.
If you don't mind going there, like for instance one guy asked if you had a garden and what do you grow?
I don't have a garden. I wouldn't be very interested in that.
I do like to look at and smell and touch flowers.
I very much enjoy nasal sex with plants.
But I also like to see beautiful places.
Now for me, the places that are most beautiful are the places with the fewest plants.
If it's rock, ice and water, then it's cool or sand, then it's going to be more beautiful for me.
I like delicious food. I enjoy many kinds of music, although they're generally not kinds that are popular.
Take a look at stolen.org slash rms-lifestyle.html.
And you'll see a lot of info about this.
Yeah, I had a look there. I thought it was pretty interesting, though.
I didn't recognize most of the genres of music that you mentioned, so that was kind of interesting.
Take a listen.
Yeah, I probably should. Let me ask you, Mr. Stollman, do you like to laugh?
Yes, I do. That's why I make so many puns.
Okay. I'm just not sure that I've ever heard you laugh.
What do you laugh at that other than the names? I mean like what really makes you laugh?
I'm unable to say I never kept track.
Okay. Is there anything about other people that brings your joy?
Do you have close personal friends and what is it that you like about them?
Well, joy and laugh are not the same.
No, I didn't mean to say they were.
Love is what gives me joy.
Some of the guys in the chat room are asking if you have any good jokes.
Well, you can take a look at the puns files in Stollman.org and the cartoons.
I can't draw. So I find other people to draw these cartoon ideas.
It was a little bit late. It took me a long time to find somebody to draw it.
But a year or so ago, people were talking about shared sacrifice.
So I got, I found someone to draw a cartoon about how that sacrifice is carried out.
And that's the current political cartoon on Stollman.org.
Shared sacrifice. What does that even mean?
Well, that was the political slogan a year ago in regard to the economy and austerity policies
that were going to make lots of people suffer and so on.
Oh, okay.
So, can you spot the cartoon?
Oh, I haven't gone to get them, sorry.
It would be good to find out that it really is easy to find because it might not be easy.
In which case, it would be good for me to know so I could make sure that gets fixed.
Okay, can you tell me where it was again?
Stollman.org slash comics.html
Link in the show and know it, folks.
Someone posted something with the name Shared Scarifice.
Well, I don't know whether that was his typo or whether it's a typo in the site.
If it's a typo in the site, I guess I'd better get it fixed.
Let me connect now and make sure that I get it right.
Yup, someone, there was a typo in here.
It's now fixed.
Yup, that's, yeah, they're easy to find.
I'm not sure what the question was about them because they are easy to find.
Did you mean are they easy to understand the jokes, so what you meant?
No, I just wanted to make sure it was easy to find them on the site.
I didn't know.
Oh, okay, sorry.
I just wanted myself and so other people managed it for me.
So it was possible that it was hard to find it.
And indeed, there was a typo which I just fixed.
You might also enjoy Stollman.org slash dogaro.html
which has my funny verse and filksongs.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, and I think I think I would have to say that the comics were easy to find
because I think I stumbled on them a couple days ago just click and links on your website.
So I can't remember which links they were at the time, but I would have to say I think I found them.
Well, that's good.
So is there another question?
I think that's all the questions that I had.
Is there anything that you'd like to talk about that I haven't asked about?
Would you like to sing a song?
I would love for you to sing a song.
I wish it wasn't feedback because I'd like to sing it with you, but that's not going to work.
I've been answering my e-mail all the goddamn day.
I've been answering my e-mail because my work gets done that way.
Can't you feel the fingers ache and type into early in the morning?
Can't you see the letters blurring?
It's just an ad for porn.
That is fantastic.
Okay, now I do have another question.
I have a personal request.
Could you please as a personal favorite to me say happy birthday, Brian, since he just popped into our chat room?
Happy birthday, Brian.
Would you like me to sing a song?
Rome, do you want a song from Mr. Stalman?
Did he say yes or no? I couldn't tell.
Sorry, I talked to him. He said no. Thank you.
This is a non-copy-righted song.
Oh, he says in that case by all means.
Happy birthday. Happy birthday.
One year closer to death. Happy birthday.
All right, that is fantastic.
Are there any other before I let you go because I know you said you had to head out to dinner?
Are there any other things that you would like us to discuss before you go?
Well, let's see.
People should take a look at Genu.org to find out what Genu is.
People ask, what's Genu? You should know the answer.
And find out what free software means, what the issues of freedom are.
But in addition, we are in a society where human rights are constantly under attack.
Obama champions the freedom, well, he calls, sorry, I shouldn't say that.
Obama champions the power to imprison or kill anybody without a trial.
So, if we don't fight for human rights now, it's not going to be much left.
We see massive surveillance being spread around our society.
It's not enough just to put legal limits on the use of all that data.
Because that would still be a tremendous increase in the amount of data collection and surveillance of everyone.
And unless society had far too little surveillance 20 years ago,
clearly this tremendous increment means too much.
So we have to limit the collection of this data.
There must be legal limits on collecting data about anybody.
So that data can only be collected about particular people subject to court orders.
And other data just can't be collected at all.
And then we have the threat of global heating.
Now, I've seen projected maps of areas that might frequently be flooded in the future.
And MIT, where my office is, is one of them.
In a few decades, it may frequently be underwater.
There are a lot of important parts of the US that are not very far above sea level.
We could be sinking ourselves.
People have got to take this seriously.
Of course, the reason why that isn't so is that the oil companies have threatened the politicians to push them into line.
You don't see Obama or Romney talking about the danger of global heating the way they did in the past.
They shut up about it.
And what they actually do just makes the problem worse.
This is why I've endorsed Jill Stein for president.
What's the point of voting for somebody who is part of the problem or would make the problem worse?
I think that both Romney and Obama will make the problem worse because they're doing so.
I couldn't agree with you more on the overreach of the Patriot Act.
You should call it that.
Remember, it's an acronym.
It's the U-period S-period A-period, P-period A-period T-period R-period I-period O-period T-period Act.
And if you want to split that up into words and pronounce them, you can do that anywhere you like and it's equally valid.
So I would call it the U-Sapat Riot Act or the Pat Riot Act.
You shouldn't call it Patriot because in a country based founded on an idea of freedom, nothing is more anti-patriotic than that law.
I could not agree with you more.
Do you have a recommendation for president? Do you support someone that you would name publicly or do you just avoid that?
I endorse Jill Stein for president.
Okay. And as far as the global heating issue that you brought up, what do you say to those people who have made claims that the only grants and the only funding that has been made available to climatologists is money for those who are willing to say that global warming is a problem and thus steering the outcome of their research?
It's bullshit. The amount of money that could conceivably be controlled that way is peanuts compared with the money that the oil companies are putting in.
And scientists love criticizing the work of other scientists when they can find some evidence to base the criticism on because that's how they can make their name.
So the evidence that's being cited is the evidence that there is.
You don't think there's a way to silence a scientist who opposes a view like that?
Well, Canada has silenced some government scientists by banning them from speaking to the media because they want to talk about the evidence for global heating and the Canadian government just wants to extract more oil.
Okay. And dude man in our chat room here, he wants me to ask how can we all live more simply to do our part?
Well, it's going to take more than that. Simplifying your life is not going to do it. Remember that we have a market for fossil fuels.
If you use less, the price will go down a little bit and somebody else will use more.
So we can't solve this problem by personally conserving.
We need government policies that will reduce the amount of fossil fuel used, reduce the amount of greenhouse gas generation.
We've got to tax oil and natural gas and coal much more than we tax them now.
We've got to stop saying that we want lower gasoline prices and start pushing for high gasoline prices because otherwise they're going to go through the roof at some point that it's going to be a horrible shock.
If we have discouraged the use gradually over years, then there won't have to be the shock.
So keep in mind that the known reserves are something like five times what it will take to destroy civilization if we burn it.
We don't need to find more reserves. We only need to keep them in the ground.
How do you feel about people exploiting this situation because it seems to me there's a lot of people exploiting the situation who claim to be opposed to global heating and they're trying to help.
But it seems like a lot of people are just exploiting it and to make money off of it.
I'm sure there are. For instance, there are compensation schemes. They say that they will make some activity carbon neutral by doing something that will use up carbon from the air in the future.
Well, often it's a matter of planting trees. And if if those trees thrive, they will eventually use up some carbon dioxide from the air.
But we don't know that those trees will thrive. Global heating might just kill them or something else might kill them.
So you've got to be skeptical about these carbon neutral schemes. I think that's what's needed is simply to heavily tax the activities that pump out greenhouse gases.
Tax them enough that people start doing them a lot less.
Most people are often heavily opposed to raising their own taxes. It seems to me as you see another way that it could be done without raising taxes.
So this is like the person who doesn't want to go to the dentist or doesn't want to be examined to see if he has cancer.
And the world is likely to kill itself. Civilization is likely to kill itself by not taking the treatment it needs.
Because the treatment hurts. And people who are not thinking long enough term only see that the treatment is painful.
They don't see that the disease is going to be much, much more painful if they don't treat it.
Okay, I want to thank you so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it. You're one of my personal heroes as far as creating and leading the free software movement.
And I think you've done a wonderful job. I want to thank you for that and congratulate you with that.
I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but I'm happy to give you your time and to say it all.
But I do agree 100% on the free software movement.
Well, I'd like to suggest then make the effort to keep saying free or Libra and not open source.
And to say proprietary or non-free rather than closed.
Because every time you do that you boost the free software movement. You remind people that we're here.
And we need that help. You could also join the free software foundation. That's helping us more.
But of course, it's not as easy. You have to give some, you have to pay your dues.
Just learning to say a different word. That doesn't take much time or money. And it does help very efficiently for the amount of time you put into it.
What are some other ways that people can get started in learning about free software and the free software movement if they're not already involved?
Well, to learn about using GNU Slash Linux, visit a user group, get a live USB or live CD and boot the machine, boot the system and try using it for a while.
But to learn about the ideas of free software, you should take a look at GNU.org slash philosophy. There you will see what we stand for.
Mr. Solomon, I just want to thank you so much for joining me today. And this has been so much fun for me and such an honor to speak to you.
And I will certainly make my best effort to do those things you suggested. I do try sometimes I slip and I know I slip a couple times in this interview and apologize for that. I didn't mean any offense by it.
But I just, I think you're a great man and I think the world is a better place for having you in it.
Well, thank you. And, you know, I didn't take it as a personal insult because this is about something more than just my own feelings.
Imagine if you went to a green party rally and you held up a sign that said Democrat, well, if you disagreed with them, you have, I guess you have a right to say so.
But if you thought you were wanted to support them, you don't do that by saying Democrat or Republican, you do it by saying green.
It's the same thing here. You support the free software movement by talking about free software by saying free software.
And of course, just mentioning the name doesn't explain the ideas. But the first step is people have to know that we exist. And then they can find out what we stand for.
And I will do my best to do that and I would encourage everybody else who's listening to do the same.
I think that's about it. I think we ought to wrap it up so you can get to your folks who are waiting on you and just, I mean, I can't thank you enough.
So happy hacking. Bye.
Goodbye, everybody. Thanks for listening tune in tomorrow for another show from another host. And if you have not created a show for hacker public radio yet and you are a listener, please.
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