Thursday, July 29, 2010

RMS AMA

Richard Stallman answers your top 25 questions.

Thanks so much to RMS for taking the time to answer our questions and thanks to the community at /r/gnu for all the questions. You can read more about RMS, FSF, and GNU at stallman.org, GNU.org 's GNU/Linux FAQ, and FSF.org.

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1. corevette: If you could have one proprietary package/software released as Free
Software, which would it be and why?

RMS: I have not made an effort to study the possible candidates, since
unless a genie offers me a wish of that kind, the results wouldn't
enable me do anything constructive. Thus, I can only respond based on
the few proprietary programs I happen by chance to know about.

Of the programs I know of, I think freeing Autocad would give the
biggest boost to the free software community. It is used in a wide
range of activities, and our CAD software lags quite a bit,

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2. stdout: At the 1999 Atlanta Linux Expo, I was standing there chatting with
you and a group of people. A very young boy (around 14 years old) very
timidly approached you to thank you for your work and what you have
done. He was obviously very intimidated and spoke only a couple of
sentences, but unfortunately made the mistake of referring to "Linux"
instead of "GNU/Linux".

You ripped into that boy and tore him a brand new asshole, and I
watched as his face fell and his devotion to you and our cause
crumpled in a heap. You destroyed that boy with your harsh words.

Someone in the FSF told me a year later that you had changed for the
better and you were much calmer.

My question to you now is: do you regret the harsh tone you've dished
out to so many people over all that time?

RMS: I have no memory of that conversation, so I'll take the questioner's
word for it that I spoke with a teenager who called the system
"Linux", and I told him it should be called "GNU/Linux". Perhaps I
really lost my temper, or perhaps I just showed some irritation and
the questioner has exaggerated it.

Either way, I shouldn't have. The boy was just misinformed by all the
other people who call the GNU system "Linux". What I should have done
was explain the truth patiently and without criticizing him.

The repetition of this error hampers the work we do for users' freedom
today. People who think the system is "Linux" assume it was started
by Torvalds and that it comes from his views on life. Then they often
follow him in devaluing their own freedom.

I will try my best to keep my good humor as I explain that the system
is GNU/Linux. You can help me succeed by joining in the work. If you
make a point of calling the system "GNU/Linux" and explaining why, the
error will gradually become less common.

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3. atomic_rabbit: In the GNU Manifesto, you envisioned the GNU system as a hybrid of
UNIX and a Lisp machine system, with Lisp as a system programming
language alongside C. In reality, aside from Emacs and a handful of
projects that use Guile as an extension language, Lisp is nowadays a
negligible part of GNU.

RMS: That is true. I initially intended to give Lisp more of a role in the
GNU system, then abandoned that goal as it took years to get the
system running at all.

As a Lisp hacker, do you regret the marginalization of Lisp? Do you
think that more efforts should be made to introduce Lisp into the GNU
system, or is that an idea whose time has passed?

I am not sure it is correct to say that Lisp has suffered
"marginalization". Lisp is not widely used now, and wasn't before.
But we do have various Lisp platforms in GNU, and we are still
improving Guile which offers a Lisp-like extension facility for other
programs.

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4. miserlou: I'm a person who makes my living by porting and writing free software
and then selling it for a profit. Unfortunately, I have to use
proprietary, corporate controlled markets (Android Market, iPhone App
Store, etc) to do this. How do you feel about digital software markets
as a financial support structure for Free software?

RMS: I don't think of them under the rubric of finance, because what
preoccupies me is the restrictions they impose. For instance, Apple's
terms for the iGroan/iBad app store have the effect that any
executable received through the app store cannot be free software.
There are free software source licenses that permit you to distribute
an executable through Apple's app store, but that executable won't
itself be free.

As far as I know, there is no such problem with Android Market.

If you want to release a version for the iGroan and iBad, I suggest
that you stop dealing with iTunes. Instead, distribute it youself and
invite people to jailbreak in order to install it.

Why hasn't GNU or
the FSF tried to make a market ("app store") for Free Software?

Would it even be possible? There is no platform that directs users to
get their free software from our app store. We don't make such
platforms. In general, each GNU/Linux distro has its own package
system and repositories. Each has its own developers' group which
maintains them.

In general, the existence of a controlled market for applications
suggests that the operating system is not free software. For
instance, I'm told that Android is nonfree in some phones, since users
are not allowed to alter the operating system software. The source
code of most of the software for this phone is free, but in these
phones the executables are nonfree.

I won't claim it is impossible to have a corporate controlled app
store for a system which is free software. I don't see how, but if
someone manages to do this, more power to her. I hope that she will
give some of the funds to free software development.

According to this:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html you guys are fine with it,
but in practice I've received quite a bit of flack from free software
people. What say you?

When you meet people who think free software is supposed to be gratis,
tell them "It's free as in freedom; it doesn't have to be gratis."
Then refer them to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html, and you
should be able to educate them with very little effort on your part.
When you get practiced in doing this and you see how easy it is,
you won't feel annoyed when the need arised.

PS. What's your favorite movie?

I have liked some movies, but I can't call them many of them to mind
just now, so I can't even try to choose a favorite. Even if I could
remember them all to compare them, I might not be able to determine
which one I think is best.

Meanwhile, I am very angry at the Hollywood movie companies for buying
laws such as the DMCA to attack our freedom. I hope you are angry
too. I suggest adopting the following not-quite-boycott of Hollywood:
never pay to see a Hollywood movie unless you have specific indication
from a trustworth source that it isn't crap.

Since nearly all Hollywood movies are crap, due to the system that
produces them, this will have practical results almost equivalent to a
total boycott of Hollywood.

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5. qrios: What's your stance on proprietary closed-source software that is
created with the goal of being released under the GPL once a
pre-specified profit margin has been met?

RMS: I think all proprietary software is unethical, even if it meets the
definition of open source. (Some proprietary programs do.) So even
though the question asks about "proprietary closed-source software",
my response is about proprietary software, whether it is closed-source
or not.

Once this hypothetical program is released under the GNU General
Public License, or some other free software license, it is as ethical
as any other free software.

Before that point, I would not consider using it or recommending it to
anyone, because it is nonfree software. However, that raises the
question of what to do or say about it instead.

Normally, if a proprietary program is widely used, we try to recruit
people to develop free replacements for it. But if the proprietary
program seems likely to become free soon, I would not encourage people
to start projects to replace it. When waiting seems likely to be
faster than writing a replacement, as well as less work, we may as
well wait -- we have plenty of other ways to use our time.

What bothers me about this sort of scheme is that it might lead people
into trying to promote the nonfree product in the hope of making it
succeed and get released as free software. If you do that, it means
you have been led to promote proprietary software. We must not treat
a proprietary program as the solution because our main point is that
it is the problem.

This particular kind of scheme is rare, so it doesn't weaken our
community much, but other ways of presenting proprietary software as a
solution do a lot of harm. For instance, most GNU/Linux distros
include them, and that greatly weakens our campaign for freedom.

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6. ZorbaTHeHut: Ten years ago, GNU/Linux was pulling itself out of the depths,
supported on the shoulders of the FSF. GCC was the compiler of choice
and people looked forward to Hurd. The GPL seemed to be the future - a
network of GPL-licensed software was rapidly spreading across the
software ecosystem. Today, relatively few people care about the Linux
kernel itself. The focus has moved towards the operating systems built
upon GNU/Linux, with Ubuntu at its forefront. Meanwhile, the Linux
kernel, while impressive, is Mostly Good Enough - there have been few
must-have improvements in the last few years, with the majority of work
going towards software that runs on it. The BSD kernels are catching up
rapidly, to the point where some "Linux distributions" now have BSD
kernel options. The Linux kernel itself is stuck on a GPLv2 license,
the GPLv3 Hurd is near-stagnant, and even GCC is finding itself
threatened by the BSD-licensed LLVM+Clang.

RMS: That states many claims, some of which I think are true, while others
seem exaggeratedly negative. My overall response is that I don't see
anything that all these points are particularly relevant to.

I am not claiming, in any way, that the FSF was not a critical force
in the growth of the software packages we know and love today.
However, given all of these recent changes, do you believe that the
GPL is the inevitable direction of things in the future, or will
software packages start gravitating towards the BSD license?

In summary: have we hit Peak GPL?

RMS: Nobody can see the future, and I have no way of knowing whether there
will be more or less GPL use in 10 or 50 years. But it is clear that
people are releasing lots of software under the GNU General Public
License nowadays. So there is no reason to think GPL use will go
down in the near future.

Anyway, the question that matters to a software developer today is not
speculation about the future, it is whether they want what GNU GPL
does. Using GNU GPL version 3 is the way to block all the known ways
of turning your program into proprietary software. (See
http://gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html.)

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7. z4srh: I feel like certain software such as tax software or high end video
games can only exist with a profit motive, due to the huge expense and
wide variety of disciplines required to create them (lawyers, artists,
writers, musicians, developers, etc.), along with the rapid
consumption of the products (ie. over the course of a week figuring
out taxes or playing the game). Indeed, the free software community
hasn't come close to releasing anything in either category. Can this
be changed, and what is the root of the problem?

RMS: Tax software can and should be released by the state under a free
license. But when the state fails to do its duty, the community
do the job.

In Brazil, FSF Latin America releases free software for filing tax
returns, and this year managed to release the free program before the
state released its nonfree program. So don't say it's impossible.

I don't like to talk about "consumption" of these programs because
that term adopts the narrow mindset of economics. It tends to judge
everything only in terms of practical costs and benefits and doesn't
value freedom.

The reason I don't use nonfree software is that it would take away my
freedom. I don't want to let that happen. So I don't consider
installing nonfree program, even as an possible option. I treat them
as poison. I hope that you will too.

I don't know whether our community will make a "high end video game"
which is free software, but I am sure that if you try, you can stretch
your taste for games so that you will enjoy the free games that we
have developed.

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8. Vaselinetimes_Day: Looking back over the last 25-odd years, what is the FSF's biggest
success (and mistake)?

RMS: The Free Software Foundation was started to advance the free software
movement, and it is hard to separate the FSF's contribution from the
contribution of others. For instance, in the early years, FSF
employees developed crucial parts of GNU while volunteers developed
other crucial parts. All of these parts were necessary for the
movement's principal success: a complete free operating system,
GNU/Linux, and a large community built around it.

I can't identify one particular large mistake, but the movement's
principal setback lies in the fact that most of this community does
not appreciate the value of freedom, talks of free software as "open
source" with a totally different philosophy (see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html), and
is not aware that we in the GNU Project are the reason why it exists.
I don't know of any simple way we could have averted this.

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9. egonSchiele: What things would you like to see CS students learning? What books
are on your "recommended reading" list?

RMS: I would like to see students reading textbooks that are free and using
reference works that are free. All textbooks and reference works
should be free. Making this true is the next challenge, after free
software. Wikipedia is a big start.

But, as for the nonfree textbooks that exist now, I cannot recommend
any of them.

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10. enkiam: At what point will you consider yourself to have "won"? To put this
another way, I hear that you don't hack anymore because you're too busy
advocating for free software. What events would have to arise for you to
be able to go back to hacking?

RMS: The free software movement will have won when proprietary software is
a dwindling practice because the users value their freedom too much to
accept proprietary software.

I don't know whether we will reach that point in my lifetime (or ever
-- victory is not certain). You can help us win by joining the FSF
(see fsf.org) or contributing in other ways (see http://www.gnu.org/help).

If we do reach that victory, I doubt I will go back to hacking. I am
getting old, and I doubt I could write large programs the way I used
to.

Meanwhile, there are many other injustices in the world. (See the
stallman.org political notes for some of them.) So if we ever win the
battle to end proprietary software, I will turn my attention to
another cause.

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11. RoastBeefOnCHimp: How do you deal with the seemingly endless stream of ad hominem
attacks relating to your communication style, choice of clothing,
grooming, etc., instead of the substance of the issues you're
addressing?

RMS: Usually I ignore them and continue talking about the more important
issues that go beyond my own personality.

If somoene asks a question in a nasty tone, I may decide to answer it.
I often start with something like, "A nasty question isn't entitled to
an answer, but I'll answer it anyway." Then I try to extract a
meaningful question out of the hostility, and give it a straight,
non-hostile answer. Sometimes this leads people to reconsider their
hostility.

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12. doobyscoo42: I saw you speak nearly 10 years ago, and I nearly asked a
(philosophical) question that has been burning in my mind since. The
reason I didn't ask is that the question is long-winded and you would
have started dancing while I was asking it, which would have
distracted me from thinking clearly while formulating it. So maybe
this is a better forum!

Here is the long-winded prelude: in a liberal worldview, you could
argue that there is an understanding that society and/or government
should not intervene in a private agreement between two adults which
benefits each of them... with some exceptions. These exceptions arise
namely when someone else is affected by their agreement, and in
particular when their human rights are violated due to the agreement
(the standard example being that hiring a hitman should not be allowed
as it violates the right of the target to live).

That seems to describe the viewpoint called "laissez-faire" or
"Libertarian". Where business is concerned, I disagree with it
very throughly, because I'm a Liberal, not a Libertarian.

I think it is good to regulate businesses in any way necessary to
protect the general public well-being and democracy. For instance, I
support consumer protection laws, which are needed precisely to stop
business from imposing on their customers whatever conditions they can
get away with in the market. I support rights for workers which
companies cannot make their employees sign away. I support the laws
that limit the conditions landlords can put in a lease. I support the
laws that help employees to unionize and strike.

All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people's rights with one
hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option
to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together
impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That's what
democracy was invented for!

And we should abolish the "free trade" treaties that obstruct the use
of democracy for this purpose.

Now, in a society when everyone who uses a computer is technically
adept, you can make a convincing case that having access to software's
source code is a human right, and society is worse off for allowing
non-free software as this would be a violation of our human rights.
This is the society you lived in the 1970's, and one could argue that
this was the society when you founded the free software foundation in
the 1980's. Before going on, let me say that I truly believe that the
world is a better place for having you in it, and having made the
decisions you have made.

But society has changed. These days, a great many people who use
computers are not technically adept and do not know how to program. It
is clear that their human rights are not directly violated by the
existence of non-free software.

Nonfree software starts to violate our human rights when it gets into
our lives. (Its mere existence somewhere else in the world doesn't
hurt us if we don't use it -- at least, it does not hurt us yet.)
That applies to all users, whether they know how to program or not.

Free software means the users control the program. With proprietary
software, the program controls the users. So all users need free
software.

about this issue.

The rest of this question presents an argument based on the premise
that the principle goal is faster technical progress. I disagree with
that goal, because I value freedom more than technical progress.

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13. Joeboy: Are you still at all optimistic about HURD, or would you agree that
that ship has sailed?

RMS: I am not very optimistic about the GNU HURD. It makes some progress,
but to be really superior it would require solving a lot of deep
problems. However, mainly what I think about the HURD is that
finishing it is not crucial.

When we started the HURD, it was for a simple reason. The GNU system
needed a kernel, and no usable free kernel existed. We set out to
write one.

That problem does not exist today. Linux works ok as a kernel.

The main shortcoming of Linux is at the level of device support. The
obstacle there isn't a lack of ability among Linux developers, but
rather the use of devices whose specs are secret.

Finishing the HURD would not advance us at all in supporting these
devices. The work that is needed is at the driver and firmware level.
That's why our high priority task list includes items relating to free
drivers, but not the HURD.

That's also why fsf.org has hardware resource pages. Your help in
updating them would strengthen us in this important battle.

Sure, it would be nice to see a GNU kernel succeed -- but there are
many successful GNU packages, so having one more is not crucial.

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14. puredemo: How can we apply the concepts of free software development to the
upcoming biological revolution of synthetic and hybrid organisms?

RMS: I don't think these ideas are applicable to biology at our current
technological level.

The free software movement is based on the recognition that nonfree
software gives the program's developer unjust power over the users.
Free software prevents that by giving the users control over the
software they use.

Free software achieves this because users can change the software and
recompile it, then use their own versions. Even in 1969, when
computers were rare and only a few people used them, we who used them
had the practical means to change and compile software, not merely to
run it.

The situation for genetically modified organisms is totally different.
There is no general tool for performing a genetic modification
comparable to using a text editor (or a 1960s card punch) to alter the
source code of a program, then compiling it and running it. Today's
genetically engineered organisms were made by the equivalent of using
`sed' to patch an executable which was mostly a black box.

We can understand and change programs because they were designed.
Good designers know how to make a design understandable so others can
change it later. Natural organisms are a mess; any designer, seeing
the myriad kludges, each one different, recognizes these systems were
never designed.

Natural organisms never had anything like source code. The genetic
code of an organism is more comparable to a binary (in fact,
quaternary) executable. Imagine a C compiler made by patching the
binary of hello.c a billion times in a genetic algorithm and you'll
see how hard this is to understand.

Now that we have a quaternary dump of the human genome, it will take
decades of reverse engineering by tens of thousands of biologists to
figure out what it does.

If some day the technology for changing organisms predictably is as
mature as changing programs predictably was in 1958, then the freedom
to change and share and use genomes will be an important political
issue comparable to that of free software today. As long as large
research teams struggle with tasks a little beyond "Hello World",
whether we are allowed to change the organisms we use will be a
question of little practical significance.

Genetically modified organisms today raise totally different issues:
for instance, damaging human health, damaging the environment, and
polluting other farms with patented genes through natural
cross-pollination.

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15. MendaSpain: Hi Richard. I love all GPL software, but I have a dilemma:
I'm writing a program which needs a lot of time to be coded but at the
same time it's really easy to be used. I could license it as GPL and
wait for donations, but from other people's experience just almost
nobody make donations to free software projects. Support is not
necessary because as I've said before, it's a really easy to use
software and nobody would pay for a 3 page manual.

For "big" software it's easy to get money using any GNU license, but
for "little" software the only option I see is selling it using the
Apple App Store approach.

What can I do in this case?

RMS: You have a choice between deserving a reward and not getting a
material reward, and getting one but not deserving it.

I faced the same question at the beginning of the GNU Project. I
decided that I would rather do something good with no monetary reward
than profit by mistreating people. I hope you will do the same,
because that way your program will be a contribution to society
instead of a social problem.

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16. fuzzyman: Outside of technology, do you find yourself applying some of the
same measures used to evaluate products or services? For example would
you rather shop for food at a local co-op rather than a big mega mart?
Clearly most businesses in our country cannot operate with a free
model so how do you evaluate whether to do business with them?

RMS: When this question says "a free model", I wonder what that could
possibly be. Free software means it respects the users' freedom to
run, change, redistribute and improve software. (See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.) For most of the physical
products you might find in a store, these issues do not arise at all.
In fact, almost all physical products are free, in this sense, as much
as their physical nature allows them to be.

So I suspect that this question is based on the misunderstanding
that 'free" means "gratis".

I frequent local non-chain bookstores, though I don't reject the
national chains totally. I don't buy a lot of groceries because I
don't cook much and I'm usually travelling; what I do buy is usually
packaged foods rather than generic ingredients. Thus, food co-ops
are not useful for me. I like them in principle.

Do you place a value on a company's "openness" with their customers and transparency or do you shop by price as many of us do?

I have a feeling that whoever wrote this question thinks that I am
a supporter of open source. Actually I disagree with that.
(See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.)
I don't judge software issues based freedom, not openness.

I would probably refuse to deal with a store that I thought
was tricking me somehow. But the issue rarely arises.

Lastly, do you have any pets?

No. I spend most of my time travelling, so I could not have any pets.
If it were possible, I would like to have a friendly parrot.

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17. dbzer0: In the past, when you were asked if the GPL and Free Software is
like Communism, you explicitly denied it, however in the course of that,
you showed that you conflated Communism with State Socialist regimes
such as the former USSR. Fair enough. However I would like to suggest
that Free Software is instead extremely compatible and indeed
conductive to Anarchism. I.e. it follows anarchistic principles of
Mutual Aid and Direct Action. I do not know how familiar you are with
Anarchist theory but what do you think of this connection? Are you
aware of it and if so, do you think that the political implications of
Free Software are a bug or a feature?

I would also like to point out the fact that Anarchists of all
tendencies but especially Anarcho-Transhumanists and Mutualists are
generally some of the most vocal and unshakeable proponents of free
software. Just something to mull over in case you didn't know.

RMS: I am not very familiar with the literature of Anarchism, but free
software clearly does have Anarchist aspects. It also has Capitalist
aspects and Socialist aspects (not Communist, though).

I have an Anarchist streak, in that I resent being given orders and
enjoy being in a community that functions well with nobody giving
orders. But I am not an Anarchist: I don't want to abolish the state,
or even reduce it. (Perhaps this is because I have a prostate
gland. ;-) I support state welfare programs, and regulation of
business.

Billionaire Polluters presents a fine example. The oil spill
illustrates that the US government failed to do its job of stopping
oil companies from taking crazy risks to save money. But if we did
not have a state, what else would do that job? The oil companies
would have private armies and shoot anyone that protests, much as BP
has done in Colombia in recent years. (See
http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/campaigns/19-bp/506-briefing-oil-workers-strike-in-casanare-colombia.)

My conclusion is that we need a state, and we need to exercise
democracy so firmly that companies scream and whimper about all the
money they didn't make because we didn't grant them dominion over our
society.

When a company says, "Don't inspect our plant, just trust us to
maintain safety standards", we need to respond, "You're probably
trying to cheat, so we will inspect you on a random day each year and
charge you what it costs."

When a company says, "We want to merge with competitor XYZ, since we
are too small to compete in this market, and by the way the merged
company will become the biggest in the field," we need to respond, "We
won't let you merge. However, we just split your biggest competitor
into 5 pieces; maybe now you will find it easier to compete."

When a company says, "Give us what we want or we will move our plant
to that other state/country", we need to respond, "Produce elsewhere
if you wish, but you can't take the factory equipment -- and we will
put a heavy tax on anything you try to sell here later."

We need to make it so hard to move production from one country to
another that each company will be stuck in one country, so that
country will be able to regulate it.

If we don't make business squeal, we are not taking away enough
of its power.

For more about my views on political issues, see stallman.org;
urgent action suggestions are in the left column, and the most
recent political notes are in the middle.

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18. lendrick: I'm the founder and proprietor of OpenGameArt.org, the
purpose of which is to archive freely-licensed works of art for use in
Free computer games. A frequent complaint that I hear from artists is
that, while you can't include a piece of GPLed code in a non-Free work,
it's still possible to include a piece of GPLed (or CC-BY-SA) art in a
non-Free work. For instance, if an artist were to create a GPLed
character for Battle for Wesnoth, someone could still use that character
in a non-Free game, provided the distributor follows the terms of the
GPL for that piece of art. In contrast, if a programmer writes a piece
of GPLed code for Battle for Wesnoth, that code could not be included in
another project unless the whole project is GPLed.
Is there any way that this issue can be addressed to the satisfaction
of both artists and coders?

RMS: It is not always true that the GPL'd character can be used in a
nonfree game. I think it depends on the circumstances whether the
character (by "character", do you mean character art?) can be treated
as a separate work from the nonfree game.

It is the same for software. It is --sad to say-- quite common to
distribute free software, even the GNU/Linux system, as part of larger
systems which are not entirely free. It is a major weakness of our
community that most of the copies of GNU/Linux that you will encounter
are not entirely free software. See http://www.gnu.org/distros for
more information and a list of those distros that are entirely free
software.

Whether or not it would be good to try to stop this with a license, it
can't be done. Copyleft is based on copyright law. Trying to use the
copyright on work A to restrict its distribution alongside some other
work B is called "abuse of copyright". (I can't give legal advice --
if you are concerned about a specific real case, please consult a
lawyer.)

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19. OsamaK: What's the best book you have ever read?

RMS: I can't remember now all the books I have read and loved. And even if
I could, I would not be able to pick one to call it best.

If you like fairly hard Science Fiction with a big vision, I recommend
A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge, and Diaspora, by Greg Egan. If
you like something a little less hard, I recommend The Jehovah
Contract by Victor Koman. If you like detective fiction, I recommend
Laura King's books about Mary Russell, starting with The Beekeeper's
Apprentice, and Steve Saylor's Roman mysteries about Gordianus the
Finder.

In other areas of fiction, I have enjoyed Jane Austen and Paul Auster,
Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allen Poe, among others. In Spanish, Jorge
Luis Borges, Arturo PÃrez Reverte (especially La Carta EsfÃrica and El
Club Dumas), and Alejandro Dolina.

If you are interested in linguistics, I recommend
The Origin of Language by Merrit Ruhlen.

A few suggestions in history and anthropology:

Burning Water Laurette SÃjournÃ
Popol Vuh Translated by Dennis Tedlock
Lords of Sipan Kirkpatrick
Courtesans and Fishcakes James Davidson
Life and Death in Shanghai Nien Cheng
Buddhism in India Gail Omvedt
also her biography of Dr. Ambedkar, leader of the Dalits
A Vietcong Memoir Truong Nhu Tang
The Forbidden Bestsellers
of Pre-Revolutionary France Robert Darnton

It is interesting to compare these two:
Marquesan Sexual Behavior Suggs
The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead Derek Freeman
(I.e., the Samoan girls lied to Mead, claiming a life style
which in fact is rather Marquesan than Samoan.)

If you buy some of these books, or any books, I recommend
yu do it in a way that doesn't identify you to Big Brother.
Pay cash, in a store.

For the sake of your friendships, please don't get a copy
with digital handcuffs (DRM, Digital Restrictions Management).
See DefectiveByDesign.org for more explanation.

In particular, don't buy them from Amazon unless/until Amazon
gives you a way to buy anonymously and without DRM.

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20. n8f8: Should the FSF play a bigger role in promoting software developer
education in the primary school system in order to enculture Free
Software ideals?

RMS: It would be great if we could do this. but I don't know how the FSF
could possibly do it. If you have experience working with a school
system and you have an idea, please contact me.

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21. bobysmith007: Where do you feel proprietary software still has advantages over its
closest [free] competitor and what should we be doing in free software
to overcome this?

RMS: The two main application areas I know of are CAD and cell phones. In
addition, there is also the matter of device drivers and firmware. As
for how to address the problem, the way I know of is that some capable
programmer starts writing the free program that will do the job.

I read a book of advice for activists, in the late 80s or early 90s,
which had advice I can rephrase as follows: "Don't start by trying to
raise funds for the activity. Start by doing the activity, and then
funds may come. And if they don't, at least you will be doing some
of the job rather than getting nowhere."

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22. two_front_teeth: Suppose your doctor told you that you needed a medical procedure to
survive but that the procedure would require inserting a device inside
of your body which ran proprietary software. Would you be willing to
have the procedure done to save your life?

RMS: The only way I could justify this is if I began developing a free
replacement for that very program. It is ok to use a nonfree program
for the purpose of developing its free replacement.

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23. dballing: I was reading your positions on "how you do your computing" at
http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html and wondered about
something. You won't use Skype, because it's a "non-free" means of
communication.

RMS: More precisely I said using Skype encourages other people to use
nonfree software.

But the phone you probably have on your desk right now probably has
copyrighted code on it for doing speed-dial functionality, how to make
the blinkenlights light up on it, what to put on the display and how
to display it, etc. This isn't the 'transient-kiosk' situation or the
"someone else's computer briefly" where you don't own the device. In
this situation, you own and use non-free code (unless, of course,
you're still living with a rotary phone, in which case, this is moot).
Just about every modern appliance today comes with software loaded on
it, burned into chips, and you're given no rights to alter it in any
way... so no matter how much you might wish your oven had a pre-heat
cycle or something, or you wish your microwave had one of those
"popcorn bag" pre-determined-cook-cycle buttons, you couldn't do so.
Now, I'm assuming for the moment that you have a home with at least
somewhat modern appliances made in the last twenty years, which raises
the question of how you justify ownership of those non-free products?

Around 1984 or 1985, I considered the question of a microwave oven
like the one in the MIT AI lab that I used. Maybe it contained a
computer ("microcontroller") running a fixed program. Maybe it
contained a circuit. I could not tell from using it how it was made,
because installation of software was not part of its job.

I concluded that in such cases it makes no difference whether the
device has a microcontroller running a program or just a circuit.
Since installation of software was not a feature, a computer embedded
inside it might as well be a circuit. How the product was made was
internally a question we need not pay attention to.

When installation of software becomes one of the functions of the
device, then part of its job is to be a computer, and then we should
insist on having only free software on that computer.

If a device does not function as a computer, it can still be
malicious. Malicious features such as surveillance and digital
handcuffs (DRM) can be implemented in software or in hardware. When
it is done in software, putting free software in the device would
enable us to fix the problem. So in these cases, we might want to
put free software into the device even though its job doesn't include
being a computer.

For your freedom's sake, you should reject any product designed to
attack your freedom, unless you personally possess the means to defeat
the attack (for instance, to break the DRM). And please join
DefectiveByDesign.org and join our campaign against DRM. Don't take
for granted we will succeed in defending your freedom without your
participation.

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24. [deleted]: I have read that you try your best to keep your identity offline
(i.e., away from popular social networking sites, forums, etc.). I was
surprised to find out that most of the time you don't access the web
directly but rather through an email daemon. Why such caution? Are
there reasons for everyone else to be this cautious about our online
presence (besides the regular caution when using Google, Facebook,
etc.)?

RMS: I do this mostly for personal reasons that don't apply to anyone else.
However, if you use a search engine from your own computer, it is a
good idea to route your queries through something like Tor so that the
search engine cannot associate them with you (or even with each
other).

The European Union threatens to require saving people's search engine
queries for the police to look at. This step towards the total
surveillance state calls for people in Europe to organize politically
now.

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25. meeiw: What is vim doing better than emacs?

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RMS: Sorry, I have never tried using vim.
I never felt I deserved such a large penitence ;-).