Free-software activist speaks on moral duty to share
While most people take for granted FBI piracy warnings and encrypted DVDs barring users from making illegal copies and distributing them, computer expert Richard Stallman offered a starkly different perspective. As a guest of the computer science department, Stallman spoke Tuesday in Duncan Hall's McMurtry Auditorium about the validity of the free-software movement. Stallman, who lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is widely known for developing a free operating system called the GNU Project, which is similar to Unix. He has been outspoken since the 1980s about free software and campaigns against federal restrictions on copyright laws.
Not to be confused with the monetary definition of free, the free-software movement allows users to have full access to view and modify software programs instead of using only the finalized version from a software developer.
"The free software movement respects your freedom and respects social solidarity in your community," Stallman said.
Stallman centered his talk on four fundamental freedoms: the freedom to run a program; to study the source code and change it instead of being restricted by what the developer decides; to make copies and distribute them as you wish; and to contribute to the community by distributing the user's modified software.
Stallman said any software programs that lack these freedoms are proprietary programs, which he vehemently opposes.
"The social system of the distribution of use is unethical," Stallman said. "That software shouldn't exist since it's not contributing to society."
He said he believes open source code allows users to identify the components in the software and modify it according to their needs. Closed source codes, such as those in licensed software, do not fully disclose their programming, which Stallman suspects contains malicious software.
"They publish the work in a secret format so that the only way to view [the source code] is through the proprietary software," Stallman said. "Microsoft never announced spy features on their program, other people discovered them."
Though Stallman cited other companies that have similar spy-ware embedded in their programs without the user's knowledge, no one company was the main offender.
"Just don't subscribe to the conditions and limitations of proprietary software," Stallman said.
Awareness of the free open-source software carried out the end of Stallman's two-hour lecture. He emphasized the importance of explaining the free software movement to other people to spur them to political action.
"Today we have what we didn't have 20 years ago - powerful enemies," Stallman said. Large companies have the means and motivation to lobby Congress and devise laws to prohibit the free distribution of software, he said.
"Without [the freedom to run a program], you are the prisoner of the software you're using," Stallman said. "Free software also means no one has power over anyone else. In contrast, proprietary software works under the dictatorship of the developer."
Stallman said he is also concerned with educational institutions that provide proprietary software to students free of charge during their undergraduate years. After the students graduate, they can no longer access the free software and must purchase it for their own use. Stallman likens this process to drug use.
"It's a lot like giving addictive drugs to students so they develop a dependency," Stallman said. "The first dose is gratis, then afterwards you have to pay. Schools won't do that, so they shouldn't give them proprietary software either."
However, Stallman's point of view proved problematic for Mike Foss, a computer and electrical engineering graduate student.
"I didn't fully understand the premise he was coming from," Foss said. "He seemed to put the freedom to exchange open software as a given."
By coincidence, FOSS is an acronym for free and open source software.
"It's excellent to have an extreme point of view [like Stallman's], because that encourages debate," Foss said. "If you don't agree with that, then it's hard to follow the rest of his argument.
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