🚀 go-pugleaf

The following text is taken from Page 31 The Guardian, Thursday November 16th
1989 without permission. The Guardian is a national newspaper of a
liberal hue. The computer coverage is IMHO the best in a newspaper
(The editor, Jack Schofield, is a great supporter of Unix, OSI,
Ataris, Amigas and other good things).

All spelling mistakes are my own.


[Big picture of rms at an LPF rally]

[14pt]Richard Stallman has taken on some of the most powerful computer
companies in America in his crusade for freedom of programming
information. Benjamin Wooley reports
[Headline: Love is for wimps and hackers]

'PEOPLE WILL program for love' proclaimed Richard Stallman. Not, note,
for a generous renumeration package, not for prestige (which never
seemed likely in any case), not even for an enternity of
mind-mouldering servitude, but for love.
 
  Stallman made this assertion just two years ago, and has been
sticking to it ever since as part of his campaign for "Programming
Freedom".

  This is a man who seems seriously out of step with the times. Love
is for wimps. Computing is big business now. It's about expensive
consultancy, not free thinking.

   Nevertheless, he is to be taken seriously. Stallman embodies the
true spirit of hacking - not the fraud, embezzelment, corruption and
other crimesthat happen to be commited using a computer and are
therefore attributed to hackers, but the fight for the freedom of
commercial information, the challenge to the computer and media
industry's assumption of a proprietary right to own information and
exploit it in anyway it pleases. 

  Stallman works- for love, presumably - at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's pioneering Artificial Intelligence lab,
where he developed the influential Emacs (Editing Macros) word
processing system, which is available on a wide range of computers.

  His office is a small, dark cell in one of the MIT campus towers. It
seems to be his complete universe - indeed, little short of a  Big
Bang could have generated such as chaotic arrangement of clothing,
bedding, books and papers. The only signs of order are a program
listing displayed on a large VDU and a young, neat amanuesis sat next
to him, keying in his bubbling stream of consciousness into the the
computer. 
   Reluctantly enticed into the lab's harsh illumination, Stallman
looks like a pale-skinned, soft-bodied dweller of cave-pools,
unadapted to the worlds glare and noise. Sitting on a sofa in a
reception area with white,. melamine walls smeared in mathematical
graffiti, watching burned out researchers wander to and fro like the
undead, it is hard to believe that you had  come to the right planet.

  Stallman, however, knows where he is comming from. He has taken  on
some of the most powerful Information Technology companies in America-
Apple, Lotus, Ashton-Tate - in his crusade against the Enclosure of
information. With a group of like-minded programmers, he has embarked
on the development of a complete program suite, called GNU (GNU is Not
Unix) designed to provide an alternative, non-proprietary software
environment for computer users- a new programming world for those
escaping the legal persecutions of the old.

  What he is fighting is nothing less that the spreading
commercialisation of computers.
"In the time that I've worked as a programmer I've watched the field
change from one of co-operating and sharing, where people could re-use
previous work in any useful way, to advance the state of the art, to
one in which co-operation is largely forbidden by the owners of the
software.

   Copyright, the main legal instrument for controlling information
was originally intended to be used by authors to protect their
creative effort. However, which the introduction of cheap copying
technology- tape recorders, photo-copiers, personal computers, it has
increasingly been adopted by publishers to protect their profits. "It
is no longer possible to enforce any kind of intellectual property
rights without a heavy hand", said Stallman

This was, he things, exemplified by the recent cases brought by Apple,
Lotus, and Ashton-Tate against companies that have products with a
"look and feel" similar to theirs. At stake was whether or not a
programs user interface, the means by which the user manipulates it
can be copyrighted. if it can, argues Stallman, so can a typewriters
User interface, forcing each typewriter manufacturer to develop their
own arrangement of keys. And so can a car's, forcing each car company
to use different arrangements to the steering wheel.
  In their defence, Apple and the others claim that they are merely
seeking to protect their investment. This cuts no ice with Stallman "
It's the user who makes the investment, by learning how the interface
works", he says.
 Also, Apple was seeking to protect work that not only originated at
Xerox and Stanford, but the desktop metaphor it used to achieve the
Macintosh's much lauded Intuitive design. So shouldn't Apple by
paying the office equipment manufacturers something for the investment
they made in designing "their" user interface?

 The fact that companies are even attempting to press such claims
shows how commercially important the control of information has
become. Information owners have become dangerously possessive, Stallman
says: "There's a tendency to destructive competition, where instead of
trying to run faster yourself, you try to trip up everyone else". The
result is a threat to the benefits that computers are supposed to
confer: " The full fruits of information technology can be realised
only when everyone has the freedom and ability to copy and change
programs"

  Stallman's solution to this problem at least has the merit of
simplicity. It is summed up in the title of his Manifesto: Why
Software Should Be Free. He doesn't mean free in the sense of costing
nothing, but in the sense of available, usable, unrestricted. The
concept of ownership should be replaced by one of service: Programmers
should be paid for adapting and developing software for all.
  In a country where the word "Liberal" is used to denote dangerous
radicalism, such ideas would seem to stand very little chance of
widespread acceptance.
  Nevertheless, he has gained some political recognition for the
League of Programming Freedom he helped found. And the Free Software
Foundation which manages the GNU project apparently thrives, having
it's own monthly GNU's bulletin and support comes from a variety of
programmers, even some computer companies. It has received, for
example, a donation from NeXT, the firm set up by Steve Jobs after
leaving the one he co-founded, Apple.


EOT
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