INTERVIEW:
Question 1
What is the GNU operating system?
Answer
GNU is the name of the operating system that we have been developing for fourteen
years. The special thing about this system is that itís entirely made of free software.
This means that you are free to change the software so that it does what you need, study
how the software works, because we give you the source code - nothing is secret inside the
software. You have the freedom to make copies and distribute them so that you can share
with your neighbor, so that you can treat other people like friends. You have the freedom
to make improved versions and give those out to the Net so that everyone else can use them
and thus you help to build your community. So these three freedoms are the meaning of free
software. And the idea of this system is that every part of it is free software so that
you can use a computer with strictly free software for every job. In this way you are not
constrained by the owner of any program.
Question 2
Thatís useful for programmers. But for the normal user?
Answer
For a normal itís useful to be free to make a copy for your friend. Sharing information
with your friends is one of the most basic acts of friendship. If youíre forbidden to
share with your friends, or if the only way you can share is underground, furtively,
thatís not good. Thatís important for everybody, not just for programmers. And then many
people use software as part of their work. If youíre using software for business, itís
very important to have the freedom to change it. If software is free, you can go out and
hire any programmer to make the changes you want. If the software is proprietary, nobody
can change it except the owner. And the owner is probably too busy even to listen to you.
Question 3
Can you tell us the history of the project, how it started?
Answer
I began the GNU project at the beginning of 1984, and at first I was the
only person writing the software. But gradually other people joined in. Many are
volunteers, including me. In addition, we have the Free Software Foundation, which raises
money to pay programmers to work on GNU software. During the 1980s and the early 1990s we
were gradually filling in the gaps because a whole operating system is many different
programs to do many jobs and we had to find or write a program for each of these jobs.
Over the years the gaps would gradually get filled in. Then in the early 1990s the last
gap was filled. Linus Torvalds developed a kernel named Linux, and that filled the last
gap. And as a result, there now are complete free operating systems. We call them
Linux-based GNU systems.
Question 4
What do you see for the future?
Answer
For the future thereís a lot of work to do. Right now we have a system which is
compatible with UNIX and itís as easy to use as UNIX, which is not easy enough. We want
to make free operating systems easy for ordinary people, not just for hackers. So thereís
a lot of work being done now on graphic user interfaces so that you can move the mouse
around and do everything with the mouse in the way that non-programmers like to do.
Question 5
You say you want people to write and to distribute free software. What are the most common
arguments software owners use against this ?
Answer
The software owners rarely try to convince me not to write free software because they
recognize that thereís no way they can stop me in general and that itís my choice.
However, when I tell people that itís wrong to make software proprietary, that itís
wrong and immoral, of course people object to that because Iím telling them that thereís
something wrong with what theyíre doing and nobody likes to be told that. So they make
various arguments. They rest on a naive idea that people have that whoever wrote something
should be able to tell other people what to do when using it. And this is an idea that
people tend to accept because of the history of copyright.
Question 6
Can free software be sold? If so, how?
Answer
Selling free software is a very important thing. The most convenient way to get a complete
free operating system is to buy a CD ROM. In fact, part of the meaning of free software is
that you are free to sell copies. Everyone is free to sell copies, because thatís part of
the freedom to redistribute. You see, free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
Weíre not saying that nobody should ever pay for a copy. Weíre saying that once you have
a copy, you should be free to change the software, to redistribute the software, and to
make improved versions, and to publish them. And this includes the freedom to sell when
you redistribute. In fact selling copies of free software is extremely important because
thatís a way to raise money for developing more free software. Thatís what the Free
Software Foundation does. I should mention that the Free Software Foundation is an
officially approved charity in the US. Itís like a school or a hospital, that is, people
can donate money to us and they can take it off their taxes. But the main way that we
raise money is by selling copies of free software, and we also sell manuals which are also
free, because everyone is free to make more copies of them and distribute copies. You can
even change the manuals too, because the manuals are generated by computer, of course. The
text of the manual in computerized form is available, in fact you can get it on the
network or you can get it on our CD ROM. So you can edit the text and make a modified
manual and then you could print that sell copies of it. The Free Software Foundation is
selling copies of things that anybody could copy and anybody could sell. In this way,
weíre getting enough money to pay our staff, which includes money for four programmers.
Question 7
Can you explain how the general license works?
Answer
I should explain that our goal in the GNU project is to give freedom to each and every
user. So we want to make sure that each and every person who gets a copy of our software
also gets these freedoms that Iíve mentioned. The way we do this is with a technique
called copyleft. The idea of copyleft is that we say that you will have permission to
modify this program, you have permission to distribute it, you have permission to publish
an improved version. But any time you distribute this program or anything based on this
program you must use exactly these terms with no changes, so that everyone who gets a copy
from you gets the same three freedoms that we give to you. In this way, as copies go from
one person to another, each person in the chain gets the same freedoms that we originally
give. If we put the software in the public domain, then we would be allowing the various
unscrupulous companies that make non-free software to take our programs and make modified
versions and distribute them as proprietary software products with no freedom at all. And
there would be people using our software who donít have freedom, which would be a failure
for our project, because our goal is to give people freedom. So with copyleft, we make
sure that everyone gets freedom. The GNU general license is the specific legal wording for
copyleft that we use for most programs. We also have other methods of copyleft that we use
in certain special situations. I should explain that copyleft is legally based on
copyright. Thatís the reason why we can enforce it. If somebody violates our copyleft by
distributing versions with no source code or trying to attach other restrictions to them,
they are violating copyright law and we could throw the book at them. In general if
anybody does this for our software, we send them a letter and they stop. They donít want
to have a trial. One other point about copyleft. You can think of copyleft as taking the
software ownerís weapons and using those weapons against them. So copyright is used for a
right wing purpose: subjugate other people make them pay you all their money. Copyleft is
used in a left wing spirit, a left wing goal, which is: encourage people to cooperate and
to help each other and give everyone equal freedom.
Question 8
If I get a program from someone I donít know and my program crashes, what can I do?
Answer
We do a better job of solving it than the proprietary software world does. Because when
you get a proprietary program, you have no idea whatís in it and thereís no way you can
find out whatís in it. You just have to hope and trust them that thereís nothing
dangerous in that program. And there may be something dangerous. In fact it happens. There
are companies that put things in their software that will give out your personal
information to everybody who asks for it. Microsoft has put things in their software that
will tell Microsoft everything you have installed on your computer. This is outrageous.
And Microsoft says: "Well it does ask a question. If you pay attention, you will
see". But of course many people donít pay attention and they donít know that this
software from some company is giving out personal information about them all the time.
Somebody could start selling you proprietary software which has something dangerous in it
and you might never know. With free software itís also possible somebody could put
something dangerous in a free program, but the source code is always available. Even if
you are not reading the source code, somebody else may be reading it and they will see the
thing that is dangerous. Of course, youíve got to realize that most of the things that go
wrong in software - no matter whoís writing it - are accidents. When Microsoft writes
programs, they make mistakes. When I write programs, I make mistakes. Every programmer
makes mistakes. The big danger is not from deliberate damage; the big danger is that
thereís a mistake in the program. Again, free software has an advantage, because many of
the users are programmers, and they are constantly looking for mistakes and telling me
about them and fixing them. In fact, I as a developer of free software am constantly
getting help from other people around the world fixing any problems there are in my
software. I donít have to fix them all myself, other people will help. It happens that I
get a message from somebody saying: "You know, I was reading a certain part of your
program one day and I saw something that looks like itís not quite right. Are you sure
this is right?" I take a look at it, and very often I realize it was a mistake. So
other people are helping me to make the program work. Microsoft doesnít get this help. So
if thereís a bug in a Microsoft program, you are very likely to have to wait six months
or a year before they fix it. In fact, one of the areas of computer systems that people
are interested in is security. And of course every operating system sometimes has bugs
that affect security. But with free operating systems these bugs are fixed very quickly.
The bug is reported and usually the next day a fix is posted on the network so that
everyone can install it if they want to.
Question 9
But with proprietary software I know who is responsible...
Answer
With free software the person you get the copy from is responsible. So if you want to be
sure, if you are afraid of trusting people, basically donít get a copy except from
somebody you trust. For example, if you get a copy of new software from the Free Software
Foundation, you know that itís our version, not modified by anybody else, and that itís
the version we have done our best to make good. Some company could be being run by some
sneaky spy or a terrorist selling you proprietary software designed to destroy your
computer and how would you know? You just assume that if itís a company, it wants to stay
in business and therefore they wouldnít do a thing like that. The same thing for the Free
Software Foundation. Our goal is to give people a viable free software alternative. So of
course, it would be stupid, self-defeating for us to put anything in the software that the
users would be angry at, so you know weíre going to try our best. And thatís the most
you can know for any software developer. Likewise, if somebody is distributing a modified
version of our software, you might trust him too. Or you might get a copy from a friend
and if you trust your friend, and you know heís not going to try to hurt you and he is
careful to install good software versions, then you can feel comfortable. You know, just
as you would go to your friendís house and say, I ran out of milk. Could I have some
milk? Youíre not going to be afraid that your friend is going to put poison in the milk
and give it to you. People sometimes do monstrous things, but generally we trust our
friends. How could you live otherwise?
Question 10
What about the critical issues of free software and the flow of information?
Answer
The owners of information, the copyright industry, is carrying out a world-wide campaign
to change laws in all countries so that they get more power to control what everyone does.
This is their main activity. Now is the time for them to get complete control over all
uses of published information. They are doing this by going to legislators and saying:
"We donít have enough incentive to develop more publications, so give us additional
power. As a general principle you should assume that anytime you give us more power, the
public will automatically benefit." They never want to analyze in detail, why the
public would benefit from giving the owners this additional power. They just say:
"Take it for granted. Give us more power. The public always benefits." Which is
silly. Thatís like saying: Pay twice as much for milk and youíll always get better milk.
Soon you would be paying a million lire for every carton of milk. Then youíd get
wonderful milk, right? Of course this is silly. Thereís a principle called diminishing
returns. The owners want to ignore that because they just want complete power. So for
example they want to make it illegal for you to let a friend come up to your computer and
read a book that you have on your computer. Even if you legally got the book and itís on
your computer legally, they want to make it illegal to let your friend read it. And if
your friend wants to communicate over the network, oh, thatís even worse! They want to
say that if he transmits it over the network- just put it on his screen so he can see it
and read it, just temporarily - it is illegal. When you look at something, when you read a
book, temporarily thereís a copy on your retina. Next, theyíll say that thatís
copyright infringement and therefore you need to get permission to read the book. In the
Soviet Union, every copier had a guard whose job it was to watch what was being copied and
make sure that nobody did any illegal copying, because preventing illegal copying was one
of the main priorities of the Soviet government. The copyright industry wants to do the
same thing, except that they want to do it with computerized guards. And it will be
illegal to remove this robot guard from your computer. They are trying to interfere in
your life in a much more direct and annoying way than they have ever done before. Any time
somebody reads a book and doesnít pay them, they feel that theyíve lost something. They
donít care if theyíre getting enough money that publishing continues and that the
bookstores are full of books. They want to get every penny they can dream of. So theyíre
trying to change laws in Italy and in other countries. And itís important therefore for
the users of information to get politically organized about this issue. Let me explain;
itís because of the history of copyright. Copyright law came with the printing press. In
the ancient world when the way to copy a book was to write a copy with a pen, there was no
copyright; it made no sense. Anybody who could write could copy a book and could copy it
just as well in principle as anybody else; making one copy was just as efficient a making
a hundred copies. The only way to make a hundred copies was to write it a hundred times.
The printing press created a different situation where the efficient way to make copies
was by mass production. You set the type once and you take it and you stamp it a hundred
times. Thatís much faster than setting the type once and printing it once. So people got
used to the idea that the only way to make books was by mass production. In that system,
in the age of the printing press, copyright was a reasonable system because it only
restricted publishers and authors. Copyright did not restrict ordinary readers like you
and me because we couldnít copy a book; we didnít own a printing press. How are you
going to copy a book? What do you mean? If you want another copy, you go to the bookstore
and buy another copy. In effect copyright is a bargain, a deal, where the public gives up
the freedom to make copies. In exchange they hope to see the bookstores filled with many
books they can buy. And this was a good deal in the age of the printing press, because we
ordinary members of the public couldnít copy the books anyway. What difference does it
make to give up a freedom that you canít use? However, weíre not in the age of the
printing press anymore. The computer is giving us a different world in which everyone who
can read something can also make one copy at a time and send it to a friend. That is a
very useful and good thing to do; itís a way of cooperating with your neighbor, itís
part of the bonds of good will that are the basis of society. So this freedom that we have
given up, that weíve traded away, has now become useful again. As a result, itís no
longer such a good deal to trade it away. Now we want to keep some of that freedom so that
we can use it, and therefore we should be reducing the power of copyright. Perhaps it
would be OK to have a copyright system that limits commercial sale of copies, that limits
organized redistribution of massive copies, however, for a person to make a copy
occasionally to give to a friend, this is something that everyone should be allowed to do.
Itís a fundamental human right and we should be organizing people, users of information
in all countries, people who read, people who listen to music; everyone who uses any kind
of information, should be organizing to demand the right to share copies with friends, as
a fundamental human right which is even more important because itís a right to help your
friend. Itís not just a right to do something that is good for yourself - the right to
have enough food, to have shelter - freedom of speech and freedom of the press are also
important rights. The freedom to share information is another fundamental right that
everyone should have.
Question 11
How did you begin your activity.
Answer
I was fascinated by computers as soon as I heard about them. I wanted to learn how to
program them. I first was able to do that when I was about 12 years old and I was going to
summer camp and one of the counselors had a manual for a computer he was using in school.
I read the manual and I was fascinated so I just thought of some simple thing to do with
the program and wrote the program down on paper because I yearned to program. I didnít
actually see a computer until later. It was when I was a senior at high school I started
visiting an IBM laboratory in New York where they let me program their computer. And I
started writing a very complicated project that I never finished to do with compilers and
extending the popular program language of the day. Then for the summer after that year
they gave me a summer job and hired me to write a program in FORTRAN. I finished the
program in one month and then spent the rest of the summer writing other programs, like a
text editor, just for the fun of it; and also because I discovered what a bad language
FORTRAN was, I swore I would never use it again and I have never written a program in
FORTRAN again. But we do have a FORTRAN compiler in the new system in case you are a
masochist and you want to write a program in FORTRAN or you have to. Then I went to school
and after one year of Harvard I discovered the computer labs at MIT. I went over there one
day hoping to get manuals for their computer system and instead I got a job and I worked
there until the end of 1983. That is where I started to find out about the software
sharing community. As soon as I got there I became part of it. And in this community if
somebody was working on something that was useful for you in any way, you could have a
copy of it. So you could either use the program or you could make changes in the program
or you could take pieces of it, cut out pieces and use them in some other program you
wanted to write. If somebody had already written the code to do a certain job, you
wouldnít have to write it again and you could copy it out of his program. And in this way
I had a very good feeling about what was happening because I felt that we were all working
together to advance human knowledge. And thatís the way I like to feel. I hate the
feeling that Iím working against other people. I want to feel that Iím working for
humanity. This cooperative society of people who shared software fell apart in the early
1980s. One person set an example by writing a new program and then selling it to a
company. And after he did this, other people with weak consciences followed his example.
They said: "Hereís a person who is being uncooperative and nasty and heís making
money from it: At least they assumed he was making money from it; it turns out he didnít
make very much. Nowadays he says that the main effect of his decision was to prevent his
program from being a big success, from being really popular. But at the time people
assumed that he must be getting a lot of profit from this. So other people imitated it and
people stopped cooperating. I saw my part of society collapse into a dog-eat-dog jungle. I
was very unhappy with what had happened. So I started looking for a way to make a new
society somewhere in some part of the world. I had been part of a software sharing
community and it was dead. So the only way I could have one was to create another. I
resigned from my job at MIT in order to start the GNU project because I wanted to make
sure I could release GNU software as free software. I didnít want MIT to be in a position
to stop me. And in the US, when the staff of a university - and I was a member of the
staff - when they develop programs, the university can take them and sell them if it
wants. I needed to make sure that would not happen or else all my work would be wasted.
The only way I could make sure that would not happen and make sure I would be able to use
copyleft, which I felt was very important, was to quit my job, and so I did that in
January of 1984.
Question 12
You didnít like they way they did research in MIT?
Answer
Well, I wouldnít say that because they donít always do it in just one way. But I knew it
was a possibility. And I didnít want to be in a position where I would have to get
permission to release the software as free software. I wanted to be absolutely certain
before writing the software that I would be able to make it free. In addition, I wanted to
be sure that I could use copyleft because I had seen the old software community collapse
because it looked like it was too easy for people to refuse to cooperate, to easy to gain
personal benefit by being uncooperative. Copyleft sets a tone that prohibits the worst
kind of abuse. So I felt - and I think more or less itís proved to be right - that using
copyleft would give the community a certain amount of backbone, a certain amount of
ability to protect itself from abuse. Because if people feel that theyíre being taken
advantage of or abused all the time, they become discouraged and defensive. So in addition
to the actual direct effects of using copyleft and the practical effects of encouraging
many people to contribute their improvements to making the program better, thereís also a
psychological effect, which is that because people see that there is a certain amount of
defense for community, they feel that the community is viable. They feel that cooperating
with the community makes sense. So, I would like to wish all of you happy hacking!
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