Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!usc!samsung!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!zmacx07 From: zmacx07@doc.ic.ac.uk (Simon E Spero) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss Subject: FSF featured in "The Guardian" Message-ID: Date: 16 Nov 89 19:23:42 GMT Sender: news@doc.ic.ac.uk Distribution: gnu Organization: The Society of the Department of Computing, Imperial College Lines: 136 The following text is taken from Page 31 The Guardian, Thursday November 16th 1989 without permission. The Guardian is a national newspaper of a liberal hue. The computer coverage is IMHO the best in a newspaper (The editor, Jack Schofield, is a great supporter of Unix, OSI, Ataris, Amigas and other good things). All spelling mistakes are my own. [Big picture of rms at an LPF rally] [14pt]Richard Stallman has taken on some of the most powerful computer companies in America in his crusade for freedom of programming information. Benjamin Wooley reports [Headline: Love is for wimps and hackers] 'PEOPLE WILL program for love' proclaimed Richard Stallman. Not, note, for a generous renumeration package, not for prestige (which never seemed likely in any case), not even for an enternity of mind-mouldering servitude, but for love. Stallman made this assertion just two years ago, and has been sticking to it ever since as part of his campaign for "Programming Freedom". This is a man who seems seriously out of step with the times. Love is for wimps. Computing is big business now. It's about expensive consultancy, not free thinking. Nevertheless, he is to be taken seriously. Stallman embodies the true spirit of hacking - not the fraud, embezzelment, corruption and other crimesthat happen to be commited using a computer and are therefore attributed to hackers, but the fight for the freedom of commercial information, the challenge to the computer and media industry's assumption of a proprietary right to own information and exploit it in anyway it pleases. Stallman works- for love, presumably - at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's pioneering Artificial Intelligence lab, where he developed the influential Emacs (Editing Macros) word processing system, which is available on a wide range of computers. His office is a small, dark cell in one of the MIT campus towers. It seems to be his complete universe - indeed, little short of a Big Bang could have generated such as chaotic arrangement of clothing, bedding, books and papers. The only signs of order are a program listing displayed on a large VDU and a young, neat amanuesis sat next to him, keying in his bubbling stream of consciousness into the the computer. Reluctantly enticed into the lab's harsh illumination, Stallman looks like a pale-skinned, soft-bodied dweller of cave-pools, unadapted to the worlds glare and noise. Sitting on a sofa in a reception area with white,. melamine walls smeared in mathematical graffiti, watching burned out researchers wander to and fro like the undead, it is hard to believe that you had come to the right planet. Stallman, however, knows where he is comming from. He has taken on some of the most powerful Information Technology companies in America- Apple, Lotus, Ashton-Tate - in his crusade against the Enclosure of information. With a group of like-minded programmers, he has embarked on the development of a complete program suite, called GNU (GNU is Not Unix) designed to provide an alternative, non-proprietary software environment for computer users- a new programming world for those escaping the legal persecutions of the old. What he is fighting is nothing less that the spreading commercialisation of computers. "In the time that I've worked as a programmer I've watched the field change from one of co-operating and sharing, where people could re-use previous work in any useful way, to advance the state of the art, to one in which co-operation is largely forbidden by the owners of the software. Copyright, the main legal instrument for controlling information was originally intended to be used by authors to protect their creative effort. However, which the introduction of cheap copying technology- tape recorders, photo-copiers, personal computers, it has increasingly been adopted by publishers to protect their profits. "It is no longer possible to enforce any kind of intellectual property rights without a heavy hand", said Stallman This was, he things, exemplified by the recent cases brought by Apple, Lotus, and Ashton-Tate against companies that have products with a "look and feel" similar to theirs. At stake was whether or not a programs user interface, the means by which the user manipulates it can be copyrighted. if it can, argues Stallman, so can a typewriters User interface, forcing each typewriter manufacturer to develop their own arrangement of keys. And so can a car's, forcing each car company to use different arrangements to the steering wheel. In their defence, Apple and the others claim that they are merely seeking to protect their investment. This cuts no ice with Stallman " It's the user who makes the investment, by learning how the interface works", he says. Also, Apple was seeking to protect work that not only originated at Xerox and Stanford, but the desktop metaphor it used to achieve the Macintosh's much lauded Intuitive design. So shouldn't Apple by paying the office equipment manufacturers something for the investment they made in designing "their" user interface? The fact that companies are even attempting to press such claims shows how commercially important the control of information has become. Information owners have become dangerously possessive, Stallman says: "There's a tendency to destructive competition, where instead of trying to run faster yourself, you try to trip up everyone else". The result is a threat to the benefits that computers are supposed to confer: " The full fruits of information technology can be realised only when everyone has the freedom and ability to copy and change programs" Stallman's solution to this problem at least has the merit of simplicity. It is summed up in the title of his Manifesto: Why Software Should Be Free. He doesn't mean free in the sense of costing nothing, but in the sense of available, usable, unrestricted. The concept of ownership should be replaced by one of service: Programmers should be paid for adapting and developing software for all. In a country where the word "Liberal" is used to denote dangerous radicalism, such ideas would seem to stand very little chance of widespread acceptance. Nevertheless, he has gained some political recognition for the League of Programming Freedom he helped found. And the Free Software Foundation which manages the GNU project apparently thrives, having it's own monthly GNU's bulletin and support comes from a variety of programmers, even some computer companies. It has received, for example, a donation from NeXT, the firm set up by Steve Jobs after leaving the one he co-founded, Apple. EOT -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ zmacx07@doc.ic.ac.uk | sispero%cix@specialix.co.uk | ..!ukc!slxsys!cix!sispero ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Advisers advise, Prime Ministers decide" | Not the official view. "The GNU Manifesto refers to all Software, not just Editors" | (I'm the FSF)