ZDNet UK

CNET NETWORKS UK BUSINESS SITES:
atlarge.com
BNET UK
silicon.com
SmartPlanet.com
ZDNet.co.uk

ZDNet.co.uk - Winner of Best Business Website 2007

You are here: ZDNet.co.uk > News > Software

Desktop platforms Toolkit

Expunging the myths of open source

Eileen Yu CNETAsia

Published: 23 Nov 2004 17:45 GMT

The man behind GNU/Linux -- not just Linux, he stresses -- is relentless in his quest to help users worldwide free themselves from the shackles of proprietary software.

He speaks three languages -- English, French and Spanish -- and has also studied Bahasa Indonesian. But the language he is most famous for is one that has helped create a platform that has touched communities and nations worldwide: the GNU/Linux operating system.

Richard M. Stallman, 51, is one of the industry's most controversial figures, known for his strong and very vocal convictions that the existence of proprietary software is perilous to software development.

Stallman was recently in Singapore to speak at an event organised by the School of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. He caught up with ZDNet UK sister site CNETAsia and explains why the free software movement should not be confused with the push for open-source applications, and how writing software is much like creating a musical symphony.

Q: What's your impression of Asia's take on the free-software movement?
A: Most people everywhere have never come across the idea that there is something wrong with proprietary software. They accept it as normal and it has never occurred to them that it's depriving them of human rights. Human rights that are appropriate to people using software, that is. And that's because they've been encouraged to think it's normal to be kept divided and helpless.

Once I gave a speech and someone in the audience came up and said: "I've been working with GNU/Linux software for years, and this is the first time I've heard anyone tell me that the whole point is freedom."

And of course you'll notice that most people who talk about Linux software treat it as if it were just another technical alternative, nothing deeper than that. So my task is to tell people about the issue of freedom that they usually won't hear.

Maybe we're having a little more success in spreading the word now, at least, I hope so.

You're very particular about referring to it as free software, as opposed to open-source software. Why is that?
Don't say open source. They [the open-source community] have done a good job of putting their name on what we do, which is what I take exception to.

The free software movement has been working for your freedom for 21 years now and after we've had some success, after we had developed the GNU/Linux system and people were starting to use it in the millions, some of them [the open-source community] in fact, it can be many of them didn't care about freedom. They were only interested in getting powerful, reliable, convenient software.

So in 1998 they made up the term 'open source' and used it as a way to talk about free software and not mention freedom, which is part of why so many people who use these software have never heard about freedom and why we have so much work to do.