Keep it free!
Interview with Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation.
The programer guru and former MIT fellow speaks out about the Linux hype, about who deserves credit for what, about GNU and GNOME as well as about MP3.
What was basically the idea of the Free Software Foundation?
Richard Stallman: In 1983 I found myself in a situation where the only way you could get a modern computer and run it and use it was to get a proprietary operating system. There were various operating systems available but they all were proprietary what means you have to sign a licence and you were prohibited from sharing copies with other people. You would not be allowed to see how the system worked. This is a dividing and terrible situation where individuals are helplessly dependent on their master who controls everything done with the software. And maybe most people who started working on computers simply saw that it was this way and accepted it. They said: "I need a computer, so I have to accept this."
But I had experienced a different way in the 1970s at MIT, a kind of community where programmers could cooperate with each other changing and sharing software. So this was like being suddenly grabbed into uglyness. I felt like being living in a decent place and suddenly being kidnapped and thrown into a dungeon. And I said "I'm getting out of here. I'm not going to live like this. I will not spend my carreer building walls to divide other people as a programer." Because If I had participated in the software industry as it was, I would have been helping to keep other people locked in their separate cells. So I vowed that I would build a free operating system because that would change the situation for everyone.
I realized that if there were a free operating system then we would have another alternative so that people don't have to be divided and conquered. Now, since operating system development was my field already I realized that I had the right skills to try to undertake this project. And that if I succeded in this project it would change the power balance. People wouldn't be helplessly forced into accepting a proprietary software because they have an alternative.
Who would fund the project?
Richard Stallman: Nobody funds it. It really doesn't matter. We didn't need funding, that's what it turned out. The free software movement has now shown that we can develop large amounts of useful software without any funding. We have also shown that there are ways we can raise funds. So it turns out that we have answered this question from both sides. But in the beginning I didn't know that. I started to ask for donations, but didn't get any. So I just started to write for myself. During the 1980s I and others were writing different components that we needed in order to have the whole system. We chose the name GNU for this operating system. But in addition when we released separate pieces for the system in the interim we also called them GNU this and GNU that. The GNU compiler, the GNU emacs, the GNU debugger, they were all parts of the GNU system.
Anyway, in 1991 Linus Torvalds wrote the kernel. We didn't even know him, but other people who knew him started to look around to see how much they could put around it to build a whole system based on that kernel. And they found out that almost everything they needed was already there. Because we had accumulated it to build our system for seven years. They didn't know that, though. They didn't realize that what they were doing was putting Linux into the GNU system. They thought that they were finding all this pieces, and attached them to Linux. So they called the system Linux although really it was the GNU system.
And nowadays we have a very ironic result: this system that we developed is working so well that it is becoming popular surely for its technical capabilities, for its superiority. With the result that lots of people are starting to use it who don't care about freedom. And not only that, they don't even get a chance to think about whether they care about it or not because nobody ever mentions it to them. Nowadays they hear about a system persistently called Linux. And the people who write about Linux don't write about issues of freedom and what kind of community we want to live in. They write about things like business success, business endorsement, the software is powerful, about all the businesses who add non-free add-ons and non-free documentations to go with the system. And the message you get from that would never in a million years make you to think that there is a political goal with the base. So the result is we're being killed by the wrong kind of success. What happened is that our software and our philosophy of freedom has been separated so that people who find out about the software no longer find out about the philosophy. And this puts the software itself at risk in the long term.
Why did Linux take off like this and not GNU?
Richard Stallman: Because they supplied the last missing piece, the kernel. So in 1991 we had finished all the rest of the system, which is most of the system. But that piece was still missing. So we were working on a kernel but Linus finished his kernel first. If you want to get Linus a share of the credit – that's fine. So GNU and Linux – that's what you actually should say. Then you give us credit and you give Linus credit.
How tight connected are GNU and Linux?
Richard Stallman: You could get a whole GNU system that has no Linux in it and install it on your computer. It's not that stable yet, but it does run. But unless you're interested in kernel hacking I wouldn't suggest you should do that. Our kernel is not mature enough yet. It's been totally forgotten that GNU was started to become an operating system. I know that GNU is mostly known for it's tools like Emacs, but they were all developed during the time we were working on our system. We released these individual pieces separately because that way people would start to work on them and report bugs in them. And of course we saw it all as part of the project.
It helped to push the system. But it slowed it down also. It was good and bad: We got people interested in the project and more people contributed. In time they wanted us to support and add new features on the existing non-free operating systems. And that took a lot of time. And instead of writing ten adequate programs I may have written three great programs. But you know, with ten adequate pieces for the system we might have had a whole system. With three great programs we didn't. So it took longer, we didn't progress as fast towards the end of finishing the whole system. And so in 1991, seven years after we started, there was still one major component missing, the kernel. And it's just a weird quark of history that the person who did this kernel did it independently of us.
I am not at unhappy that Linux was written. But I am unhappy that people confuse the whole GNU system with Linux and give Linus Torvalds the credit for our work as well as for his.
What could be the results of forgetting about the GNU philosophy?
Richard Stallman: See, for the moment we have a free operating system more or less. And so even if people don't hear about the idea of freedom they can more and more start using the system and have freedom. But the world doesn't stay still. The system has to be changed and to be kept free in order to adapt it to new models of hardware, to new jobs that people want to do. And, if people don't care about freedom they won't insist on keeping their freedom when those adaptations are made. Instead some selfish person will say, "here is a piece of proprietary, non-free software that will do this new job or handle the new hardware." And so the users who never thought about the issue of freedom would say: "thank you very much. Now I can run my free system, my 'open source Linux system' on this new piece of hardware." Well, the result is the system is no longer entirely open source, no longer entirely free software.
But, they don't think about it that way. They've never been exposed to the issue. So they will accept these things and in five years from now the system may be terminated, sucked through with non-free pieces that are regarded essential. In fact you wouldn't be able to run the system without them – and we would be back in the same situation that we were in in 1983 when you couldn't get a modern computer and run it without getting proprietary software.
Do you see any solutions?
Richard Stallman: My solution is to explain this issue to many people. That's why I am evangelizing the free software movement. That's why I am talking to you.
What about GNOME? Could the friendly (inter) face for GNU/Linux help to spread the idea of free software?
GNOME is one of the pieces of the GNU project now, it's approximately the most important part. There is another interesting part that's being done in Germany which is the GNU Privacy Guard which is an encryption software. Basically I recruted someone outside ot he U.S., Werner Koch, to work on that to avoid U.S. export controls. The goal is that it will be entirely free software and something you can freely redistribute in all of the world except in places where encryption is illegal. We need an alternative to PGP because PGP is not free software anymore.
How would you maintain GNU/Linux to keep it all free?
Richard Stallman: The more people who find out of the GNU philosophy, the more people will agree with it. Obviously not all who find out about it will agree. I mean, people have different opinions and will make up their own minds. But if twice as many people find out about it probably twice as many people will agree. And the more people are to agree the more people we will be to do the work necessary to cope with the challenges to face. For example, how can we handle new hardware, that's the secret. We've got to have somebody to do reverse engineering. So, the more people we have who are strongly motivated the more likely we will be to find somebody who wants to do the reverse engineering. It takes commitment.
How many programmers do you have?
Richard Stallman: No one knows. I don't know if anyone knows. The most of the reverse engineering that has to be done has to be done in Linux because it's for kernel drivers. And Linux is the kernel. So the place where we need these people is in connection with Linux which makes it doubled hard because Linux as a piece of software is not really from the free software movement. It doesn't come from the GNU project. But Linus Torvalds is not a political person. He's apolitical, he's not concerned with our software goals, and he doesn't believe in these ideals. He likes free software, he prefers to work on it and have free software to use. But for him it's not an issue of right or wrong. It's not an issue of injustice so that we need to make an effort to corrrect it.
Fortunately there are some people involved with the kernel who have absorbed this idea from us, so some of the reverse engineering gets done. But if we were effectively spreading the idea of freedom, if instead of ten million users who were never hearing about freedom we only had one million users but they were all hearing about freedom and are all engaged in this issue, then we might have some hundred or thousand people who rise up in anger when their freedom is threatened. And that's the best protection for our freedom.
Now that we've been talking about proprietary and free software for so long, what do you think about copyright in general? Is it an outdated model?
Richard Stallman: Copyright as it is now is an oppressive system in the digital age. You need to distinguish between functional works like software and manuals and works for appreciation like novels, songs, records and arts because they raise different issues. For software it is essential that people have the freedom to publish modified versions of a program and therefore we must have software to be free. Anything less just won't do it. However for non-functional things like novels the freedom to publish a modified version is not so essential. And that – sometimes – makes it possible to have different kinds of compromise systems that might be acceptable for novels and songs. But they would not be acceptable for software.
What about MP3 and the copyright concerns it raises?
Richard Stallman: Well, I think distributing music on MP3 is a very good thing. I hope people will distribute lots of it whether it's legal or not. However, there is a problem with MP3. It's patented. We can't make free software for MP3, it's a real sad thing. And it may be ten years before we can.
The record companies have started a major campaign. And what they are going to do is to prohibit other formats like MP3. Because the thing is the public clearly would never choose to buy any music in the format that comes out of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) (http://www.sdmi.org/) that the labels have started if they have a choice. So what's going to happen is that basically we come to a big fork in the road. The record companies used to be doing something essential. The only way lots of people could get musical records was via these record companies. So it was a good thing that we had record companies. But that's not going to be true anymore. The record companies are just impediments now to the distribution of music and they are even bad to musicians. In the U.S. most of the bands who get record contracts get no money, all they get is publicity. The reason is that the record company lists the publicity costs as an advance to the band. And until they sell enough copies to equal the publicity costs they get no money. And most of them don't make that much money, and most of the bands never get a penny from copyright.
So, the record companies are taking away our freedom in the name of the musicians who they are screwing. We must refuse to accept this subjugation and must insist on reclaiming our freedom to redistribute music. If people were free to redistribute verbatim copies of music properly labeled with the name of the band and their website, the bands would get more publicity than the way they get it from the record companies. And it would be much friendlier to music lovers as well. The bands would be better off than in the present system since they could sell CDs or files to download from their own website. Everybody would be better off except the power-centered record companies.