RSS feedsA popular bumper sticker on US highways reads: 'If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.' Richard Matthew Stallman, or RMS as he likes to be called, is more than just outraged.
The founder of the Free Software Foundation has dedicated his life to paying attention on behalf of those of us who neither know nor particularly care about his ideals.
His kind of militancy is rarely seen outside a jihad, and he is as uncompromising as an Old Testament prophet. 'Stalin' and 'Rasputin' are soubriquets commonly applied to him. Consider, for example, these two stories.
While working at MIT in the 1970s, Stallman became a fierce exponent of the philosophy known as the Hacker Ethic. This states that access to computers, indeed to anything that might teach you something about the world, should be unlimited and total, and that all information should be free.
When the MIT Computer Science department started to require users to log on with a private password instead of just hitting carriage return, Stallman broke the system's encryption code so that the following message would appear on an offender's screen: "I see you chose the password ****. I suggest that you switch to the password carriage return. It's much easier to type and it also stands up to the principle that there should be no passwords."
One-fifth of the computer science lab staff reportedly acceded to this request, thereby allowing anyone access to their accounts. It freaked out the US Department of Defense when the artificial intelligence lab at MIT insisted on doing the same thing.
In the intervening three decades, Stallman has remained implacable in defending his ideals. vnunet.com's sister publication Computing was warned in advance that he could be a challenging person to interview and the email correspondence leading up to the meeting seemed to bear this out.
Would Computing refer to GNU/Linux, or would it repeat the usual 'mistake' and confuse the operating system with the kernel? And could we please promise to avoid the other common error, which is to confuse free software with open source software?
Yes, we responded, this article would refer to GNU/Linux and lay out the differences between the Free Software Foundation and the open source movement.
However, this was not enough to appease Stallman. He wrote back: "If one article calls the system GNU/Linux, while the other articles call the system Linux, the overall message of the combination is call it Linux.
"All else being equal, it is better if any given article does the right thing rather than the wrong thing, but one article that does the right thing doesn't redeem the rest of the magazine.
"So I think we should talk with the editors now about the question of what they will call the system. Could you introduce them to the issue, and to me?"
No, actually, Richard, you're proving to be a tad too high-maintenance. We'll go ahead and agree to set out the differences in this particular article, but you cannot expect to control what the editor does in the rest of the magazine.
Thorny issues
On that basis, the interview went ahead, although nomenclature remains a thorny issue with Stallman. His biographer Sam Williams, author of Free as in Freedom noted that reporters attending the first LinuxWorld show in San Jose knew better than to use the term 'Linux' in his presence.
Like him or loathe him, and those coming into contact with Stallman tend to fall into one or other of the two camps, he has a right to feel aggrieved. Here's why.
In 1984, Stallman launched the GNU project. He describes GNU as "a recursive acronym for GNU's not Unix", and the goal was to create a free software version of the proprietary Unix operating system.
The idea was not just to offer more features than Unix, but to breathe life into the dying hacker community and strengthen the crusade to abolish all proprietary software.
Five years later, Stallman had fashioned the GNU General Public License (GPL), a 'copyleft' as opposed to a 'copyright' licence that allows anyone to study the source code, make changes and redistribute copies to others, as long as those changes are returned to the community (see www.gnu.org/licenses for more).
Thanks to a grant of almost $250,000 from the MacArthur Foundation in 1990, Stallman was able to dedicate himself to spreading his message about software freedom worldwide. On one overseas trip that year, he spoke to a university audience in Helsinki, which included the 21 year-old Linus Torvalds.
At that time GNU had all the vital components except one: the kernel. It was Torvalds who wrote the code of the Linux kernel, combined it with GNU software and so produced the GNU/Linux operating system.
Many people agree that, in terms of lines of code, Torvalds's contribution amounted to about five per cent of what people commonly refer to as Linux. On the other hand, the 95 per cent created through the GNU project wasn't a complete operating system.
As Stallman admits: "Once you have 100 per cent of the system instead of 95 per cent, you can actually install it on a computer. You don't need to have any other operating system, so in fact Linus Torvalds took the step needed to cross the finishing line."
For years, the completed operating system was known only as Linux. Around 1995, however, Stallman began to lobby for the name to be changed to GNU/Linux.
"What began to be frustrating was when I saw that people were becoming so enthusiastic about Linux that they had no interest in co-operating with the GNU project," he said.
"The operating system that people often refer to as Linux exists because of our idealism about being able to use computers without being part of a proprietary software social system, which I consider wrong and ethically objectionable."
Free versus open source
Therein lies the difference between free software and open source software.
"In the 1990s, as free software started to catch on, millions of people chose it, not because they valued those freedoms, but because they saw that it had the advantages of being powerful, reliable and low-cost," said Stallman.
"People were recruited who had never heard of the Free Software Foundation's ideals in the first place, and they were the ones who formed the open source movement in 1998.
"They cite only the practical advantages of free software, but not the ethical imperatives of the Free Software Foundation. Calling this variant of the GNU system Linux plays into the hands of people who choose their software based only on technological advantage, not on whether it respects their freedom."
In a demonstration of how Stallman is entirely consistent, Williams's biography of him has been published under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means it is 'copylefted'.
Readers can copy, loan, modify and even republish both physical and electronic versions of the book under the same licence (see www.faifzilla.org).
One story, included near the end of the book, further illustrates Stallman's character. In the course of a dinner conversation, Williams's wife exclaimed: "God forbid!" To which Stallman said: "I hate to break it to you, but there is no God."
In those rare moments when Stallman isn't talking about his crusade for free software, he mentions that one of his hobbies used to be folk dancing, including morris dancing, until he was forced to stop because of an injury.
Now his days are spent mostly answering emails. Although he still does occasional programming on Emacs, he doesn't have as much time as he'd like for that.
He continues to be financially independent thanks to the Takeda Foundation's first Techno-Entrepreneurial Achievement Award for Social/Economic Wellbeing, a part of which he received last year, along with Linus Torvalds.
Cry freedom
The subject of freedom is never far from Stallman's mind. The fact that the State of California requires people applying for a driver's licence to be fingerprinted was a factor in his decision not to move there, but to stay in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has been his home for the past 30 years.
And he's horrified by the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, a law which says that the police can not only demand that you hand over your decryption key, but that you keep that a secret from your associates and continue communicating with them as if nothing has happened.
"This is a scenario from a cold war spy thriller," said Stallman. "It could be the KGB doing this to people, not Scotland Yard. What a horrible lever to use to make people spy on others."
However, the Free Software Foundation itself is not above policing compliance with GNU's GPL. "We have a full-time member of staff who spends their time checking sites and products to see if they're complying with the GPL," said Stallman.
"The same person also investigates any report that somebody is violating the GPL. Sometimes that's not the case, and we address many of those common misunderstandings on our website."
However, there has never been a court case directly involving the Free Software Foundation because perpetrators have always backed down, knowing that losing a lawsuit for copyright infringement is no fun. But doesn't Stallman see the irony of using copyright law against others when he's such an advocate of 'copyleft'?
"Usually, copyright is used to restrict and deny the public's rights, but we are using that weapon in this case to achieve something good: to defend the public's rights from people who would seek to take them away. I wish it weren't necessary," he explained.
Stallman turned out not to be that difficult to interview after all, as long as you don't mind being frequently interrupted by corrections such as: "Please don't use the term Berkeley-style licensing."
Or as long as, when you ask: "How much coverage do you get in the general media?" you are content with the answer: "I don't know how to measure it."
Otherwise Stallman is pleasant and highly articulate. And, as one long-term associate of his said, he is unlikely to slam the phone down on you, because he sincerely wants to win you over. What hasn't helped his reputation, however, is his tendency to get angry when journalists play devil's advocate or take what he sees as a biased stance.
"I get upset and when that happens I can't think clearly and do a very bad job of defending what I stand for," he said.
This is remarkably self-aware for someone who has been described as having 'Geek Syndrome', or high-functioning autism.
Indeed, Stallman's intensity is so palpable that you can't imagine taking him down the pub for a beer and a few jokes. But he does have an endearing way of ending conversations with the phrase: "Happy hacking."
And you, Richard. And you.
See also:
All Hacking
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