“Libre Software, Libre Education” with Richard Stallman(Columbia University, 10-17-2014)
The lecture “Libre Software, Libre Education” was held in Butler Library on the Columbia University campus on October 17th. Roughly 20 people attended the event, most of whom were Columbia University students. The speaker, Richard Stallman is, according to the event description, a “Mac Arthur Award winner, Harvard alum, founder of the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation, hacker and freedom advocate…” The lecture ran for an hour and a half with a question and answer period following the event. The lecture mainly focused on Mr. Stallman’s own philosophy towards the free software movement and open source computing, only briefly touching on free online education.
Stallman’s philosophy towards software, hardware and all of computing technology is that of total freedom. He is even opposed to the phrase “open-source” because it evades the moral issues associated with the word “free”. He has established four criteria that he calls the four essential freedoms. The first freedom is to run it as you wish; second is the ability to study and change source code; third is the ability to make exact copies to sell or give as desired; and fourth is the ability to make copies of copies to sell and give as desired. If any of these freedoms do not exist in a program, than the user is subjugated by the owner or creator of that software. If the user is not free than there is the possibility for surveillance. He would like to see people take control of their computing and not have it controlled by a company or government. In essence the user can control a program or the program can control the user. He considers Facebook and Instagram to be surveillance mechanisms. Users can make choices, however, that can combat the massive data collection and surveillance caused by proprietary software. Some examples of free software formats include Ogg and WebM formats. Stallman finds proprietary software to be a form of “digital colonialism.”
Proprietary software includes many malicious functionalities, in which the companies design programs at the expense of the users. Some examples of these malicious functionalities include; ways of spying on users, digital restrictions, “back doors”, and censorship capabilities. Stallman calls out big names such as Microsoft Windows, Apple, Android and others who use these functionalities as a way to gain control of their users and to change things about the software without the consent of the user. These “backdoors” can delete programs and applications without the consent of the user. He also points to various websites and companies who make users identify themselves to use their product, and in turn collect that data. He gives one example of the Amazon Kindle, on which the e-book of George Orwell’s classic 1984 was remotely deleted from thousands of devices due to a license dispute. Stallman believes that no one should be able to know what a person is reading, let alone what passages the person is underlining within the book.
Richard Stallman started working as a programmer of operating software technology in the 1980s, when he began work on the free software operating system, GNU. The operating system was built through a team of programmers dedicated to the free software movement. At one point in the early 1990s, GNU collaborated with Linux developer, Torvalds, who added the “kernel” to the GNU system. This last piece allowed the operating system to work and has been running ever since with help from many programmers. The system has also become Linux and much of the Linux code has been derived from GNU code. The two ended up splitting ideologically and there has been a rift between the GNU/ Free Software Movement and the Linux/ Open Source Software movement. Open source being less concerned with the moral aspects of the movement and more concerned with increased access.
Stallman also addressed copyright concerns. He believes that all non-practical works, such as literary and artistic works should not be free. He suggests a ten year copyright time frame, instead of life plus seventy years. Practical works, including source code, should be free. He considers source code to be similar in nature to recipes, which are guides for creating useful works that can be tweaked to gain different results.
Stallman concluded his lecture pressing the need for people to make free software for all aspects of consumer computing, including educational software. The more people that are committed to a free or open source software movement, the more users will be able to control their own computing.
Although many of Stallman’s ideas may be considered too radical for many people’s everyday life, (he himself does not have a cell phone or use credit cards if possible, because of the tracking and surveillance capabilities) they do tend to reflect digital humanities principles. However, some aspects that Stallman finds to be completely unethical, the data collection and tracking software for example, can actually benefit the digital humanities community. He chooses to ignore the fact that some people do enjoy certain things in their life being tracked, taking the overarching ethical quandaries that come with it as a necessary evil of progress (who doesn’t love using Google maps when lost). These types of software in the hands of digital humanists can be used to benefit society, not exploit it. Proprietary software does have certain benefits, such as a guarantee of tech support, and long term preservation.
Free and open source software is a necessary alternative to proprietary software. Stallman voices opinions which many choose to ignore in order to live and work conveniently (and effectively) in the 21st Century. But many of us cannot use our cell phones, e-mail services or GPS without thinking of the recent events involving the NSA and Snowden and other privacy breaches. It’s nice to know that someone out there is actively fighting what many of us cannot. We need someone like Richard Stallman to remind us that there are alternative resources to that appear all too indispensable to our everyday lives.