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.

From Richard Stallman himself:

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program’s users have the four essential freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

(from The Free Software Definition)

I recently watched an excellent documentary about early hacker culture called Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age which had several wonderful clips of RMS in his early years. I clipped the relevant clips out of the documentary and uploaded them to YouTube:

So, free software sounds pretty good, right? I wish all software was free software.  Nearly all computer users, however, use the opposite of free software, called proprietary software, all the time in their daily lives. Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and many, many other programs are all proprietary software.

With proprietary software, we users have no way to determine what our software is doing on our computers because we can’t examine the source code. The software might be extremely insecure and exposing us to all sorts of security risks and we’d never know about it. Proprietary software may also send data about us back to the software company, or contain malware that allows the software company or even the government to gain remote access to our computers. Think these suggestions are far-fetched? Think again. This stuff has happened and continues to happen — just take a look at some of the links I’ve posted in my lifestream recently or do some research.

Another downside of non-free software is that if there’s a problem with it, a feature that’s missing, or something that we’d like to change, we’re at the mercy of the software company to implement these changes. When you take the shrink-wrap off that box of proprietary software, you’re agreeing that you will use the program as-is and won’t try to modify how the program behaves or reverse-engineer it to extract the source code. No software company that respects its users’ freedom would force such a scheme upon them.

Proprietary software also restricts sharing and copying. Users of proprietary software are legally forbidden from sharing their software with their neighbors. Users who share their proprietary software with their neighbors and friends are called “pirates,” “counterfeiters,” and “thieves” — propaganda terms used by the RIAA, MPAA, and other media conglomerates to demonize the simple act of sharing knowledge. Sharing a software program with your friend is not “piracy” — it is simply not the same as robbery and criminal violence on the sea. Not even close.

Why are these media and software companies trying to make sharing — that good thing that we learned about as children — into something bad and nasty?

Sharing is good. Sharing knowledge is better. Sharing software that empowers people to improve their lives is best.

I’ve already written about misinterpreting copyright and why copying is not theft in other blog posts — check them out if you’re interested.

These are just a few of the ethical reasons why free software is better than proprietary software. There are a whole host of technical reasons why it’s better, too. Free software source code can be scrutinized by more eyeballs, so it’s less likely to try to employ security through obscurity. Critical security bugs get patched much more quickly — often within hours — so free software is usually more secure than proprietary software.

And the list of free software benefits goes on… but I digress.

RMS is a legend. So, I decided to invite him to come to Stanford to give a talk about his ideas. He replied and let me know that he was already planning to speak at Stanford to students of the CS302: Tech Law course. I was thrilled! But, I wanted to help out in some way.

So, I got the Stanford ACM to host a public reception for RMS on the day before his talk, so that students from the Stanford community could meet him and ask questions. Some friends at Yahoo even heard about the event and offered to sponsor it and pay for all our food, which was extremely kind.

RMS is one of the most unique men I’ve ever met. Over thirty years after the decade of hackers, RMS still embodies the spirit of the 70′s hacker culture. He’s often criticized for being too extreme with his viewpoints. But, I think that’s what makes him unique.

RMS is an extremist in the cause of freedom. And there aren’t many people like that left in this world.

Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers’ feelings. — Richard Stallman

Stallman looking for a new laptop case at Fry's Electronics in Palo Alto (his bag ripped earlier in the day, so we took him to Fry's)

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… “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…

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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.

I can copy Firefox onto a CD, give it to my friend, and he can install Firefox on his computer — all without permission from or payment to Mozilla. In this model, it’s the actual act of authoring a new work that is compensated, and not the mere distribution.

Why am I ranting about this? Well, I just stumbled upon an awesome little song by Nina Paley about copying being different from theft which made me think about the differences between authoring something (a creative process) and distributing it (a very non-creative process).

Here’s the song:

Nina Paley singing “Copying isn’t theft”

And there’s a cute little cartoon that goes along with it.

The original animated short

Unsurprisingly, there have been a ton of people who have remixed this cartoon, adding their own creativity to the original author’s work to create something new and different. This is an awesome example of the good that can come from the freedom to remix copyrighted works (although in this case, Nina released her work under a Creative Commons license).

Punk remix

Jazz remix

Piano arrangement

8-bit remix

Ragtime version

In french!

Indian remix

Subhi & Gurpreet’s version of “Copying is not theft”

UPDATE: I found another cool version of the song:

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.

In effect, the government spends the public’s natural rights, on the public’s behalf, as part of a deal to bring the public more published works. Legal scholars call this concept the “copyright bargain.” It is like a government purchase of a highway or an airplane using taxpayers’ money, except that the government spends our freedom instead of our money.

When the government buys something for the public, it acts on behalf of the public; its responsibility is to obtain the best possible deal—best for the public, not for the other party in the agreement. … For example, when signing contracts with construction companies to build highways, the government aims to spend as little as possible of the public’s money.

I’m not sure about the part where government tries to spend as little money as possible… but the point is still valid.

… Perhaps novels, dictionaries, computer programs, songs, symphonies, and movies should have different durations of copyright, so that we can reduce the duration for each kind of work to what is necessary for many such works to be published. Perhaps movies over one hour long could have a twenty-year copyright, because of the expense of producing them. In my own field, computer programming, three years should suffice, because product cycles are even shorter than that.

The ridiculousness of copyright is nowhere more apparent than in the software industry.

As an author, I can reject the romantic mystique of the author as semidivine creator, often cited by publishers to justify increased copyright powers for authors—powers which these authors will then sign away to publishers. … I ask you to accept one thing on my word alone: that authors like me don’t deserve special power over you. If you wish to reward me further for the software or books I have written, I would gratefully accept a check—but please don’t surrender your freedom in my name.

Sharing information with your neighbor should not be illegal, and those who do so should not be treated like criminals. That’s my two cents.

Read the rest of Misinterpreting Copyright — A Series of Errors at the GNU website.

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Well, more specifically, I just called my congressional representative, Tom McClintock, and explained why Net Neutrality is important. This was my first time calling a member of Congress to voice my opinion on something directly. It was surprisingly easy to do. I might even say it was fun.

I started off the phone conversation by urging my support for the Internet Freedom Preservation Act [H.R. 3458] which is currently in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. I prepared a high-level schpiel about how Net Neutrality is the principle that protects a free and open Internet, yada yada… And then I gave some concrete examples of how Net Neutrality ensures that economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech will continue to flourish on the Internet.

To illustrate why Net Neutrality is good for the economy, I used my two websites as an example. Because of the principle of neutrality, my websites have a fair opportunity to compete with all the websites on the Internet for the attention of Internet users. That is to say, Internet users (the public) get to decide if they want to use my sites, when to use them, how often to use them, all without the interference of their Internet Service Provider (Comcast, Verizon, AT&T).

If Comcast had its way, companies would be able to pay for premium access to the pipes. Companies with premium access would have their sites load faster for Internet users. Companies who refused to pay Comcast’s premiums fees, or couldn’t afford to pay them could have their sites artifically slowed down — and theoretically even blocked. So, big companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Time Warner, and News Corporation (the incumbents, so to speak) that can afford to pay this premium fee are favored over smaller competitors like Twitter, Lala …and me!

I like the idea of the consumer dictating what products will succeed and which will fail. These decisions are best determined by the free market. This is why we use Google for web search, and not Altavista anymore. This is why we left MySpace for Facebook when we got tired of ad-ridden profile pages that freeze your browser and make your CPU go to 100% just to render the page. And, this is why even Facebook and Google Search will, in due time, be replaced by other, better products.

Then, there is the freedom of speech argument. I’ve written about this before. ISPs should not have the power to block or discriminate against certain Internet traffic for any reason. Telephone service companies already have similar restrictions — they are not allowed to block a communication based on its content. In exchange, telcos are not liable for the content of the communications that they deliver. Why can’t we do the same for the Internet?

Certainly most reasonable observers see that this is a slippery slope. If we start allowing ISPs the discretion to block, censor, filter, interfere, impair, degrade, manage, or whatever they want to call it — with our Internet communications, then who’s to say they won’t use this power to silence their critics? Or to interfere with the performance of a competitor’s service? Or to block a competing product completely?

So, these are some of the issues I discussed during the phone call. Obviously, I didn’t speak directly to McClintock. The staff member I spoke with said that he was unfamiliar with McClintock’s position on Net Neutrality, but that he would check with “the boss” and get back to me via email. I’ll let you know what I hear back.

For opposing viewpoints see this and this.

If you want to call your representative too, you can use this handy little tool developed by FreePress to help you find their phone number.

If you’re interested, here is the official summary of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act [H.R. 3458] and the changes that it would bring:

Amends the Communications Act of 1934 to set the policy of the United States regarding various aspects of the Internet, including access, consumer choice, competition, ability to use or offer content, applications, and services, discriminatory favoritism, and capacity. Makes it the duty of each Internet access service provider to:

(1) not block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use an Internet access service;

(2) not impose certain charges on any Internet content, service, or application provider;

(3) not prevent or obstruct a user from attaching or using any lawful device in conjunction with such service, provided the device does not harm the provider’s network;

(4) offer Internet access service to any requesting person;

(5) not provide or sell to any content, application, or service provider any offering that prioritizes traffic over that of other such providers; and

(6) not install or use network features, functions, or capabilities that impede or hinder compliance with these duties. Requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promulgate related rules. Prohibits construing this Act to prohibit an Internet access provider from engaging in reasonable network management. Requires the FCC to:

(1) promulgate rules to ensure that an Internet access service provider does not require a consumer, as a condition on the purchase of any Internet access service, to purchase any other service or offering; and

(2) take certain actions, including regarding private transmission capacity services.

Getting Immortal Technique's autograph for my brother.

Immortal Technique

Second famous rapper I’ve met this week: Immortal Technique — most famous for his political activism and political rap music. This guys’s a real rapper (unlike Chamillionaire, who is a commercial hip-hop artist sellout).

Immortal Technique is legit — he’s turned down half-million dollar offers to sign to major music labels like Sony and Def Jam because he doesn’t want to lose control over the content of his music. He’s often been criticized for the content of his music (listen to some and you’ll see why), but there’s more than a grain of truth to what he raps about.

I don’t have time right now to write a long blog post (I have 2 CS assignments due soon, 1 test on Monday, and 20 CS assignments to grade), so I’ll leave it at that. But, I encourage you to take a look at Technique if you haven’t heard of him before — he’s quite interesting.

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There is a surprising amount of wisdom to be gleaned from bumper stickers (you know, those rectangular stickers people like to plaster all over their cars ). Most bumper stickers are meant to support this or the other politician, so they’re not that memorable.

But occasionally, I stumble on a particularly humorous or profound bumper sticker. So, a while ago I decided to start writing down the cool bumper sticker slogans I stumble upon.

This is that list, posted here for your amusement and pondering:

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” — Albert Einstein

If I give up all my freedom, THEN I’ll be safe.

How is a nation divided when the candidates agree?

Whatever stupid shit you believe, SPEAK UP!

If you still think they hate us because we are free, perhaps you should read instead of watching TV.

War is Peace.  Freedom is Slavery.  Ignorance is Strength.

DON’T STEAL: The government hates competition.

And while doing some research for this blog post, I found some other cool bumper stickers over at Liberty Stickers:

“If there is sin superior to every other, it is that of willfull and offensive war.” — Thomas Paine

People aren’t human if they live across water from here.

“War is a way of shattering to pieces materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and intelligent.” — George Orwell.

“Every election is a sort of advance sale of stolen goods.” — H.L. Mencken

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” — James Madison

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” — Edward Abbey

“1 death is a tragedy. 1,000,000 is a statistic.” — Joe Stalin

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” — H.L. Mencken

“All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” — Voltaire

“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.” — Adolf Hitler

“We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.” — George W. Bush

“We must guard against the unwarranted influence by the Military-industrial Complex.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

“War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.” — Howard Zinn, historian

Even though everything I’ve ever heard any politician say about anything has been a damn lie, the next time they start making up excuses to start a war, I’ll believe them then too. Because I’m an American. United I stand!

Government: Causing more violence than it prevents since 10,000 B.C.

Government is Dangerous: Brought to you by the 175 million people murdered by their own governments in the last century.

Neutrality: Our only path to peace.

And my favorite bumper sticker of all:

Dear I.R.S.: Please remove me from your mailing list.

Hopefully, you’ve noticed the common threads in all of these slogans (they’re stuff I’m always talking/preaching/ranting about):

1.) Don’t believe everything you are told
2.) Fight tyranny
3.) Strive for peace

And most important of all: Question authority!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the FSF, they’re a nonprofit corporation founded by free software activist and GNU hacker Richard Stallman. Their goal is to promote free and open source software. Their tactics often include comical publicity stunts to bash proprietary software.

This is the email I received this morning from the Free Software Supporter mailing list:

Hi everyone,

This Wednesday, August 26 at 11am, the Free Software Foundation will be launching its Windows7sins.org public awareness campaign, drawing attention to the threats posed by the adoption of Microsoft’s proprietary operating system. We have a launch event here in Boston on the Boston Commons from noon until 3pm, and we need everyone in the area to come along and help out and join in the ceremony as we conduct a ceremonial trashing of proprietary software.

**We’ll be launching our Windows 7 campaign with pomp and fanfare, with a giant 12 foot trashcan being filled with boxes of proprietary software.**

The event promises to be lots of fun, and with thousands of people passing through the Boston Commons every day we hope you will help us connect with the public by handing out information and explaining the benefits of free software. There will be camera crews and photographers capturing the event and we will be getting these images up online as soon as possible on the day.

Let us know you’re coming and bring along your friends and work colleagues – mail campaigns@fsf.org if you have time to help us set up, or just turn up at the Boston Commons near the entrance to the Public Gardens from noon.

If you’re not in the Boston area, there will be plenty for you to do to help us launch the campaign and get the message out. Stay tuned for upcoming instructions…

Thanks for your support!

–
Peter T. Brown
Executive Director
Free Software Foundation
www.fsf.org www.gnu.org

I think I’d go to the event — if not to dump my proprietary software, then to witness an event unlike any other I’ve heard of. Too bad I’m not in the Boston area.

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(See this flash animation and more @ FreeTheFlash.com)

For what can war but endless war still breed?

– JOHN MILTON, On the Lord General Fairfax

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