CNet Asia interviews Richard Stallman about the foundations of software freedom, new WebApp clauses for GPL3 and why we're so very lucky Beethoven didn't file patents.

you'll notice that most people who talk about Linux software treat it as if it were just another technical alternative, nothing deeper than that. So my task is to tell people about the issue of freedom that they usually won't hear.

Aha! -- ok, maybe only a misprint, but then again, maybe not -- did we just see Richard use the term 'Linux'? ...

[ via News & Technology - CNETAsia ]

GNU Rules

Just for the record, just so you know, I'm pretty strict about my use of both 'GNU' and 'Linux', or I try to be: the software freedom operating system is called 'GNU' because it is (or rather, because it isn't: It isn't Unix); any distributions of GNU using the Linux kernel are products and thus have every right to call themselves whatever they so wish, and they wish, mostly, to have their product called 'Linux', so I accept that as their personal perogative and I call them all, generically, "Linux vendors", ie, vendors of a "Linux distribution".

But make no bones about it: The thing they are all selling is running on GNU, Linux-based, but still GNU, ie, a not-Unix software freedom O/S core over which they then use freely as is their right per Stallman's Freedom-0, and therefore are free to use that core below and in consort with un-free opensource.

In my fringe, backwoods and unimportant opinion, Richard does GNU a disservice seeking to pavlovially pair the freedom in software orientation of the underlying GNU with the primarily commercial application of GNU which would rather not think about freedom. Why? Because the Linux vendors are siding with the 'Open Source' business-philosophy of the marketplace, invoking a myth of "being pragmatic" in avoiding any acknowledgement of the issues of freedom in computing; by pairing GNU and Linux in the minds of those who are already of this my profit first market-philosophy, it doesn't educate them on the Tragedy of the Commons or introduce them to their human rights in software freedom, it instead taints GNU with the Linux compromises and makes GNU easier to dismiss as "That Linux thing".

GNU is not Linux

A case in point, just today I responded to a post on SlashDot trolling for a preferences-war over "GNU/open source CMS systems" -- right there we see they have no clear preference, GNU and 'open source' being equivalent in their minds as providing only the me-first freedoms to free-use and free-to-fix; indeed, in the list of topics to discuss about free-CMS, not one item on the list has anything to do with sharing.

I responded

Free software isn't about supplying you with the perfect glass of gratuitous beer, it's about people working together, co-operatively, optimally working to distribute the considerable load of re-inventing shared solutions so that each can better concentrate on their specific needs ...

Her confusion is innocent, likely, borne of living in a world where free software means free of responsibility, free of social, ethical or humanitarian concerns, any of that ugly sort of pinko-hippy stuff that gets laughed out of the board-rooms.

If you'll pardon a bad paraphrase, why not put it this way: Ask not what Software can do for me, but what I can do for Software. -- so long as we perceive free software as primarily something to exploit for our own advantage, ie the freedom to use and to fix as paramount, so long as we see it in first-person singular, we will fail to see the bigger picture, and fail to understand the Tragedy of the Commons, and we'll gleefully piss in the drinking water because, hey, it feels so good.

Here's where GNU, if considered distinct and aloof, could be an agent of education and perhaps, who knows, even an agent of change: I'd rather we say, "Sure, I maybe use some opensource software, but I would rather use software that's as free as GNU ..."

and then let people ask, "what do you mean, 'free as GNU'?"

If we want to attempt a branding of memes, I'd rather we do our operant conditioning to bind GNU to the concept of software freedom in contradistinction to the popular preconception of simply free and open in the Linux distros.