Stallman: Protect the freedom of free software
Published: 11 Oct 2004 14:45 BST
Freedom 1 is necessary to protect users from hidden features that may spy on, interfere with, threaten or harass them. Stallman didn't claim that all proprietary software does that, but he listed several widely used items that do, including Windows XP's search function, Windows Update, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer. He also pointed out that one unauthorised attempt to build a back door into Windows is known to have failed, and wondered whether any had succeeded.
Access to the source also means you can change a program if you don't like any of its features. But not every computer user is a programmer, and there is more free software than any one person could examine and change. Freedom 3 lets people work as a community, giving others the benefit of the work done by those able to make changes, he said. If enough people like a change, that version becomes the norm. It also means that users can contribute to a fund to pay programmers to make agreed changes for them. Free software thus implies a free market for support and services that isn't tied to the original developer, explained Stallman. "Freedom is not having a choice of masters, freedom is not having a master."
So why 'GNU/Linux' rather than 'Linux'? Over 20 years ago, Stallman decided he was ethically unable to work with software that wasn't free, so he set himself the task of building a complete replacement for Unix. In a spirit of "playful cleverness" he named the project GNU, a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix. He invited others to help, and in January 1984 he quit his job at MIT to ensure that organisation would have no claim on his work. "I've never had a job since then," he said. "I avoid expensive habits."
By early 1990, the initial system was largely complete and most of it had been released under the GNU General Public Licence that ensures users have the four freedoms, but it lacked a kernel. Stallman though using the Mach microkernel would be quicker than building one from scratch, but "it still doesn't run reliably".
In 1991 the Linux kernel appeared, and in 1992 it was released under the GNU GPL. Combining Linux and GNU would give a complete free operating system, "and that's what people did," said Stallman, but they got confused and started calling the whole thing Linux "instead of realising the whole thing is basically GNU".
He didn't play down the significance of the Linux kernel, indeed he acknowledged that it carried GNU across the finishing line by making it a complete system that could be installed on a bare computer. Stallman's concern is that this confusion broke the connection between the free software philosophy and the software itself.
Linus Torvalds just wants technically good software, Stallman says, and other people are following that stand and are arguing against the GNU philosophy without realising they are GNU users. Often they write off the philosophy as being impractical while they are using its practical fruits, he says. There are tens of millions of GNU/Linux users, said Stallman, but a large fraction of them have never heard the idea that it is about freedom so they need to be taught to understand and defend it. "That's the job that hasn't been done by our community," he said.
ZDNet Australia's Stephen Withers reported from Sydney. For more coverage from ZDNet Australia, click here.
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