Редактирование: Richard Stallman, Free software: ethics and practice

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[[Изображение:RMS.jpg|thumb|240px|Ричард Мэттью Столлман]]

Лекция прошла в 16:20 3 марта 2008 года в аудитории П-14 2-го учебного корпуса МГУ им. М. В. Ломоносова.

== Диктофонные записи ==
* [http://esyr.org/lections/audio/stallman/stallman_lection.ogg Лекция]
* [http://esyr.org/lections/audio/stallman/stallman_q_n_a.ogg Вопросы и ответы]
* [http://sbos.in/RMS_Lection.ogg Диктофонная запись], взятая с http://rms-moscow-2008.narod.ru/ ([http://phobos.cmc.msu.ru/FTP/Stallman/RMS_Lection.ogg зеркало], [http://sbos.in/blog/2008/03/03/%d1%81%d1%82%d0%be%d0%bb%d0%bb%d0%bc%d0%b0%d0%bd-%d0%bd%d0%b0-%d0%b2%d0%bc%d0%ba-2/#comments источник])

== Видеозаписи ==
* [http://new.master.cmc.msu.ru/x-files/RMS/Stallman_MSU_2008_03_03.ogg Видеозапись], взятая с http://rms-moscow-2008.narod.ru/ ([http://phobos.cmc.msu.ru/FTP/Stallman/Stallman_MSU_2008_03_03.ogg зеркало], [http://community.livejournal.com/msu_cmc/180158.html источник])

== Фотографии ==
<gallery>
Изображение:RMS_1.jpg
Изображение:RMS_2.jpg|"Oh, mighty developer, please make this change for me!"
Изображение:RMS_3.jpg
Изображение:RMS_4.jpg|"The IT sector includes many different kinds of jobs, paid programming work is a small fraction of that"
Изображение:RMS_5.jpg|"I don't know why they planned it with insufficient time"
Изображение:RMS_6.jpg
</gallery>

== Расшифровка лекции ==

(расшифровка взята с [http://rms-moscow-2008.narod.ru/], счетчик времени по [[#Видеозаписи|видеозаписи]], 
подзаголовки добавлены после расшифровки, только для ориентации по тексту)

{00:02:05}

(For who wants to make recordings, I want you to promise that if
you publish the recording [laughter], do it in OGG Vorbis format
only. [someone: "Yes!", applause] and under the CC-noderivs license
[laughter], that's the only license, because this is opinion, this
is not technical education, this is political views, so I'd like
you to release it under the CC-noderivs license only, and only in OGG
Vorbis format, because I want everybody to install an OGG player and I
have to do my little bit to help promote that.
f
{00:03:44}

So, should I just start? No interruption. [many voices: "Yes!"] Okay.)

{00:03:52}

=== Introduction. The four freedoms ===

Most of society teaches you that when you judge a program, you should
judge it solely in superficial practical terms. How powerful is it?
How convenient? How reliable? What does it cost? All superficial practial.
They don't suggest, they don't teach you to ask yourself the really
important questions. Does this program respect my freedom? Does this
program respect the social solidarity of my community? These are the
questions that the free software movement is concerned with. Free software
means software that respects the user's freedom. So, it's an issue
of freedom, not price. Think of "free speech", not "free beer". It's,
I believe, "svoboda", not "besplatno". [laughter, applause]

Proprietary software, which is non-free software, keeps the users divided
and helpless. Divided because they are forbidden to share with anybody
else, and helpless because they don't have the source code, so they can't
change anything, they can't even verify independently, what the program
is actually doing to them, and many of those programs do nasty things
to their users.

{00:05:37}

But, if all I say is "I'm in favor of freedom", I have not really tackled
the difficult issue, because it's very easy to say: "I stand for freedom",
even Bush says he stands for freedom [laughter], and Bush doesn't even
recognize freedom after he's crushed it. So, the hard issue is: which
freedoms are the freedoms everybody should have?

Therefore, I should say more.

A program is free software if it gives the user the four essential
freedoms.  Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program as you
wish. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code and to
change it, so the program does what you wish. Freedom 2 is the freedom
to help you neighbor, which is the freedom to distribute exact copies
to others, when you wish. This could mean giving them away, this could
mean selling them, as you wish. Freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute
to your community, that is the freedom to distribute copies of your
modified versions to others, when you wish. If the program respects
these four freedoms, then it respects the individual user's freedom,
and it respects the community's solidarity, so it's free software,
which means that the social system of the distribution and use of this
program is an ethical system.

{00:07:25}

But if one of these freedoms is missing or insufficient, then the program
is proprietary software, non-free software, user-subjugating software,
because the social system of it's distribution and use is unethical. So,
a proprietary program is actually a social problem. To develop and
release a proprietary program is not a contribution to society. It's
an attack on society, it's an attempt to grab power over other people,
and this should not be done.

(By the way, is it possible to open the window? Maybe it's not, but
it's still pretty hot in here. If there is no way to get... ah, good,
at least some air is coming in, thank you) [light laughter]

{00:08:28}

But why these four freedoms are essential, why define free software
this way?

([someone's cell phone is ringing quite loudly]

If you have a portable surveillance and tracking device, please turn it
off. [chuckling] They have already tracked you here, they are already
know you're listening to me [laughter], so there is no need for you to
keep it on. And by the way, these portable tracking devices emit signals
for tracking purposes even when they are apparently switched off. The
only way to stop them is to take out all the batteries. And if they want
to listen, they don't have to do it through your portable surveillance
device, I expect recordings will be posted, they can listen to those,
and even welcome to come and attend, so there is absolutely no reason why
your portable tracking and surveillance device has to be on.)

{00:09:45}

And so, why define free software this way? What makes these 
four freedoms the essential ones? Each freedom has a reason.

Freedom 2, the freedom to help you neighbor, the freedom to distribute
copies to others is essential on basic ethical grounds. So you can live
an upright life as a good member of your society, a good member of your
community. If you use a program without freedom number 2, you are in
danger of falling, at any moment, into a moral dilemma. Whenever your
friend says: "Hey, that program is nice, can I have a copy?", at that
moment you will face a choice between two evils. One evil is to give your
friend a copy and violate the license of the program. The other evil is
to deny your friend a copy and comply with the license of the program. If
you're in the dilemma you ought to choose the lesser evil, which is to
give your friend a copy [laughter] and violate the license of the program.

{00:11:10}

However... Why is this the lesser evil? Well, if you can't help doing wrong
to somebody or other, better you should do it to somebody who deserves
it. [laughter] Now, we can assume that your friend is a good friend, a good member your community and normally deserves your cooperation.
Of course you might want to cooperate even with somebody who's not helpful,
because that way he might learn. But in any case, the case where it's a good friend, a good member of your community, is the sharpest moral
case. We contrast with him the developer of the proprietary
program, who has deliberately attacked the social solidarity of your
community. If you can't help doing wrong to one or the other, then
you should do it to him, the developer.

{00:12:07}

However, being the lesser evil, doesn't mean it's good. It's never a
good thing to make an agreement and then break it. Now, there are some
agreements that are evil in themselves, and keeping them is even worse
than breaking them. This is an example. But still, making an agreement
and breaking it is not good.

And if you give your friend a copy, what will your friend have? Your
friend will have an unauthorized copy of a proprietary program and
that's a pretty bad thing, almost as bad as an authorized copy would
be. [chuckling]

{00:12:56}

So, what you should really do once you have fully understood this issue,
is make sure you are never in that dilemma. I know of two ways. One
is: don't have any friends. [laughter] That is the method implicitly
suggested by the proprietary software developers. [laughter, applause]
The other method is don't have any proprietary software. If you make
sure to have no programs without freedom number 2, then you can't get
into the dilemma. So if someone offers me a program without freedom 2,
no matter how attractive it might be, I am morally required to reject
it, because to accept it and accept those conditions would be a betrayal
of my community, it would be wrong. It would be wrong for me to accept
those terms to be a user of the program.

{00:14:10}

And thus when people speak of unauthorized copying as "piracy", that is
propaganda. They are trying to make you take for granted that helping
your neighbor is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship, which is
what piracy means after all. And nothing could be more false than that,
because attacking a ship is very bad, but helping your neighbor is the
right thing to do. So don't use their propaganda terms, don't repeat their
propaganda. If someone else calls it "piracy", call it "unauthorized
copying", which is a neutral term, or call it "forbidden cooperation"
[chuckling], which takes the other side.

So that's the reason for freedom 2, the freedom to help your neighbor,
the freedom to distribute exact copies when you wish.

{00:15:24}

Freedom 0 is essential for a different reason, so you can control your
computing. It may be incredible, but it's true, that there are proprietary
programs that restrict even the execution of authorized copies. They may
restrict what computer they can run on, or who is allowed to use them,
or how much, or for what purpose, this is obviously not having control
of your computing, so freedom 0 is essential.

So essential, so for many years I didn't realized it was necessary to
mention it. And because it's so basic, when I decided I have to mention
it, I've put it in the beginning of the list, which is why it's freedom
0. But it's not enough, because freedom 0 just means you can either do or
not do, whatever the code of the program lets you do. So the developer
still has power over you. Instead of exercising the power through the
license of the program, he exercises the power through the code of the
program, but it's still power, it's still control over you.

{00:16:44}

So, it order to control your computing you need freedom 1, which is the
freedom to study the source code and then change it so the program does
what you wish. This way you decide, and not the developer for you. If
you use the program without freedom 1, you can't even tell what it's
doing. Many proprietary programs contain malicious features.  They can be
designed to spy on the user, restrict the user, even attack the user. For
instance, one proprietary program that spies on the user, that you may
have heard of, is called Microsoft Windows. [laughter, applause]

{00:17:26}

When the user of Windows, and I wouldn't say "you", because I'm sure
you wouldn't use [laughter] a lousy program like this. When the user of
Windows invokes the menu feature to search for a word, Windows sends
Microsoft a message saying what word was searched for. That's one spy
feature, but there is another. When Windows XP asks for an upgrade,
it reports to Microsoft the list of all the programs installed on the
machine. Another spy feature.  But Microsoft never announced these
spy features, they were put in secretly, and people found them by
investigation. And since investigation is not perfectly reliable,
it's quite possible there are other spy features, that we don't know
about. But spying is not limited to Windows. Windows Media Player also
spies on the user. In fact, it does photo surveillance, it reports every
single user looks at.

{00:18:58}

(Just a second, since there is a camera here, I might as well, move these
things, get them out of the way.. Mmm?..  Everywhere I look, there is
another recording device. [laughter] They must be really suspicious of
me. [laughter])

{00:19:45}

But you shouldn't think that Microsoft is uniquely evil and that only
Microsoft would do something so nasty, because Real Player spies on
the user the same way. And we're pretty sure that Real Player did
it first. After all, Microsoft is more known for imitation, than
for invention. [laughter] In fact, lots of proprietary programs are
spy-ware. But it gets worse, there is also the functionality of refusing to
function. When the program says: "I don't wanna let you see the contents
of this file, even though it's in your computer",  "I don't wanna let you
copy part of this file, even though it's in your computer", "I'm not gonna
print this file for you, because I don't like you". [laughter, applause]

{00:20:50}

Those programs really don't like you. [laughter] They're not designed to
serve you, they're designed to keep you in prison. That's their purpose.
We call this kind of malicious feature "digital restriction management"
or DRM, or "digital handcuffs". It's the intentional malicious feature
of refusing to function. Many companies do this. Microsoft, of course,
does this. Apple does this, Adobe does this, Google does this, Sony does
this, Amazon does this.

It's a broad attack on the freedom of computer users and it operates on
two levels. Every instance of digital restrictions management attacks
you in two ways at once. First of all, it's purposes to take away your
freedom in using your copy of a work, to take away what would otherwise
be your legal rights. But at the same time it attacks your freedom by
stopping you from using free software to access your copy, so the only
way to do it is with proprietary user-subjugating software.

(Just a second)

{00:22:32}

Because this is such a threat, we have started a campaign of protest
against digital restrictions management, you can find it in the site
DefectiveByDesign.Org. Because these products are all designed to be
defective, and you should never buy it. Never buy anything with DRM
unless you personally have the means to break the DRM. If you can break
in, it's okay. [laughter] Otherwise, it's an attack on your freedom and
it's dangerous, so reject it, and teach other people to reject it too.

{00:23:24}

Windows Vista [laughter] is a tremendous advance in restricting the user.
That appears to be it's main purpose. In fact, Microsoft decided to
compel users to throw away perfectly good hardware and replace it,
just because that working hardware was not designed to restrict users
enough. So users to run Vista have to throw it away and replace it with
new hardware designed to control them. This is so nasty, that we have
a special campaign against using Windows Vista. It's called BadVista.Org.

Of course, all versions of Microsoft Windows are proprietary software,
they are all bad ethically. So you can't live in freedom using any
version of Windows, and if you have a computer with Windows, what you
need to do is "defenestrate" it, which means either throw Windows out
of the computer, or throw the computer out of window. [laughter, applause]

{00:24:53}

But those Windows users who are not ready to make their escape to
freedom yet, at least they shouldn't allow themselves to get deeper
into the clutches of the enemy, so they should not use Windows Vista,
until, of course, they are ready to stop using Windows entirely. But,
malicious features are getting worse, there is a malicious feature of
attacking user: back-doors.

{00:25:29}

One proprietary program that has backdoor, that you may heard of, is
called Microsoft Windows. You see, starting with Windows XP, Microsoft
arranged to keep track more or less of who the user is. And so when
Windows XP asks for an upgrade over the net, Microsoft can deliver to that
user an upgrade designed specifically for him, which means, Microsoft
can take control of his computer and to do him whatever it wants. That
user is at Microsoft's mercy. That's the back door we know about,
but is there another?

In India of few years ago I was told that they have arrested some
of the developers of Windows, and accused him of working not just
for Microsoft, but also for Al-Qaeda, [laughter] installing another
backdoor that Microsoft wasn't supposed to know about. That attempt
apparently failed. Whether other such attempts succeeded, we have no
way of checking. But we do know, that Microsoft installed another
backdoor for the use of in even more violent terrorist organization,
namely the United States government. [laughter] Specifically the National
Security Agency. This was detected in 1999, before Bush stole his first
election. So, what this shows you is you can't trust a program that
doesn't give you freedom number 1. You don't know, what's in there.

{00:27:32}

But, in fact, Windows Vista makes in even worse, because with Vista
Microsoft can impose a change in software. Microsoft can simply install
changed software when it wants to, and the user doesn't have a chance to
say no. But please don't think that Microsoft is uniquely evil, because
Mac OS X does the same thing. Apple can forcedly change the software
without giving the user chance to say no. So it's an understatement to
say that Microsoft and Apple can take control of the user's computer,
because with Windows Vista and Mac OS X they always have control, they
have control from the first minute that the user started using it. And
they never relinquish that control.

Every non-free program without freedom 1 demands blind faith from the
user, blind trust, because there is no other possible basic /?/ to use
it, you can't check anything, you can't verify, all you can do is place
yourself completely at the mercy of the developer, it's all "just trust
me" software. Now, that doesn't mean that every one of these programs has
malicious features, some do, and some don't. But we can never be sure
that any one of these programs has no malicious features, there is no
way to verify that. So we can divide them into two classes. There is the
programs in which we know of malicious features, and the ones in which
we don't know of malicious features, now some of them have malicious
features, and others don't, but we can never identify with certainty
any of the ones that don't. But I'm sure there are some.

{00:29:54}

So what can we say about them without knowing the identity of any
one of them?  Well, we know that their developers are human, so they
make mistakes. The code of those programs has errors. And the user of
the program without freedom 1 is just as helpless facing an accidental
error, as she is facing an intentional malicious feature. If you use the
program without freedom 1, you are a prisoner of your software. We, the
developers of the free software, are human too, we also make mistakes,
the code of our programs also has errors, but if you find an error in
our code, or anything in it that you don't like, you are free to change
it. We can't be perfect, we can and we do respect your freedom.

Thus, freedom 1 is essential. But that's not enough, because that's the
freedom to personally study and change the source code of the program.
That's not enough, because there are millions of users that don't know
how to program. They can't personally exercise freedom 1, but even for a
programmer like me freedom 1 is not enough, because there is just too
much software. In fact, there is too much free software for any one
person to master it all and personally make all the changes that he
might want. So the only way we can fully take control of our software
and of our computing is to do it working together, cooperating, and for
that we need freedom 3, the freedom to distribute copies of your modified
versions when you wish, the freedom to contribute to your community. This
allows us to work together.

{00:32:12}

For instance, suppose one person takes a free program, and makes a change,
and releases her modified version. And somebody else takes that and makes
another change that goes further in that direction, and releases his
modified version, and someone else starts with that and makes another
change, and releases his modified version.  Afterwards we will say:
they all worked together to produce the feature that we ultimately got,
which doesn't mean that they planned it in advance that way. The first
one might have no plans beyond the feature that she personally made,
but nonetheless, because the program is free, they were able to cooperate.

And thus all the users get the benefit of the four freedoms. Every user
can exercise freedoms 0 and 2, the freedom to run the program as you
with, and the freedom to distribute exact copies when you wish, because
this doesn't require programming. Freedoms 1 and 3 entail programming,
so any giving user can exercise these freedoms more or less, depending
on how much skill he has in programming. And of course, there are many
people that don't want to learn any programming, so they can't directly
exercise freedoms 1 and 3, but when other people, the programmers,
exercise these freedoms and release their modified versions, everybody
can install them, if they wish.

And thus we all indirectly get the benefit of the four freedoms. I get
tremendous benefit from other people's exercise of freedoms 1 and 3
without my ever reading the code of those programs, which I never seen,
I could if I wanted to, but I don't have to do that personally in order
to get the benefits. Thus we all get the benefits of the four freedoms
and together what they give us is democracy.

{00:34:42}

You see, a free program develops democratically under the control if its
users. Every user can participate as much or as little as she wishes in
a society's decision about the future of that program, which is simple
the sum total of all the individual decisions. The users are in charge,
and therefore, the users generally get what they want, and nobody is
in a position to stop them. With free software no one has power over
anyone else, so nobody is in a position to put in malicious features
and impose them on anybody else. The reason, proprietary software soft
often has malicious features, that the developer knows, that if he puts
in a malicious feature, nobody else can take it out, the users are stuck
with it, unless they can escape to another program, and sometimes they
all have the same malicious features, and there is nowhere to escape to.

But with free software, if a developer is silly enough to put in a
malicious feature, somebody else will see it in a source code and take
it out, and release his modified version and say: "look, what I've found
in that program, and here is the version which doesn't have it", and in
a short time everyone will go to the fixed version and the developer
of the malicious version will have lost his reputation and he will be
nothing. That's possible, because the users are all free. And we can
make the program develop to reject the malicious features, because we
all together are in control of the program, if that's what we users want,
that's what we get.

{00:37:00}

By contrast, the proprietary program develops under the dictatorship of
its developer and functions as an instrument to impose that developer's
power over all the users. So we have a simple choice. On the one end
we have individual freedom, social solidarity and democracy, and on the
other we get divided and controlled by a dictator. It's a simple choice,
and the answer is obvious: we should reject proprietary software and
use only free software.

This is free software in ethical terms, which is the most important
way to look at the issue. When ethical issues is a stake, they are more
important than something else. But, since many people are involved in
business, people are often interested in free software from a business
perspective, so I will talk about that to some extent.

=== Free software from a business perspective ===

{00:38:17}

How does free software affect business.  Well, lots of businesses use
computers, only a tiny fraction of them are in the business of developing
software.  So the result is, in general, free software is very good for
businesses, because businesses appreciate the four freedoms, just as
individuals do in their leisure time. And businesses using software
should have these four freedoms, just as other users should. And in
particular, businesses can take advantage greatly.

{00:39:01}

([the camera operator turned away from RMS and now shooting the
listeners] By the way, when it's pointed away, is the microphone going to
pick up my speech?  [growing laughter] Can you turn..(indistinguishable)...
the microphone... [the speech is apparently interrupted] 
If you could point the microphone this way and camera
that way you can get the shot you want. [laughter] Okay, well.. fine. 
[laughter])

{00:39:44}

So, businesses can take advantage of the four freedoms to get the features
they want even if they are not software developers. For instance,
there are a thousand a users of some free program, that want a certain
change. And suppose, none of those users knows how to program. But
they have some money. Now they could be businesses, or they could
be individuals, if it really doesn't matter, but in any case here's
what they can do. They can get in touch with each other and start an
organization and the idea is that they all join and in joining they pay
money to the organization, and this way the organization collects money
to pay programmers to do the work they want. So if this is a medium-sized
change it might require a month of work for a skilled programmer, and that
might cost 10,000 dollars, and the organization may ask each of those
thousand people: please pay 10 dollars, that's not much money. I expect
that if you wanted a certain change, you'd probably put in 10 dollars to
get it and certainly if it's useful for your business, and your business
is going to be more profitable with that change, it's worth it to you
to put in such a tiny amount of money. But what if it's bigger, what if
it take a year of work, and then it might cost a 100,000 dollars, and
the organization might ask each one of these members to put in a 100
dollars, but you know, chances are, if businesses want a big change,
it's because it's going to make a big improvement for them, and it's
going to be worth that 100 dollars and they won't hesitate.

{00:41:45}

But how this organization get it done? The organization has to find
programmers to hire. So the organization could ask a group of
programmers: "Could you do this?  When could you have it done? What
would you charge? Let's see your portfolio, so we can evaluate your
abilities. What about you? What about you?" And so after they compared
the answers from various groups, then can decide, who to hire. Which
shows us, that free software brings with it a free market for all kinds
of support and service.

By contrast, a support for a proprietary program is typically a
monopoly. Only the developer has the source code, so only the developer
can make a change, and if a user wants a change, the user has to beg
the developer, or even pray to the developer: [laughter] "Oh, mighty
developer, please make this change for me!" [laughter, applause]

{00:42:52}

Sometimes the developer says: "Pay us, and we'll listen to your
problem". [laughter] If the user pays, the developer says: "Thank you
very much.  [laughter] In six months there will be an upgrade, buy the
upgrade and you will see if we have fixed your problem, and you will
see what new problems we have in store for you [laughter]

But with free software anyone that has a copy, can read the source
codes, master it and begin offering support, so it's a free market and
pretty easy to enter. As a result, all those companies and organizations
and agencies that say they really need good support and say that they
think that free market generally provides better things to the buyer,
rationally speaking, they should insist on using free software so they
can get their support through the free market instead of a monopoly.

{00:44:12}

Isn't it ironic, that the proprietary software developers call us
"communists"? We are the ones who have provided for a free market, where
they allow only monopoly. More than that, we are the ones that respect
private property, and they don't. Companies like Microsoft and Apple,
and so many others, they don't respect your private property, in fact
they say that "your" copy is their property. They say everything is their
property, their idea of private property is: everything belongs to them,
like the czars. So, by contrast, your copy of a free program is your
property, and you are free to use it in all the ethical ways.

But it goes beyond that, because in the free software community we
have a decentralized society in which everybody can basically decide
what he wants to do and do it, whereas with proprietary software it's
a command-based system, the executives decide: we want this feature, we
do not want that feature, the programmers put it in, and all the users
are stuck with it just the same. So, which one is a Soviet-style system?

{00:46:12}

And this leads to another paradox. Usually when there is a choice of
products to do a job, we say there is no monopoly. But, when there
is a choice between proprietary software products, yes, there is
monopoly. Because if the users chooses this proprietary software package,
he then falls into this monopoly for support, but if he chooses this
proprietary product, he falls into this monopoly for support, so it's a
choice between monopolies. And the only way to escape from monopoly is
to escape from proprietary software, and that is what the free software
movement is all about. We want you to escape and our work is to help
you escape.

We hope you will escape to the free world. The free world is the
new continent in cyberspace that we have built so we can live here
in freedom. It's impossible to live in freedom in the all world of
cyberspace, where every program has its feudal lord that bullies and
mistreats the users. So, to live in freedom we have to build a new
continent. Because this is a virtual continent, it has room for everyone,
and there are no immigration restrictions. And because there were never
indigenous peoples in cyberspace, there is also no issue of taking away
their land. So everyone is welcome in a free world, come to the free
world, live with us in freedom. The free software movement aims for the
liberation of cyberspace and everyone in it.

=== A brief history of the free software movement and the GNU project ===
 
{00:48:22}

I reached these ideas, not in their current form, of course, in their
early form in 1983. I wanted to be able to continue using computers
but have freedom.  But how could that be possible? In 1983 it was
impossible, because the computer is useless without an OS, an operating
system, and an 1983 all the operating systems for modern computers were
proprietary, so there was no way to buy a modern computer and run it
and have freedom. How could I change that? I was one man, not particularly
famous, with no political experience or skill. So I didn't think I would
get very far just starting an ordinary political movement, trying to
campaign to convince governments to change their laws, or even convince
companies to change their policies. Nowadays we sometimes achieve this,
but things have changed quite a bit since 1983.

{00:49:35}

So I didn't think of doing it that way, but I saw another approach to
achieve the goal: through technical work. I realized that if I developed
another operating system, then I as the author could make it free software
and that way everyone would be able to use computers in freedom by using
my system.  This system would be the way to use a computer and have
freedom. And I was an operating system developer, that was my field,
my principal skill. So I thought I had a chance of doing this. So that
meant I was aware of an important and growing social problem. That most
people didn't recognize as a problem. I had the skills necessary to try
to eliminate that problem and chances are, it seemed, nobody would do
it if I did not. That meant that I had been elected by circumstances
to do this job. It was my duty.

{00:50:04}

It's as if you see somebody drowning, and you know how to swim, and
there is no one else around, and it's not Bush [laughter] or any other
government leader that suppresses the opposition and does other bad things
to human rights, then you have a moral duty to save that person. Now,
I don't know how to swim, but in this case the job that had to be done
was not swimming, it was developing lots of software, and that I knew
how to do. So I decided to develop a free software operating system or
die trying. [laughter, applause]

{00:52:10}

Of old days, that is. Because, at the time, the free software movement
did not have active enemies. Lots of people said it was silly and then
they paid no further attention. So the obstacle to success was not
opposition, you know, I didn't think somebody was likely to stick me
with some radioactive polonium or something like that, but the obstacle
was the large pile of programs that we would have to develop in order
to have an entire free operating system. And 20 years ago nobody knew,
not even I, if we would ever achieve that goal. It was plausible that
I might die of old days first. But when it's a matter of fighting for
freedom, you can't afford to wait until victory is within reach before
you start, because that means you missed most of the opportunities,
you have to start the campaign for freedom long before that, if you
still have no idea if you are going to win, and then maybe you win.

{00:53:46}

So the next thing I decided was to ask other people to join in and
help. The goal wasn't to have a system developed entirely by me, it was
to have a free system as soon as possible, so other people writing parts
of the system could get it done sooner. But I also had to make technical
design decisions, what kind of system should it be. Well, back in the
eighties there were various computer architectures quite different,
and new ones were being introduced, I realized that it would take years
to develop an entire operating system and during that time computer
architectures could change and so, if the system was not portable, it
could be obsolete before it was done. I didn't want that, so i decided
to make the system portable. I only knew of one successful portable
operating system, and that was UNIX, so I've decided to follow the design
of UNIX. Furthermore, I decided to make it upward compatible with UNIX,
because that way all the UNIX users would find it easy to switch to
this system.  However bad made all the initial design decisions, because
UNIX consisted of hundreds of components that work together through
interfaces that were more or less documented, and the users also spoke
those same interfaces to talk to these components, so to be compatible
we had to keep the same interfaces, which meant replacing each component
compatibly. So the only thing I needed to start a project was a name.

{00:55:41}

Of course, I looked for a funny name, because in the 1970's I was part
of the community of programmers, who shared software. When we wrote
a program, we shared it with everybody, that was our way. And all the
software that we were using in this lab at MIT was free software, although
I don't remember if we used that term or not. And we called ourselves
"hackers", which meant and still means that we were programming because
it was tremendous fun. Now half of us were employees, and the other half
were students, but that was all secondary, because the fascination of
what we can do with the computer was what really mattered. That was our
main motivation, that was tremendous fun. But to make it even more fun,
we sometimes chose funny names for our programs, because imagining the
users laughing at the name can keep you going, fixing the difficult bugs
[laughter] till you get your program to actually work. If they don't
start using it, there will be any users to laugh at the name.

{00:57:13}

Now, back in the seventies, system level programming was generally
not portable, so every program was written for a particular kind of
machine, and a particular system, and it was quite common that you'd
see interesting program that ran on some other kind of machine, so you
would write another one in order to do the job on your machine. When that
happened in our community since we were looking for ways to have fun,
we had a specific custom: you could give your program a name which was a
recursive acronym saying: your program is not the other one. For instance,
in 1976 I developed first Emacs, text editor, a programmable extensible
text editor and afterwards there were some 30 imitations, and some of
them were called "this or that Emacs", which is straightforward and not
particular clever. But there were also FINE for "FINE Is Not Emacs",
and then there was SINE for "SINE Is Not EMACS", and there was EINE for
"EINE Is Not Emacs", and there was MINCE for "MINCE Is Not Complete
Emacs" [laughter] and version 2 of EINE was called ZWEI for "ZWEI Was
EINE Initially". So you can have lots of fun with recursive acronyms. I
looked for a recursive acronym of the form "Something Is Not UNIX",
blank-INU, but I could see any combination like that that was a word,
and if it doesn't had another meaning, it's not a joke. So what can I
do, I thought, I can make a contraction, and get rid of the "I", I have
"Something's Not UNIX", blank-NU. So I've tried every initial: ANU, BNU,
CNU, [laughter] DNU, ENU, FNU.. GNU! [laughter] Well, "gnu" is the most
humour-charged word in the English language used in countless wordplays.
So, of course I couldn't resist. [light laughter]

{01:59:48}

But why is the word gnu so humour charged? It's because according to
the dictionary, the "g" is silent and it's pronounced: "nu". So anytime
you wanted write "nu", you could write it "gnu" and you have a joke,
perhaps not a very good one [laughter], but there are lots of them. And
sometimes it is a good joke. For instance, there was a funny song where
I was child, that was based on the word "gnu". So, given a specific
meaningful reason to use this for a particular programming project,
I could not resist. However, when it's the name of our system, please
do not follow the dictionary, please pronounce it "GNU". If you talk
about the "new" operating system, you'll get people confused, because
we've been developing it for 24 years now, and we've been using it for
15 years, it's not "new" anymore, but it still is GNU it always will be
GNU, no matter how many people mispronounce it as "Linux".  [laughter,
loud applause]

=== The "Linux" and "GNU/Linux" names. The GNU General Public License ===

{01:01:21}

But how that such a bizarre mistake get started, how did it happen that
millions of people use GNU system and think that they are using the
"Linux" operating system, which doesn't really exist? Well, during
the eighties our work was to develop the many components we would
need, hundreds of components, to have a complete UNIX-like operating
system. By 1990 we had all the components, we had most of the system,
but one major essential component was missing, that was the kernel,
which is the program that allocates the machine resources to all the
other programs that you run. So in 1990 the Free Software Foundation
hired somebody to begin writing that kernel for GNU, I chose the
design. The design I chose was to use as the bottom half, Mach. Mach is
the micro-kernel, that was developed as a university funded project. So
I thought: they'll make that work, we just write the top half, and the
top half we decided would be made of modular server programs, and they
will all run in userspace, which would make them easy to debug, because
if one of them crashes, it doesn't crash the whole machine, and you
can debug them with the source-level debugger. So I though this design
would enable us to get the whole thing working soon, I don't know why,
but it took many years to get it to run at all. And it still doesn't
run very well, so I wouldn't recommend that you use it, and sad to say,
very little progress is being made.

{01:03:11}

That's a disappointment, but it's not a disaster, because in 1991 a
college student named Torvalds developed his own kernel using the usual
monolithic approach and he got it basically work within a year. That kernel
was called Linux and initially it was not free software.  The initial
license was too restrictive, it didn't allow commercial distribution,
which is an important thing in using free software. However, in 1992
Torvalds changed the license and released Linux under the GNU General
Public License, which is the free software license that I have written
to use on most of the programs that we developed for GNU.

{01:04:09}

What is that mean. First of all, what is the free software license. Well,
how can you make a program free software? Under today's copyright law
in most of the world, anything that's written is copyrighted. So every
program is copyrighted starting from the moment it's written down. And
copyright law says that people are not allowed to copy it or modify it or
distribute it, and in some countries it says they not even allowed to run
it without permission. So how could the program be free software? Only
because of an explicit declaration by the copyright holder saying that
the users have the four freedoms. That declaration is a free software
license. That is, assuming it really does validly give you the four
freedoms in a sufficient way, than it qualifies as a free software
license. So theoretically, there are infinite number of free software
licenses, but it's better to use the existing one than to write your own,
because it's convenient to have fewer licenses rather than more.

In any case, there are various different free software licenses, the
GNU GPL is not the only one, but there is something special about the
GNU GPL, and that is it's a copyleft license.

{01:05:45}

Now, every free software license has to give you freedom 2 and freedom 3,
the freedom to distribute exact copies and modified versions, but there
are two ways to do that. Some licenses say: when you distribute, you can
distribute any way you like, you could even make these copies proprietary,
you can put restrictions on the other people. A copyleft license says:
when you redistribute, you have to do it in a right way, the same way
that you got your copy, under the same license, with the source code,
and in general, you may respect other people's freedom the same way we
respected yours, so when you get our program, you get it with freedom,
and then when you pass it along to others, perhaps exactly or changed,
perhaps extended, you must give them, you must pass along to them the same
freedoms that we gave you. So, copyleft is a way of defending freedom
for every user. By releasing something under a free license you respect
other people's freedom, you do not take it away. But people may still be
vulnerable to middle man, even though you did not take away their freedom,
a middle man could take it away before they get their copies, so with
copyleft we go beyond just respecting people's freedom, we actually
actively defend everybody's freedom. We say: if you get your copy, it
will come with freedom, because the middle men are not allowed to take
away the freedom before you can get. And I'm proud to say that the GNU
General Public License is used by about 70% of free software packages. So,
copyleft for various reasons has attracted a lot of developers.

{01:08:03}

In any case, once Linux was available under the GNU GPL, it was free
software.  And thus, the combination of almost complete GNU system and the
kernel Linux made a complete free operating system, and thus the goal,
that I had announced in 1983, have been reached. For the first time it
was possible to buy a PC and run it in freedom with free software. The
development of Linux the kernel was the step, that carried us across
the finish line. It was able to do that because we have taken many
steps already in order to get close to the finish line. But people
mistakenly focused on that one last step as if that was everything. They
got confused. The people who started distributing these combinations of
Linux and GNU, they started calling them Linux systems, and as a result
they started a confusion, where most people, when they hear the name
Linux, they don't know, whether they are talking about this one piece,
that Torvalds started, or the entire system that's basically GNU. Most
people don't even understand the difference. Most people don't know there
is a distinction to be made, so they believe that Linux is an operating
system, that you can install on a computer, and they also believe that it
was started in 1991 by Torvalds and they also believe that it's released
now under the GNU General Public License. Well, there is nothing in the
world of which these three things are true.

{01:10:06}

They're making some statements that describe the whole system, and
some statements that describe just this piece, and they don't know that
they're confused. They don't know that there is a distinction to be made,
you have to be somewhat well educated technically to start understand
there is a difference. Now, this obviously is unfair to the thousands of
contributors to the GNU system.  Because we're the principal developers
of this combination and people basically don't give us much credit,
they give the credit all to mister Torvalds, so in fairness sake I ask
you to please call it GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux, give us equal mention,
since we started it and we did the biggest part of the job, we ought to
get at least an equal share of the credit. But I have to recognize that
credit is not the most important ethical issue in life, and if it were
just a matter of credit, it wouldn't be worth making a fuss about.

But there's something else, something much more important at stake in your
choice of the name to use with this system. Your freedom is at stake,
indirectly, of course. Because your choice of the name doesn't directly
affect much of anything, but your choice of words to say determines
what meaning you express, determines what you say to other people, what
you teach them and that affects what they do and that ultimately affect
important things.

{01:12:02}

You see, the name GNU has always been associated with the ideas of
freedom, that I've told you today. The name Linux is not, because the
name Linux is associated with the views of Linus Torvalds and he has never
agreed with these ideas of freedom, that I have told you today. He doesn't
even want to think about the question, he dislikes raising ethical issues,
he wants technology to be pure and not affected by ethical concerns. It's
the world view of engineer who doesn't look around him. And he is said
this many, many times. He used to develop proprietary software as his
job, about ten years ago, and he said so, well what kind of example was
that? The thing is, of course he has a right for his views, he has a right
to tell people his views, but the problem is when our work is attributed
to him erroneously, and then under strength of our work people look to
him for ethical leadership, that's not right, they ought to know that we
developed this system and that we did it for their freedom's sake. But
when they think the system is Linux, and they think it was all started
by mister Torvalds, they tend to follow his view of the world and of
these issues, and that leads them in a dangerous directions, because as
you can see, freedom is frequently threatened.

{01:14:15}

And so, when people don't defend it, they are likely to lose it. You can
see that here, you can see that in the US, you can see that in the UK,
and in many other countries following their leadership. Freedom has been
under attack in recent years.

Now, in most areas of life people have been debating the issue of human
rights for centuries, that's plenty of time to reach conclusions about
which human rights are essential and that everyone would have, and to
spread those ideas around the world. That doesn't always means that we
succeed in defending them, but at least it creates a base from which
to try.

But computing is a pretty new area of life, it's only around 15 years that
most people even in a few advanced countries have been using computers,
and in other countries it's less. That's not a lot of time to have
a debate about the human rights for computer users, even if you try
hard to do it, and just the opposite is happened, in fact, there has
been hardly any attempt to seriously consider these question. Instead,
society allowed the proprietary software developers to state the answer
and then just accepted that as if it were unquestionable. Hardly anyone
dares to put it into question. Most people who use computers began
with proprietary software, surrounded by other people using proprietary
software, they didn't even know they could be an alternative, so they
just assumed that that's okay. If you are surrounded by people that live
a certain way, it's not easy to raise a question: is it ethically okay
to do that? It takes great strength. Now, even I haven't necessarily
had that much strength, after all, I didn't have to invent the idea of
free software in this way, I learned it by going to work in a lab at MIT,
where software was free, I just.. I saw this way of life, I didn't have
to invent it and then envision what it would be like purely in my own
mind, I learned what it was like by living it! So, other people who were
not as lucky as me and didn't have this good fortune to experience free
software, they took for granted that software was proprietary and what
could possibly ever be wrong with that?

{01:17:19}

So, there basically has not been in most of society any debate about
this question, about the question of what human rights the developer of
software is entitled to. I think I have identified four of them. The four
essential freedoms, that define the free software, are human rights that
every software user should have. But even among the users of GNU/Linux
system most of them have never heard this idea. Because only a fraction
of the community talks about it. Most of the community doesn't tell them
about GNU or free software, or any of these ideas of free software. Most
of them say that the system is Linux, and the associate it with ideas of
Linus Torvalds, they say: it's a way to get powerful reliable software,
and that's as far as they go, they don't mention freedom and social
solidarity as goals.

And they don't say "free software" either, they have a different term
they prefer to use, it's called "open source". Among the people who first
promoted the term "open source" in 1998, several of them specifically
wanted our ethical concerns to be forgotten, they just wanted it to
drift out of people's minds, and not be remembered. And they partly
succeeded, not completely, the free software movement is still here,
still spreading these ideas, and I believe, still growing, but we are
only a fraction of the users of free software, most of who have not
heard these ideas. Now that makes our community weak, because in order
for people to defend their freedom they have to value their freedom,
and in order to value their freedom, they have to know what it is,
first of all. And we face a big task simply to explain to the users of
free software, what these freedoms are.

{01:20:03}

So we need your help to do this most important job. So you can start
explaining the issues of free software to other people. You can read more
on our website gnu.org. And then you can start explaining to individuals,
you can give speeches, this is tremendously important way to contribute,
we need it more, actually, then we need more programmers, because there
is a lots of programmers developing free software, and not so many of
us spreading these ideas of freedom. But if you don't have time to spend
twenty minutes explaining these ideas of freedom, there is a way you can
help us do it, that only takes one second. And that is calling the system
GNU/Linux, because it only takes one second to say "GNU/", or type "GNU/",
and so you can certainly spare that much time to help us. Now it's true
that that won't explain our philosophy, you can't explain a philosophy
in one second, no matter what you do. But it will make our explanations
more effective by preparing a way for people to pay attention.

You see, if a person has been told that the system is Linux and it was
all started by Linus Torvalds in 1991, he probably believes that the
GNU project was a project to develop a handful of tools, which Torvalds
just by coincidence found useful "in Linux". So, completely wrong idea
of what we've been trying to do and what we did. So, when he sees an
article from the GNU project explaining our philosophy of freedom, he is
likely to say: well, that has nothing to do with me, I'm a Linux user,
why should I care about GNU. After all, GNU is just a friends group,
some fanatics that wrote a few useful programs once upon a time. But if
he realizes that the system he is using is basically the GNU system,
if he think of himself as of GNU/Linux user instead of a Linux user,
then when he sees an article from the GNU project, he is likely to think:
"Ah, here is the philosophy of GNU and I'm a GNU/Linux user, I should
pay attention, I should see what the GNU project has to say", and then
we have a chance to try to convince him. All these efforts that we are
making will have more effect, if you are preparing the way. We need
your help, because our community's weakness has already let us to loose
freedoms that we had, because so many of the users don't really care
about freedom, and don't even understand the issue, they are willing to
accept non-free programs as part of the GNU/Linux system.

=== Problems of modern GNU/Linux distributions ===

{01:23:39}

And in fact, most of the thousands of distributions of GNU/Linux contain
non-free software. In 1992 for the first time we had a complete free
operating system. There was the GNU/Linux system, you could get it,
you could install it on a PC and it would run, and it would be free. By
2000 you couldn't find a free distribution of GNU/Linux anywhere. How
did that happened, how did we lose, how did we failed back from the
freedom we had achieved? Well, around 1995 there were already several,
at least, different distributions of GNU/Linux, and already most of
them called themselves Linux distributions, and some of them started to
put in non-free programs and present them as an advantage, they said:
"Ah, choose our distribution and look what you get!", pointing to those
proprietary programs, as if they made it better. Which is the exact
opposite of the idea of the free software movement, which is that a
non-free program takes away your freedom and makes things worse.

So, their publicity was working directly against our efforts. None
of that /?/, all the distributions were competing with each other,
so the developers of another distribution looked at that and said:
"Uh-oh, they have this proprietary program and that attracting the
users away from us, we better put in this proprietary program too,
so that the users will come back".

{01:25:30}

Now, they could have said: "We are very sorry, esteemed user, that such
and such program is not free software, it doesn't respect your freedom,
we have put it in because we know you have come to expect this from
other distributions, and if we didn't put it in we know you would choose
a different distribution and get it that way. But this program doesn't
respect your freedom, so if you care about your freedom, you shouldn't
install it. And because we are serious about these regrets, we are not
just waiting for somebody else to give us a free replacement for this
program, we are contributing one full time employee to the project to
develop a free replacement, because it's since we're distributing it
and we feel ashamed of that we feel it's our moral duty to speed the
day when we can delete it and put a free program in it's place."

They could have said that. But what they did say, was:

"Look what you get in our distribution!"

{01:26:51}

So, by and by, all the distributions had non-free software. People
would ask me after a speech: where can I get a copy of GNU/Linux? And
I would say, I don't know of any place I can recommend. How sad, that
our community had almost completely fallen into the ditch at the side
of the road, just because drivers weren't looking at where they were
going. They didn't think about freedom, or they didn't care. Well I'm
happy to say that now there are free distributions, there is UTUTO,
U-T-U-T-O [writes on blackboard], there is BLAG, which stands for "BLAG
Linux And GNU", and there is gNewSense. These are three distributions
that have a policy of rejecting non-free software, because there purpose
is to give your freedom.

[a listener asks: "How about Debian?"]

Debian almost gets there, but not quite. Officially the Debian system
consists only of free software, but the Debian servers also distribute
non-free software, so we can't refer people to them. For years I tried
to convince the Debian project to remove those non-free programs and
eventually I gave up, I failed to convince them. So, as you can see,
these are not the well-known distributions, the well-known distributions
still include or distribute non-free software, so I can't recommend them.

{01:29:00}

Thus, after falling into the ditch, we have begun to climb out, but
we still have further to go. And that shows what happens when we have
a bunch of people who have freedom, but they don't know what freedom
is and they don't appreciate it. They are likely to lose it. And today
that's even more likely, but now we have something we didn't have twenty
years ago.

=== Powerful enemies of free software movement ===

Powerful enemies, such as big corporations, that want to stop
us from developing free software for certain jobs. 
Many countries have laws that restrict the release of free software. The
US has at least two such laws. One of these laws make it's illegal to
distribute software to break digital restrictions management. Thus for
instance, DVDs are made with digital restrictions management. The movie
is usually encrypted, and in order for software to play the movie it
has to know the code to decryption. And that software is forbidden
in the Unites States, forbidden to distribute, it's censored. And
not just in US but in European Union as well except for one country:
Finland. Finland has the same law, but a court ruled last year, that this
program is widely available that the DVD version of digital restrictions
management now longer qualified under the law, because the law says:
"effective technical means", and the court said: that's not effective
anymore, everyone has this program.

{01:31:05}

Well, that's an interesting way of doing it, but in order to, you know...
although I predict that those megacorporations like Microsoft and
Hollywood will gonna bribe the Finnish government to change the law and get
rid of this court decision, but if Finns can defend it, that will mean
that any form of DRM will be legal to break once enough people have the
software to break it, which is the challenge to us. [laughter, applause]

But in the meantime you simply must refuse to buy products infected
with DRM unless you have software to break it with. If you are unable
to make copies of it, don't buy it, don't even accept it as a gift,
because it's an attack on your freedom.

{01:32:30}

Well, that's one way of forbidding free software, which only applies to
certain kinds of applications, those for access to a digitally restricted
works, but the other attack is from patent law, and that can forbid
any kind of free program, because it can forbid any program. Because a
large program combines thousands of little techniques, and algorithms,
and code structures and data structures and features and everyone of
those could be patented. In fact, even little aspect of a feature or an
algorithm can be patented. You can have an algorithm which infringes ten
different patents, each of which focuses on different parts of what's
going on in that algorithm.  So the result is that there is thousands of
things in a big program that might be patented, each of which might be
patented by somebody. Well, suppose, 10% of them actually are patented
by somebody or other. That means a hundreds of different patents, each of
which gives somebody a basis to sue you for developing the program. Isn't
that fun for software developer? You write a program and now hundreds
of different licenses to sue you have been handed out.

{01:34:07}

This is not good for software development of any kind, and that includes
free software. The free software foundation just launched the campaign
for the elimination of software patents. It's called "End software
patents". Take a look for it. And this is a battle that we going to
have to fight in every country. Software patents are a stupid policy
and they're also a nasty policy, because they restrict every programmer
and any software user, but the megacorporations like them, because the
megacorporations in any field own /?/ have the patents, and they use these
patents, thereful /?/ patents to make everybody else cross-license with
them, with the exceptions of the companies we call "patent trolls", those
patent trolls are companies whose only business or principal business
is taking around a bunch of patents and finding others that they can
sue. All they do is squeeze money out of somebody else. They're parasites.

So, we now have to face the attempts of these companies to stop us
from writing free software. Twenty years ago it was a valid and only
/?/ answered question whether we would have the ability to develop a
broad range of free software. Today, since we mostly done that already,
that's not much of a question anymore, but the question now is: will
we be permitted to serve the public? Or will those who want the public
to be helpless and divided by the help of governments to forbid us from
serving the public?

{01:36:48}

So I'd like to cover a few specific topics. One is: free software
and employment.

=== Free software and employment ===

Some people predict that if the world moves to free software, 
all software development employment will go away. Now, this
is just fud. Look at the IT sector. The IT sector includes many different kinds of
jobs, paid programming work is a small fraction of that. We look at paid
programming. Developing a proprietary software is a small fraction of
that, because most of it is development of custom software, programs
being developed for one client. Now, that is very important, because if
the world rejects proprietary software, these jobs will disappear, this
proprietary software won't be developed anymore. But these jobs will not
disappear, they basically won't change much, because if a business wants
a certain program developed this year, it's just going to have to pay,
even in the world where all the software is free, freedom respecting,
the businesses gonna have to pay.

{01:38:10}

([on the wall clock it's now about 17:50, and Ivannikov steps to RMS
and says, looking at his wristwatch: "Richard, (indistinguishable) ..at
six". Growing laughter.]

I told everyone that this speech takes more than a hour and a half,
I told people it takes usually two and a half hours, I don't know why
they planned it with insufficient time. How sad, well, there is gonna
be no time for questions, that means, that... it's not my fault. They
didn't give us enough time!)

[the remainder of the speech is feeling more rushed]

{01:38:45}

So, basically, these jobs will not be lost, but meanwhile, free software
generates new jobs, jobs adopting and extending free software, so we
lose a few jobs, we gain a few jobs, I don't know whether that's a net
increase or net decrease, the main thing is basically the IT sector
employment is not changed much, there is nothing to be scared of.

=== Free software and education ===

{01:39:05}

The other specific topic is free software and education. Schools must
teach exclusively free software. There are four reasons for this.

The most superficial is to save money. Schools don't have enough
money. They're limited by their budgets, they should not waste their money
paying for permission to run proprietary software. But some proprietary
software companies eliminate this reason, by donating by gratis or nearly
gratis copies of their non-free software. And why do they do this? Is
it because they are idealistic and they want to promote education? I
don't think so. They are trying to use the schools to impose dependency
on society. The idea is that schools teaches the students to use that
non-free software, and the students graduate, and after they graduate the
same company does not offer them gratis copies anymore, and especially not
to the companies that they go to work for. So, in effect, the idea is:
the company pick ups the school and uses it to push the students, which
push all society into a pit. It's like handing out gratis samples of an
addictive drug, saying: inject this into your students, the first dose
is gratis. After that they'll have to pay. The schools should refuse to
participate, refuse to be used in this way, because the school has the
social mission: to educate the next generation to be good citizens of
their strong, capable, cooperating free society. And a way you do that
is by teaching people to be free software users.

{01:41:03}

But there is a deeper reason, for the sake of educating the best
programmers.  You see. Some kids /?/ of the age of thirteen or so, they
are naturally born programmers and they're fascinated with programming,
they want know how the computer works, they want to know how the system
works, if this kid uses a program, he wants to know how it works, but
when the kid asks the teacher how this works, if it's proprietary, the
teacher can only answer: "I'm sorry, I don't know, it's a secret". But
with free software the teacher can explain it as much as he knows,
and then say: here is the source code, read it and you'll understand
everything. [laughter, applause]

And that kid will read it all, because he's fascinated, and this way
he gets the chance to learn something very important: how to program
well. That's different from just to knowing how to program, which is
obvious for him. The way you learn write good clean code is by reading
lots of code and writing lots of code. Only free software give you the
chance to do this. Every time this kid finds something in that source
code which is hard to understand, he learns something important: don't
write it that way. If even he can't understand, then it must be really
hard to understand, so he's got to see lots of badly written code to
learn all the things not to do. Only with free software every school can
give kids this opportunity. I had to go to a special lab at MIT to have
an opportunity like this, because the lab had a free operating system.
Today every school can have it. But it has to reject proprietary software.

{01:42:54}

But there is even deeper reason, which is for moral education. Education
of good citizenship. Schools have to teach the spirit of good will,
the habit of helping your neighbor. So every class should have a rule:
students, if you bring software to class, you may not keep it for
yourself, you must share it with the rest of the class, until sharing
software with other people around you becomes normal practice.

But, the school has to follow it's own rule in order to set that good
example.  It has to practice what it preaches. Thus, the school must
only bring free software to class. Every school should teach and use only
free software.  When it says for the students: "Here is the computer you
can use", it should have only free software in it, and all the source
code should be available for these students to use, and on some of the
machines the students should be able to change it and maintain it, they
should be able to be the sysadmins, they should be able to be the system
developers, because by doing it you learn how to do it.

{01:44:08}

This university should move completely to free software, there should
be no non-free program inside these buildings.

[long applause]

(So, since we now have to leave... [hands out two packs of stickers]
Can we put these at the exit, these are some stickers...

[applause]

{1:45:07}

These say: "GPLv3", and these have the gnu and the penguin, both
flying. [happy laughter, applause]

Take as many stickers as you can use.)

{1:45:22}

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@@ Строка 707: / Строка 707: @@
 So, of course I couldn't resist. [light laughter]
-{00:59:48}
+{01:59:48}
 But why is the word gnu so humour charged? It's because according to