<div dir="ltr"><p><b>Background:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>Jeremy Andrews</i>: When did you first start working with computers?</font></p>
<p><a href="http://kerneltrap.org/files/jeremy/rms-bw.jpeg" target="photo"><img src="http://kerneltrap.org/files/jeremy/rms-bw-small.gif" align="left" border="0"></a><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I first read manuals and wrote programs on paper in 1962 or so. 1969 was when I first saw and used a real computer.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What types of programs were you writing prior to actually seeing and using a real computer?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: They were pretty trivial, like things to
add up a vector of numbers. About the time I first started with a real
computer I designed a computer language based on string substitution.
In some ways like <a href="http://www.cs.fit.edu/%7Edclay/cse5040/snobol.html" target="new">SNOBOL</a>, although I'd never used SNOBOL.</p>
<p>And then, the first thing I started writing when I had a real
computer to use--I'd seen the language PL/I and I was thrilled by how
many features it had. But there was a feature it didn't have: it didn't
have the summation convention used in tensor analysis. So I started to
write a pre-processor for PL/I that would implement the summation
convention. I didn't ever finish it, but I actually got some parts of
it to work. I wrote it first in PL/I, and then we discovered that even
one pass of it wouldn't fit in the machine that was available. (I had
actually written a lot of parts of this in PL/I on paper by that
point.) Then I started rewriting it in assembler language, but I only
rewrote a few passes of it in assembler language. And then I learned
about things like lists and about Lisp, and lost interest in languages
like PL/I.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: When you graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a BA in physics, how did you intend to use your degree?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I thought I would become a theoretical
physicist; however, the pleasure of programming, where I could make
real progress and see results, gradually grew and overtook the pleasure
of learning physics.</p>
<p><b>Life In The AI Lab:</b><br> <font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What tasks occupied your time at the AI Lab through the 1970s?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Mostly operating system development, but I
did one AI research project with Professor Sussman; we developed
dependency-directed backtracking.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What is dependency-directed backtracking?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: You make some assumptions, and with those
together with some given facts you draw a conclusion. You may reach a
contradiction; if so, at least one of your assumptions that led to that
contradiction must be wrong. You also record which combination of
assumptions actually related to the contradiction, so you can deduce
that that combination of assumptions cannot all be true. Then you
backtrack by changing assumptions, but you never try a set of
assumptions that includes the combination that you know are
contradictory. Now, this is a technique that people had used for a long
time in thinking. It's also known as proof analysis. But it hadn't been
used in computerized reasoning.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What was the result of this research project?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: We published a paper. The technique got used by other people later, so apparently it became part of AI.</p>
<p>Also, I learned how to understand electrical circuits better. The
program that we wrote, which used this technique, was a program for
understanding electrical circuits. By imitating the program, I could
understand circuits better than I could before.</p>
<p><b>The GNU Project And The Free Software Foundation:</b><br> <font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>:
The story of your encounter with non-free printer software in the early
80's is very well known. This incident ultimately resulted in your
founding the GNU Project in 1984, and the Free Software Foundation in
1985. You have remained quite active in this movement ever since, as a
public speaker and a prolific author of free software. Of which of your
many achievements in the past two decades are you the most proud?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: What I am proud of is that we have built a community where people can use computers and work together in freedom.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What are the largest challenges you're facing today?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Software patents. The Digital Millennium
Copyright Act. The broadcast flag. Cards with secret specifications.
Non-free Java platforms.</p>
<p>In other words, organized efforts by people with power to put an end to our freedom.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Is there a plan for addressing these issues?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Regarding the laws, not much of one, in the
US. In other countries that do not yet have these laws, we can try to
prevent them.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: That's a bit scary.</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: It is.</p>
<p><b>"Free Software" vs. "Open Source":</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: You regularly have to explain the
differences between "free software" and "open source software", and yet
the media continues to confuse these terms. For our readers that may
therefor be confused themselves, can you explain the differences, and
why it is important to get it right?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Free software and open source are the
slogans of two different movements with different philosophies. In the
free software movement, our goal is to be free to share and cooperate.
We say that non-free software is antisocial because it tramples the
users' freedom, and we develop free software to escape from that.</p>
<p>The open source movement promotes what they consider a technically
superior development model that usually gives technically superior
results. The values they cite are the same ones Microsoft appeals to:
narrowly practical values.</p>
<p>Free software and open source are also both criteria for software
licenses. These criteria are written in very different ways but the
licenses accepted are almost the same. The main difference is the
difference in philosophy.</p>
<p>Why does the philosophy matter? Because people who don't value their
freedom will lose it. If you give people freedom but don't teach them
to value it, they won't hold on to it for long. So it is not enough to
spread free software. We have to teach people to demand freedom, to
fight for freedom. Then we may be able to overcome the problems that
today I see no way to solve.</p>
<p><b>"GNU/Linux":</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Another frequent area of confusion is
the name 'GNU/Linux'. Why is the GNU project's contribution significant
enough that it should be in the name of the operating system,
especially compared to other large pieces of any Linux-kernel based
operating system, such as XFree86?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: It's no coincidence that the code we wrote
for the GNU system is the largest single contribution to the GNU/Linux
system today. Many other people and projects have developed free
software programs now used in the system; TeX, BSD code, X11, Linux,
and Apache are noteworthy examples. But it was the GNU Project that set
out to develop a complete free operating system. The combined system we
use today is founded on GNU.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: In talking about GNU Linux...</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I prefer to pronounce it GNU-slash-Linux,
or GNU-plus-Linux. The reason is that when you say GNU-Linux it is very
much prone to suggest a misleading interpretation. After all, we have
GNU Emacs which is the version of Emacs which was developed for GNU. If
you say "GNU Linux", people will think it means a version of Linux that
was developed for GNU. Which is not the fact.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: You're trying to point out instead that it's a combination of the two.</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Exactly. It's GNU plus Linux together.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Which makes up the GNU+Linux operating system that everyone uses.</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Exactly.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What is gained by people using the term GNU/Linux?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: People know that Linus Torvalds wrote his
program Linux to have fun. And people know that Linus Torvalds did not
say that it's wrong to stop users for sharing and changing the software
they use. If they think that our system was started by him and
primarily owes existence to him, they will tend to follow his
philosophy, and that weakens our community.</p>
<p>It's an interesting anecdote to think that the whole operating
system exists because an undergraduate thought that it was a fun
project. But the real story is that this system exists because of
people who were determined to fight for freedom and willing to work for
years if that's what it took. That's a story that teaches people
something worth learning.</p>
<p>When people forget that, they start drifting toward the practical
but superficial values shared by the open source movement and
Microsoft: the idea that the only thing that matters about your
software is whether it gets your jobs done and what it costs.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Which begins to answer my next question, what is lost when people refuse to use the term GNU/Linux?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: What's lost is an opportunity to teach
people. The software is equally free regardless of whatever name you
call it--if, that is, the distro you're using really is free. But the
only free GNU/Linux distro I know of is UTUTO. Most versions of the
GNU/Linux system are not entirely free software. All the commercial
distributors put in non-free software. And then there's Debian which
keeps all the non-free software clearly separated, but does distribute
it. And those who sell Debian GNU/Linux often add a few non-free
programs as a "bonus"... They invite you to think it's a bonus you're
getting that your freedom is no longer complete.</p>
<p>If you happen to be running a version of GNU/Linux which doesn't
have the non-free software, then the situation is not materially
changed by the name you use. But the situation we're likely to find
ourselves in five years from now depends on what we teach each other
today.</p>
<p>A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if you called it an onion you'd get cooks very confused.</p>
<p><b>GNU/Hurd:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: The GNU Hurd has been under
development for over a decade. There was talk of a 1.0 release over a
year ago, but this was delayed due to a couple of lacking features.
What is the current status of this project?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: The Hurd runs, and missing features are
gradually being added. However, for practical use today, you would use
a Linux-based version of GNU.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Do you have any predictions as to when we're going to see a 1.0 release?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: No, I'm afraid I don't, I'm sad to say. A
lot of the Hurd developers seem to have decided that they should
re-write it to work with a different micro-kernel (L4). I was
disappointed to hear this, but now it looks like it will be some more
years before the Hurd is usable.</p>
<p>At least we do have a free kernel that works with GNU.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Will the GNU Project focus solely
on a GNU system built around the GNU Hurd when it is released, or will
it continue to support a widening range of free-software kernels?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: We will keep supporting Linux-based versions of the GNU system for as long as they remain popular.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: How will we refer to a Hurd-based operating system? Is it GNU Hurd, or GNU slash Hurd?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: It's the GNU operating system, and the Hurd
is its kernel. But because it's so common for people to use version of
GNU that are based on Linux as the kernel, it's useful to contrast the
two, and talk about GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd, which are two different
versions of the GNU system with different kernels.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What would the advantages of using a GNU/Hurd system be over say a GNU/Linux system?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: There's probably no gigantic advantage that
jumps out at the user's face if you're not writing interesting
programs. The Hurd offers interesting, powerful capabilities. For
instance, you can write your own filesystem, so you could implement any
sort of behavior you want and package it as a file. It offers the
possibility of implementing sandboxes, where you can run a program but
have another program monitoring all its I/O to make sure it doesn't
start writing in files it wasn't expected to.</p>
<p>These things may be doable with a kernel that doesn't have the
Hurd's architecture, but with the Hurd it's trivial and the most
natural thing in the world.</p>
<p><b>Writing Code vs. Management:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: How much source code do you write these days?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I myself? Only a little, on Emacs. I was involuntarily self-promoted into management.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: That's an interesting description. How did this happen?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: The amount of management and activism that
had to be done got more and more, and so I had to find other people to
take over more and more of my programming responsibilities.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Do you miss the programming?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Yes. It's fun.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Is the management/activist role something you desire to remain in?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I wouldn't say I desire to, but it's
necessary that I do so. At the moment we don't have anyone to replace
me. We're actually thinking about how we we could try and develop
people who could do this, so that I will not be indispensable.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What is your role these days?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Partly it is being a very firm and
determined leader. Partly it is being an orator. Partly it is advising
other people on how to be activists or how to contribute to free
software. I've learned something that a lot of people could usefully
know: how to be extremely persistent and whenever one avenue was
blocked find another.</p>
<p>I've also learned the spirit of what you do when you're fighting for
freedom. When it's a fight that you can't ever give up as lost.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Many of the programs you were the
original author for are key components of much software development
today (free and non-free alike), such as the GNU Compiler Collection
(gcc), the GNU symbolic debugger (gdb), and GNU Emacs. All of these
projects have remained under constant development over the years. How
closely have you followed the many projects you've started, and how do
you feel about the directions they've taken?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I don't follow GCC and GDB in technical
detail nowadays--other people now have that responsibility. I still
supervise Emacs development.</p>
<p><b>GNU Emacs:</b><br> <br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Then you are still working on Emacs at a code level?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Yes, although now with my broken arm I
really have no time to program anything. I will when my arm is better
and I can type for myself again.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: May I ask what happened to your arm?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I fell and broke my arm, and I needed
surgery. It hurts, and I think it will never be normal again. But I
think it will work for typing. (Later: it works fine for typing, but it
tingles all the time.)</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: I'm sorry to hear about your arm, and I wish you a speedy recovery.</font></p>
<p>I recently reread Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg". Are you familiar with the book?</p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I have a vague memory of it.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: A quick summary, he talks about a
spy that breaks into a university computer system, initially using a
security hole in GNU Emacs...</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Well, whether it's really a security hole,
or whether he had made a mistake by installing a certain program setuid
is subject to argument.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: That's exactly what I was curious about, just what your reaction would have been to the book when it came out.</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: His book made it sound like Emacs, or
actually movemail I think it was... His book made it sound like it was
normal to install movemail setuid. I think some people sometimes did
that, as there was a certain problem you could get around by doing
that, but that wasn't the normal way to install it. So in fact, people
installing Emacs the usual way would not have had that problem.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it certainly was useful to make Emacs more
bulletproof, so that that problem couldn't happen even if you installed
movemail as setuid.</p>
<p>That was ages ago.</p>
<p><b>Non-Free Software:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What is your reaction to tools such as gcc, gdb and GNU Emacs being used for the development of non-free software?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Any development of non-free software is
harmful and unfortunate, whether it uses GNU tools or other tools.
Whether it is good or bad, in the long term, for the future of computer
users' freedom that one can use these tools to develop non-free
software is a question whose answer I could only guess at.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: How do you react to the opinion
that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that
can then be put into the development of completely new software, money
that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software
that may have never been developed?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: This is no justification at all. A non-free
program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is
the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is
available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom.
That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is
better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.</p>
<p>So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that
path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else
instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free
program to do the same job.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What about the programmers...</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: What about them? The programmers writing
non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get
some other job.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Such as?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: There are thousands of different jobs
people can have in society without developing non-free software. You
can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom
software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The
small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What is the distinction there?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Non-free software is meant to be
distributed to the public. Custom software is meant to be used by one
client. There's no ethical problem with custom software as long as
you're respecting your client's freedom.</p>
<p>The next point is that programmers are a tiny fraction of employment
in the computer field. Suppose somebody developed an AI and no
programmers were needed anymore. Would this be a disaster? Would all
the people who are now programmers be doomed to unemployment for the
rest of their lives? Obviously not, but this doesn't stop people from
exaggerating the issue.</p>
<p>And what if there aren't any programming jobs in the US anymore?</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: You mean what if all the programming jobs were outsourced to foreign countries?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Yes, what if they all go? This may actually
happen. When you start thinking about things like total levels of
employment, you've got think about all the factors that affect it, not
blame it all on one factor. The cause of unemployment is not someone or
society deciding that software should be free. The cause of the problem
is largely economic policies designed to benefit only the rich. Such as
driving wages down.</p>
<p>You know, it's no coincidence that we're having all this
outsourcing. That was carefully planned. International treaties were
designed to make this happen so that people's wages would be reduced.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Can you cite specific examples?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: FTAA. The World Trade Organization. NAFTA.
These treaties are designed to reduce wages by making it easy for a
company to say to various countries, "which of you will let us pay
people the least? That's were we're headed." And if any country starts
having a somewhat increased standard of living, companies say "oh, this
is a bad labor climate here. You're not making a good climate for
business. All the business is going to go away. You better make sure
that people get paid less. You're following a foolish policy arranging
for workers of your country to be paid more. You've got to make sure
that your workers are the lowest paid anywhere in the world, then we'll
come back. Otherwise we're all going to run away and punish you."</p>
<p>Businesses very often do it, they move operations out of a country
to punish that country. And I've recently come to the conclusion that
frictionless international trade is inherently a harmful thing, because
it makes it too easy for companies to move from one country to another.
We have to make that difficult enough that each company can be stuck in
some country that can regulate it.</p>
<p>The book No Logo explains that the Philippines have laws that
protect labor standards, but these laws count for nothing any more.
They decided to set up "enterprise zones" - that's the euphemism they
used for "sweat shop zones" - where companies are exempt from these
rules for the first two years. And as a result, no company lasts for
more than two years. When their exemption runs out, the owners shut it
down and they start another.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: How does free software address this?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Free software doesn't address this. Free
software addresses the issue of how computer users can have freedom to
cooperate and to control their own computers. This is the larger issue
that becomes relevant when you start talking about "How are people
going to have jobs that pay them decently?" The answer is: in the world
of the low wage treaties, they're not going to.</p>
<p>It's inconsistent and future to subject millions of people to the
loss of freedom that non-free software imposes, just so that a tiny
segment of society will have better paying jobs, when we're ignoring
all the rest of society with their lousy jobs.</p>
<p>If you want to start doing something about that problem, do it at
the right level, which is the level of the power balance between
corporations and countries. Corporations are too powerful now. We have
to knock them down. I don't believe in abolishing business or even in
abolishing corporations, but we've got to make sure that no corporation
is powerful enough that it can say to all the countries in the world,
"I'll punish any country that doesn't obey."</p>
<p>That is the way it works now. And it was deliberately set up by people such as Reagan, and Clinton, and Bush and Bush.</p>
<p><b>New Technologies:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: I have read that the free software
model tends to imitate existing software, rather than blaze new trails
and developing completely new technologies.</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: To speak of a free software "model" is
somewhat misleading. The open source movement speaks of a "development
model", but our concern is for the user's freedom, not how the program
is developed.</p>
<p>Free software doesn't always imitate, but often it does. There's a
good reason for this: freedom is the main goal, and innovation is
secondary.</p>
<p>Our goal is to develop free software so that we can use computers
exclusively with free software. In 1984, we started with nearly zero
(we had TeX, nothing else). We had a lot of catching up to do, so we
have done it. Even if GNU/Linux had no technical innovations compared
with Unix, it would be completely superior because it respects your
freedom as Unix does not.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Do you believe that free software has caught up with non-free software?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: To a large extent, but not totally.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Would you say that we're going to
start seeing a lot of technical innovations originating from free
software as things are catching up?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: We already have. We already have seen a
technical innovations in free software. A lot of them help make up the
world wide web.</p>
<p><b>The Internet:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Does the importance of using only free software apply to the Internet?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I don't understand the question.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Software not only runs on personal computers, but also the computers that comprise the Internet...</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: That may mean your computer. If your computer is on the Internet, then that's one of the computers you're talking about.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: You're correct. At this very moment
my computer is part of the Internet. And my computer is comprised
entirely of free software. However there are plenty of computers on the
Internet that are not comprised of free software.</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I think you meant to say, "not running
entirely free software." There are many computers on the net that are
not running free software, and that means the people who use and own
those computers have lost this aspect of their freedom. That's a
problem.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Do you consider it proper for people who are trying to only use free software to utilize...</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: To connect to a server that's running non-free software?</p>
<p>I don't feel I need to refuse to connect to a server that is running
non-free software. For that matter, I won't refuse to type on a
computer that's running non-free software. If I were visiting your
house for a little and you had a Windows machine, I would use it if it
were important for me to use it. I wouldn't be willing to have Windows
on my computer, and you shouldn't have it on yours, but I can't change
that by refusing to touch the machine.</p>
<p>If you connect to a server that runs non-free software, you're not
the one whose freedom is harmed. It's the server operator who has lost
freedom to the restrictions on the software he runs. This is
unfortunate, and I hope that he switches to free software; we're
working to bring that about. But I don't feel you have to boycott his
site until he switches. He isn't making you use the non-free software.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Back to my earlier question, as a specific example do you use tools such as Google when attempting to locate online content?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I have nothing against communicating with
Google's network server, but for Google's sake I hope they have the
freedom to study, change and redistribute the software used on their
server. Having the freedom to do so does not imply the obligation to do
so; Google doesn't have to change or redistribute the software they
run. But they ought to be free to do this, just as you and I should be
free to do this with the software on our machines.</p>
<p><b>The Workplace:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What if your job requires you to use non-free software?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I would quit that job. Would you
participate in something anti-social just because somebody pays you to?
What if the job involves hitting people on the head in the street and
taking their wallets? What if it involves spreading the word that
Democrats should vote on Wednesday instead of Tuesday? Some people
seriously claim that you can't criticize what someone does if it is
part of their job. From my point of view, the fact that somebody is
being paid to do something wrong is not an excuse.</p>
<p><b>Embedded Applications:</b></p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Embedded applications have become
more and more prevalent in society. Is it possible to completely avoid
non-free software and still remain in-touch with current technologies?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I don't know if it is possible, but if it
is not, that is something we need to change. Once an embedded system
can talk to a network, or users normally load software into it, its
software needs to be free. For instance, if it uses non-free software
to talk to the network, you can't trust it not to spy on you.</p>
<p><b>SCO:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: How do you react to SCO's recent accusations about the Linux kernel?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: The vague and cagey nature of their
statements, coupled with having seen that the only specific facts they
produced proved to be false, suggests they have no real case.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What impact do you expect this to have on free software?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I don't expect it to have a big impact
because I don't think they have a case. They're trying to create FUD
and they may scare some timid people off.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Do you expect this to bring the GPL into the courtroom?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I don't know.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Is that a concern for you?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: We think the GPL will stand up in court,
but no wise person is eager to get into a battle, even if he thinks
he's well enough armed that he'd probably win.</p>
<p>The arguments that SCO have been making are so laughably absurd that
they lend support to the idea that SCO has no real case, that they're
only interested in creating FUD.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: To what end?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: They hope some companies will pay them money, and Microsoft already did.</p>
<p>To people who know almost nothing about copyright law, anything
sounds as plausible as anything else. When they hear what SCO says,
they don't know how ridiculous it is. So they think, "SCO says this,
IBM says that, how do I know who's right?"</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: What's in store for the GNU General Public License (GPL)? Are there plans for a version 3?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Yes, but we are not really sure what will change. What we can say is that the changes will be details.</p>
<p><b>Getting Involved:</b><br>
<font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Is there any other current event that you'd like to address?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: The FCC last year decided to require
digital restrictions management in all receivers of digital TV. And not
only that, to require that they be made not modifiable by the user. I
think they have not yet decided whether this device is software
controlled. If they make it software controlled then for the first time
there will be a government policy explicitly banning free software for
a job that millions of people are going to want to<br>
do.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Are you optimistic about this?</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: I don't know. I am a pessimist by nature.
Many people can only keep on fighting when they expect to win. I'm not
like that, I always expect to lose. I fight anyway, and sometimes I win.</p>
<p>I'm not the main leader in this particular battle. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation is fighting. Public Knowledge is fighting. People
need to get involved politically. At this point people should go to the
<a href="http://www.eff.org/" target="new">EFF website</a> and the <a href="http://www.publicknowledge.org/" target="new">Public Knowledge website</a>,
and continue doing so over the coming weeks to see how they can get
involved in this coming campaign. It's going to take a lot of people
spending probably at least twenty minutes. If you care enough about
your freedom to spend twenty minutes on it, if you can tear yourself
away from whatever little job it is you're doing this week, and next
week, and so on. Spend a little time fighting for your freedom, and we
can win.</p>
<p><font color="#444444"><i>JA</i>: Thank you.</font></p>
<p><i>Richard Stallman</i>: Happy hacking!</p><br><br><br clear="all">The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. <br>Bertrand Russell<br>
<br>I ask you only two questions :<br><br>1. Did u find joy in ur life?<br>2.How many found joy from ur life ??<br><br>-Hemanth HM <br><br>
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