Politics
“Empty Walls” by Serj Tankian
Posted under Music, Politics on May 29, 2010.
Leave a Comment 1,240 views :beautiful, music video, terrorism, United StatesRichard Stallman Comes to Stanford
Richard Stallman at Stanford University
A few weeks ago, I had the amazing opportunity to meet Richard Stallman — founder of the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation, and developer of the amazingly popular GNU Emacs, GNU compiler (gcc), and GNU debugger (gdb).
RMS, as he likes to be called, is a living legend in the computing field. He’s widely considered to be the father of the free software movement. There is no question that the free software philosophy has brought enormous amounts of good to the world. I firmly believe this. I think most programmers and computer scientists would agree, too.
GNU/Linux render farm at Dreamworks
Free software is everywhere today. The popular operating system GNU/Linux (which Stallman wrote large parts of) powers so much of our computing today, nearly everyone has used it, whether they’ve heard of it or not.
The majority of servers on the Internet are powered by Apache and GNU/Linux, major parts of the Internet and most networks in large corporations are powered by GNU/Linux, and even 95% of the desktops and servers at major Hollywood movie studios like Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, and Sony run GNU/Linux.
Many people are confused about what the phrase “free software” means. Before I continue, let’s be clear about the definition of free software.
Related Posts
Posted under Computer Science, Famous People, Politics on May 21, 2010.
2 Comments 1,607 views :copyright, free software, freedom, FSF, GNU, hacking, Richard Stallman, StanfordQuoted
… “Diversity is really important,” Stanford University Association for Computing Machinery Student Chapter Chair Feross Aboukhadijeh said. “If you’re starting a startup, you don’t want to hire people that are just like yourself because then you don’t get a variety of ideas.” …
– From The Oracle – Gender enrollment gap in science classes persists
From now on everyone has to call me “Stanford University Association for Computing Machinery Student Chapter Chair Feross Aboukhadijeh” if you want to get my attention. Anything less than my full title and I won’t reply to you. 
But seriously… what a ridiculously long way to introduce me…
Related Posts
Posted under Politics, Stanford Life on May 06, 2010.
Leave a Comment 1,128 views :diversity, quote, womenCopying Is Not Theft
When artists do work, they should be paid — no one is debating that. Musicians are paid when they perform at concerts, when they sell discs, and when they compose for someone. Artists are paid when they sell their artwork, when they are commissioned to make art, and when their art appears in art museums.
However, artists shouldn’t chase down and sue every adolescent who copies their work without advance permission. The job of artists is to create stuff — and for that they should be compensated. They should not necessarily be compensated for the distribution of their work, especially when computers and the Internet make it trivial to distribute bits at a near-zero cost.
At the end of the day, artists should be paid when they make stuff. Mozilla is a great example of a company that understands this. Let’s say that software engineers are artists for the sake of this example (in many ways, we are artists). So, Mozilla engineers get paid when they’re designing, programming, and submitting patches for Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey. Yet, when the time comes for the software to be distributed, Mozilla engineers are not paid anything. All Mozilla software is free (as in freedom) and open source, as governed by the Mozilla Public License.
Related Posts
Posted under Music, Politics, The Internets on Mar 25, 2010.
7 Comments 3,352 views :art, copying, copyright, free software, Mozilla, remixMisinterpreting Copyright
I just read a great article about copyright that articulates the free software position extremely well. It’s written by Richard Stallman, the guy who started the free software movement.
Some highlights:
The copyright bargain places the public first: benefit for the reading public is an end in itself; benefits (if any) for publishers are just a means toward that end. Readers’ interests and publishers’ interests are thus qualitatively unequal in priority.
This is why our discussion about copyright is so unbalanced today. People need to remember that the public is more important than the publisher.
Related Posts
Posted under Politics on Mar 18, 2010.
1 Comment 1,438 views :copyright, free software, freedom, FSF, GNU, Richard Stallman-
Feross Aboukhadijeh - Stanford, CA
Hi, this is Feross. I'm a computer science student at Stanford University (class of 2012). I'm interested in Internet technology, web development, and computer security. I like hacking on cool software projects, running, basketball, retro video games, and shiny gadgets.
-
I support
