Free as in Freedom - Sam Williams (read this if .TXT) 📗

system GNU/Linux in print, most are quick to credit Stallman for launching the drive to build a free software operating system 15 years before.

 

I won’t meet Stallman again for another 17 months.

During the interim, Stallman will revisit Silicon Valley once more for the August, 1999 LinuxWorld show.

Although not invited to speak, Stallman does managed to deliver the event’s best line. Accepting the show’s Linus Torvalds Award for Community Service-an award named after Linux creator Linus Torvalds-on behalf of the Free Software Foundation, Stallman wisecracks, “Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance.”

 

This time around, however, the comments fail to make much of a media dent. Midway through the week, Red Hat, Inc., a prominent GNU/Linux vendor, goes public. The news merely confirms what many reporters such as myself already suspect: “Linux” has become a Wall Street buzzword, much like “ecommerce” and “dot-com” before it. With the stock market approaching the Y2K rollover like a hyperbola approaching its vertical asymptote, all talk of free software or open source as a political phenomenon falls by the wayside.

 

Maybe that’s why, when LinuxWorld follows up its first two shows with a third LinuxWorld show in August, 2000, Stallman is conspicuously absent.

 

My second encounter with Stallman and his trademark gaze comes shortly after that third LinuxWorld show.

Hearing that Stallman is going to be in Silicon Valley, I set up a lunch interview in Palo Alto, California.

The meeting place seems ironic, not only because of the recent no-show but also because of the overall backdrop. Outside of Redmond, Washington, few cities offer a more direct testament to the economic value of proprietary software. Curious to see how Stallman, a man who has spent the better part of his life railing against our culture’s predilection toward greed and selfishness, is coping in a city where even garage-sized bungalows run in the half-million-dollar price range, I make the drive down from Oakland.

 

I follow the directions Stallman has given me, until I reach the headquarters of Art.net, a nonprofit “virtual artists collective.” Located in a hedge-shrouded house in the northern corner of the city, the Art.net headquarters are refreshingly run-down. Suddenly, the idea of Stallman lurking in the heart of Silicon Valley doesn’t seem so strange after all.

 

I find Stallman sitting in a darkened room, tapping away on his gray laptop computer. He looks up as soon as I enter the room, giving me a full blast of his 200-watt gaze. When he offers a soothing “Hello,” I offer a return greeting. Before the words come out, however, his eyes have already shifted back to the laptop screen.

 

“I’m just finishing an article on the spirit of hacking,” Stallman says, fingers still tapping. “Take a look.”

 

I take a look. The room is dimly lit, and the text appears as greenish-white letters on a black background, a reversal of the color scheme used by most desktop word-processing programs, so it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. When they do, I find myself reading Stallman’s account of a recent meal at a Korean restaurant. Before the meal, Stallman makes an interesting discovery: the person setting the table has left six chopsticks instead of the usual two in front of Stallman’s place setting. Where most restaurant goers would have ignored the redundant pairs, Stallman takes it as challenge: find a way to use all six chopsticks at once. Like many software hacks, the successful solution is both clever and silly at the same time. Hence Stallman’s decision to use it as an illustration.

 

As I read the story, I feel Stallman watching me intently. I look over to notice a proud but child-like half smile on his face. When I praise the essay, my comment barely merits a raised eyebrow.

 

“I’ll be ready to go in a moment,” he says.

 

Stallman goes back to tapping away at his laptop. The laptop is gray and boxy, not like the sleek, modern laptops that seemed to be a programmer favorite at the recent LinuxWorld show. Above the keyboard rides a smaller, lighter keyboard, a testament to Stallman’s aging hands. During the late 1980s, when Stallman was putting in 70-and 80-hour work weeks writing the first free software tools and programs for the GNU Project, the pain in Stallman’s hands became so unbearable that he had to hire a typist. Today, Stallman relies on a keyboard whose keys require less pressure than a typical computer keyboard.

 

Stallman has a tendency to block out all external stimuli while working. Watching his eyes lock onto the screen and his fingers dance, one quickly gets the sense of two old friends locked in deep conversation.

 

The session ends with a few loud keystrokes and the slow disassembly of the laptop.

 

“Ready for lunch?” Stallman asks.

 

We walk to my car. Pleading a sore ankle, Stallman limps along slowly. Stallman blames the injury on a tendon in his left foot. The injury is three years old and has gotten so bad that Stallman, a huge fan of folk dancing, has been forced to give up all dancing activities. “I love folk dancing inherently,” Stallman laments. “Not being able to dance has been a tragedy for me.”

 

Stallman’s body bears witness to the tragedy. Lack of exercise has left Stallman with swollen cheeks and a pot belly that was much less visible the year before.

You can tell the weight gain has been dramatic, because when Stallman walks, he arches his back like a pregnant woman trying to accommodate an unfamiliar load.

 

The walk is further slowed by Stallman’s willingness to stop and smell the roses, literally. Spotting a particularly beautiful blossom, he tickles the innermost petals with his prodigious nose, takes a deep sniff and steps back with a contented sigh.

 

“Mmm, rhinophytophilia,“At the time, I thought Stallman was referring to the flower’s scientific name. Months later, I would learn that rhinophytophilia was in fact a humorous reference to the activity, i.e., Stallman sticking his nose into a flower and enjoying the moment. For another humorous Stallman flower incident, visit:

http://www.stallman.org/texas.html

he says, rubbing his back.

 

The drive to the restaurant takes less than three minutes. Upon recommendation from Tim Ney, former executive director of the Free Software Foundation, I have let Stallman choose the restaurant. While some reporters zero in on Stallman’s monk-like lifestyle, the truth is, Stallman is a committed epicure when it comes to food. One of the fringe benefits of being a traveling missionary for the free software cause is the ability to sample delicious food from around the world.

“Visit almost any major city in the world, and chances are Richard knows the best restaurant in town,” says Ney. “Richard also takes great pride in knowing what’s on the menu and ordering for the entire table.”

 

For today’s meal, Stallman has chosen a Cantonese-style dim sum restaurant two blocks off University Avenue, Palo Alto’s main drag. The choice is partially inspired by Stallman’s recent visit to China, including a lecture stop in Guangdong province, in addition to Stallman’s personal aversion to spicier Hunanese and Szechuan cuisine. “I’m not a big fan of spicy,”

Stallman admits.

 

We arrive a few minutes after 11 a.m. and find ourselves already subject to a 20-minute wait. Given the hacker aversion to lost time, I hold my breath momentarily, fearing an outburst. Stallman, contrary to expectations, takes the news in stride.

 

“It’s too bad we couldn’t have found somebody else to join us,” he tells me. “It’s always more fun to eat with a group of people.”

 

During the wait, Stallman practices a few dance steps.

His moves are tentative but skilled. We discuss current events. Stallman says his only regret about not attending LinuxWorld was missing out on a press conference announcing the launch of the GNOME

Foundation. Backed by Sun Microsystems and IBM, the foundation is in many ways a vindication for Stallman, who has long championed that free software and free-market economics need not be mutually exclusive.

Nevertheless, Stallman remains dissatisfied by the message that came out.

 

“The way it was presented, the companies were talking about Linux with no mention of the GNU Project at all,”

Stallman says.

 

Such disappointments merely contrast the warm response coming from overseas, especially Asia, Stallman notes.

A quick glance at the Stallman 2000 travel itinerary bespeaks the growing popularity of the free software message. Between recent visits to India, China, and Brazil, Stallman has spent 12 of the last 115 days on United States soil. His travels have given him an opportunity to see how the free software concept translates into different languages of cultures.

 

“In India many people are interested in free software, because they see it as a way to build their computing infrastructure without spending a lot of money,”

Stallman says. “In China, the concept has been much slower to catch on. Comparing free software to free speech is harder to do when you don’t have any free speech. Still, the level of interest in free software during my last visit was profound.”

 

The conversation shifts to Napster, the San Mateo, California software company, which has become something of a media cause c�l�bre in recent months. The company markets a controversial software tool that lets music fans browse and copy the music files of other music fans. Thanks to the magnifying powers of the Internet, this so-called “peer-to-peer” program has evolved into a de facto online juke box, giving ordinary music fans a way to listen to MP3 music files over the computer without paying a royalty or fee, much to record companies’ chagrin.

 

Although based on proprietary software, the Napster system draws inspiration from the long-held Stallman contention that once a work enters the digital realm-in other words, once making a copy is less a matter of duplicating sounds or duplicating atoms and more a matter of duplicating information-the natural human impulse to share a work becomes harder to restrict.

Rather than impose additional restrictions, Napster execs have decided to take advantage of the impulse.

Giving music listeners a central place to trade music files, the company has gambled on its ability to steer the resulting user traffic toward other commercial opportunities.

 

The sudden success of the Napster model has put the fear in traditional record companies, with good reason.

Just days before my Palo Alto meeting with Stallman, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel granted a request filed by the Recording Industry Association of America for an injunction against the file-sharing service. The injunction was subsequently suspended by the U.S. Ninth District Court of Appeals, but by early 2001, the Court of Appeals, too, would find the San Mateo-based company in breach of copyright law,5 a decision RIAA spokesperson Hillary Rosen would later proclaim proclaim a “clear victory for the creative content community and the legitimate online marketplace.“See “A Clear Victory for Recording Industry in Napster

Case,” RIAA press release (February 12, 2001).

http://www.riaa.com/PR_story.cfm?id=372

 

For hackers such as Stallman, the Napster business model is scary in different ways. The company’s eagerness to appropriate time-worn hacker principles such as file sharing and communal information ownership, while at the same time selling a service based on proprietary software, sends a distressing mixed message. As a person who already has a hard enough time getting his own carefully articulated message into the media stream, Stallman is understandably reticent when it comes to speaking out about the company. Still, Stallman does admit to learning a thing or two from the social side of the Napster phenomenon.

 

“Before Napster, I thought it might be OK for people to privately redistribute works of entertainment,”

Stallman says. “The number of people who find Napster useful, however, tells me that the right to redistribute