Original post at [1] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Before Richard Stallman's talk at the Turing Festival, Wired.co.uk sat down with him to talk about the Free Software Foundation -- the movement he started in the 80s whilst working on the GNU/Linux operating system.
The foundation opposes proprietary software, programs that restrict a user's freedom by not letting them see, share, or modify, the source code. Wired.co.uk discussed with the Stallman the role of free software, Facebook and how he thinks it ties in with the recent UK riots. Wired.co.uk: What is wrong with proprietary software? Stallman: Some masters, when they have subjugated people, are very cruel to them, and some are not so cruel, but the wrong is in the fact that these masters are masters. So, when the program controls the users it becomes an instrument for somebody to have power over [those] users. That is what is unjust, that is why proprietary software is always unjust. Competition is irrelevant to this issue, if there is a choice of proprietary products to do a job then that means you have a choice of masters, that's not freedom, freedom means not having a master. What does software need to be considered free? Free software means the users control the program: with proprietary software, the software controls the users. Specifically there are four essential freedoms: freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program as you wish; freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code, and change it so it does your computing as you wish; freedom 2 is the freedom to help others, which is the freedom to make exact copies, and distribute them to others; and freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute to your community, which is the freedom to make and distribute your modified versions. With these four freedoms, the users have control both individually, and in whatever groups they choose to form. So, freedom of access isn't one of the freedoms? Free software does not mean you are guaranteed to be able to get a copy of it at all. The criterion for free software is a matter of how you get it, if you get it. So when you have a copy, the program either is, or is not free software, and that depends on whether you have certain essential freedoms; the ones needed for the user to have control of the program. What about services that you can access on your free platform, such as Facebook? Facebook is not your friend. Facebook's business model is collecting [...] people's personal data. You shouldn't use it, it's a harmful thing. I recognise it's occasionally been used to do some good things, but it's still basically a bad thing. It's useful to be able to talk with other people that you choose. So the fundamental job that Facebook does isn't a bad thing, it's the way Facebook does it that's bad. It fails to warn people that anything they post could become known to the general public, the police, their employers, etc. An ethical social networking site has to warn users about this frequently, because the possibility is inherently there. Even if you say that only a certain list of people can see this particular thing, you don't know what they're going to do with it. So the site ought to warn users that this possibility can't be prevented. Then there's inviting people to tag photos with other people's names, and thus build a bigger database. Which is why I ask that people don't post photos of me on Facebook. They could be tagged, and Facebook has a face recognition system, I don't like that. Finally, there's the fact that Facebook 'like buttons' do surveillance. They track visitors to whatever site has the 'like button', to whatever page. That's a broad surveillance system. There's a lot of surveillance of people as they browse, and I'm looking for people to work on changing our variant of Firefox so that it blocks that better. Does this mean there's hardware that you can't use either? I have no DVD player. DVDs are malicious, except the free software that can play [them]. I would have a copy of that, except [I can't] if I go to France, which I'm going to do in a few days. Why is that? Because, Sarkozy [...] pushed through a vicious law which says that possession of a copy of this program, or [one that] breaks any other digital handcuffs, is punished by imprisonment. How about in Britain? The Digital Economy Bill is an instance of when governments are subservient to corporations. It's not protecting anything. It punishes people for being accused of copyright infringement. So, here we have punishment on mere accusation, which discards a basic principle of justice. It's not the only unjust law in the UK to stop people from sharing. What's evil about the war on sharing is its aim. It's an attack on society, and it's therefore wrong no matter what methods are invented, but the methods systematically tend to be cruel because given that sharing is good, and sharing is easy and convenient, and sharing is useful, people will share, and only nasty methods have a chance to make them stop. So they constantly look for new nasty methods to use, but a government wouldn't adopt such laws unless it had already betrayed the public. The media companies are the masters, and we're not allowed to displease them. They accuse, no need to convict, no need for a trial. That law is an evident injustice. There are other areas or life, which are more important, where government is also guilty of injustice. But it's a clear basis to diagnose a government of occupation. It's put in place by the mega corporations to keep the people down. People must think in terms of resisting a government of occupation, until the occupation is ended and the empire falls. One way people can resist is by removing the keys from their wireless networks. If you have a key on your wireless network then you're acting as an enforcer. You've been conscripted into the war on sharing. [If everyone has open networks] they can't really tell who's doing anything. Were the recent British riots a form of resistance? The riots are a symptom of government injustice. And the government is using the riots to focus people's anger on this side issue, instead of on the targets that really call out for anger. Remember that part of the reason for the riots is that there are people who saw themselves facing a life of no opportunity, unemployment, and a constant pattern of mistreatment by the police. That doesn't mean that it was right to loot stores of luxury goods, but it meant that their crimes were provoked, and who provoked it? The people doing the budget cutting. Now if they were thinking clearly, [the rioters would] plan a different kind of protest. They weren't very smart and did something that wasn't justified, but that doesn't mean the provocation wasn't a real issue, and, if [things] continue that way, they're going to explode again, somehow, someday. People can understand that those were small crimes compared with the big looting. They can see that they're suffering because of all the money that's been looted by the big looters. I'm not sure how much damage was done [during the riots], it might be as much as some millions of pounds, but the big looters have taken billions, the riots are tiny compared with that. The little looters are being used as a distraction from the big looters. Namely the banksters, who got bailed out instead of bankrupted, and then there are the tax dodgers. So, what can we do? We have to push back against this. Even when there isn't a big protest we can still be doing things. Such as I'm doing right now with you, I'm pointing attention at the real issue instead of at the distractions. We have opportunities to do this every day. It would be nice if people could stand in front of Topshop, or a Vodafone store, for a couple of hours handing out leaflets. Though this course of action has been called criminal in the past. The crime of aggravated trespass was essentially invented as a way to make protest a crime. Any time they charge somebody with aggravated trespass people should respond: "Oh, this is government tyranny. We know from the fact that that's the charge that it's government tyranny." They're charged with the crime of protesting. A protest that there was no other reason to prohibit. It's one of the usual things. Most people accept a tyrannical law, they don't condemn it and demand it be removed. Such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers act (RIP)? RIP human rights. The police could demand that you hand over the encryption key that you use to talk to your brother, and not let your brother know. And if your brother finds out through anything you did, that's a crime, you could be put in prison. Essentially this sounds like the plot of a nasty spy movie. So what are you, personally, doing about this? The free software movement is politics. Developing the GNU operating system was an instance of direct action. To address an injustice, mainly the injustice of proprietary software. I didn't see myself as being in a position to change that situation. To do anything to reduce the problem of proprietary software through political action so I did direct action. I wrote other software and said: "Let's use this instead, let's escape from that proprietary software." --------------------------------------------------------------------- [1]http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/06/richard-stallman -- Parin Sharma https://identi.ca/FRDManiac -- Mailing list guidelines and other related articles: http://lug-iitd.org/Footer
