BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
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Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#2BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system?
Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software.
He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#3BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
His laptop was stolen in Argentina, I think.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#4BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
Yet his creation succeeded spectacularly.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#5BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
I don't think it's fair to treat him this way.
Except for the kernel, pretty much everything I use is GNU or was inspired by GNU. From the coreutils to the window environment, passing through the compiler, most linux systems are half GNU.
Besides, we need activists like Stallman in the same way we need activists like Peta or activists like Greenpeace. They might be too radical and close-minded, but they always have a point; they force society to rethink some of its values, and act as whistle-blowers for some injustices that might go unnoticed.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#6Wow. I was one year old when this was published.
Stallman's combination of sort-of-maddeningly-precise nerdspeak and revolutionary zeal has always made me cock my head and listen--if not to every word, then at least to some of his more apt analogies:
"I think it is important to say that information is different from material
objects like cars and loaves of bread because people can copy it and share it
on their own and, if nobody attempts to stop them, they can change it and make
it better for themselves. That is a useful thing for people to do. This isn't
true of loaves of bread. If you have one loaf of bread and you want another,
you can't just put your loaf of bread into a bread copier. You can't make
another one except by going through all the steps that were used to make the
first one. It therefore is irrelevant whether people are permitted to copy
it—it's impossible."
That quote also reminded me of Paul Graham talking about how "files move around like smells" at his PyCon keynote this year. He was responding to a semi-panicked question about "how will we make money if we can't charge for copies of software?!":
"If you imagined that we lived like on the moon, and everything--you know, we
had to get like air in pipes, and paid for the air, right? People could charge
for smells. People could charge for good smells, right? And so it would seem
reasonable for smells to be property. But now, you walk by restaurant, and you
smell this delicious smell, you get this like free boost--for nothing! And
like, I think the record labels are like these people who are from the moon,
right? And they used to be able to sell these things because the only way you
could get them was through their channel. But now, files move around like smells.
And it's not convenient to charge for them. Ultimately this stuff is
pragmatic. I realize that doesn't sound very principled, but historically it
seems to be the way things work."
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#7BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
And yet the guy is almost certainly an order of magnitude more successful and respected than you.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#8BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
also his passport. If I understand correctly, he was distressed he can't get to Brasil for his next talk.
Also future talks will also be affected. Imagine how bad it is to lose your passport in a foreign country. Instead of catching the flight next day you have a visit at the embassy and a lot of waiting.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#9BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
Is this an attempt at mockery? Please, let me be the next 60-year-old with my code powering half of the planet, a philosophy thirty years ahead of its time, touring the world, with my laptop stolen en route to my next talk.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#10There were all kinds of interesting articles in BYTE. I remember finding a whole box of them when I was still in grade school - tossed out by the public library - and I spent the summer reading and memorizing them.
Somehow I missed this interview until now. Cheers, Stallman!