URL : http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=78

RMS Speaks [icon.gif] Submitted by [14]sankarshan on Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 09:44

Richard M Stallman, more famous by his acronym RMS, spoke for the greater part of 120 mins at K P Basu Memorial Hall of the Jadavpur University, at the meet organized by JU. The iLUG-Calcutta members were part of the audience and this is a account of the proceedings.

RMS was scheduled to speak on GNU/Linux OS & the Free Software Movement. While generally not deviating from his previous speeches and presentations, the occasion was made memorable by the packed audience. For a hall with a comfortable seating capacity of ~200, there were those who stood & sat on the aisle and passage(s) throughout the 2 hours.

The session began with a prelude by Dr A N Basu the VC of JU, introducing RMS to the audience, though his frank admission was noted - RMS needs introduction to only a very few. His short introduction contained a viewpoint on the importance of societal knowledge and the need to perform acts for the greater good of the society. The Pro-VC of JU, Dr Ashok R Thakur, in his short speech integrated the need to program software with the concept of freedom [freedom as espoused by the FSF].

The freedom to run the program, the freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to one's needs, the freedom to redistribute the program to help users and the freedom to improve the program and release the improvements to the public. In this he used a Russian parable of Gorky to illustrate the untiring courage of path breakers and evangelists who had the courage and the vision to forsee the need to make people aware of freedom or the lack of it in their daily life. He so correctly pointed out that the issue transcends the economic sphere into a socio-political domain. The business model of proprietary and monopolistic software and the associated development model needs to be put under the scanner according to him.

RMS expressed the need to speak about the socio-political issue associated with software development. In his opinion, every software project has a self-serving nature in that its richness is built when the community participates in its evolution. A community based development model implements good and moral rules of the society and thus helps in building up the community itself. The software slowly evolves like a city. By means of the now legendary Xerox laser printer model at MIT, he drew a picture of how the proprietary model involving Non Disclosure Agreement(s) stifle productivity and lead to a closed community of programmers working in secrecy. And although paradoxical, Free Software support actually follows the laws of market economics so as to ensure that the developmental model is not hindered or hampered in any way. While non-free software represents in his belief, a choice of "masters", the goal of Free Software is the one that should be more publicised. At this point he talked about the motivation for people who write/create free software. He thinks, and is aware of, the need for people to break the shackles. Some do it for the fun of it, some as a consequence of their political idealogical leanings while some do it for money and appreciation. But whatever maybe the reason for creation of such software, the GNU/Linux movement is a strong one. He expressed a desire to make people more aware of the role of the FSF in the proliferation of the strong and vibrant free software scene. The end part of his talk was dominated by the DMCA, Software patents as well as the trusted computing initiative from Intel & Windows. And hypothesizing about a time when such shackles on intellectual property would make it impossible to work in a computing environment.

RMS's alter ego St IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs also dropped in with his holy blessings on the proceedings.

Some of the memorable quotes of the day :

On being asked if using vi [in the Church of Emacs was a sin] he admitted [as St IGNUcius ] that using vi was not a sin but a penance. On the restrictive and evil influence of monopolistic and proprietary business model, RMS described the incident with the laser printer and the need for a source code as "We became prisoners of our own software"

At the end of the 2 hours, after the distribution of 'some GNU/Linux' stickers was over, the members of the ilUG-Calcutta had a short but interesting interaction with RMS. While personal doubts about the licensing regime and the FSF movement were answered, the individual feelings are best left to be discussed in a meeting.

RMS's writings, speeches and quotes as well as reports on recent activities are available at his personal home page [16]www.stallman.org