A recent attack piece against Richard Stallman was written by Linus Torvalds on the eve of Obama’s election.

Black and white by Linus Torvalds

Linus begins with this:

So I’m pretty well-known for not exactly being a huge fan of the FSF and Richard Stallman, despite the fact that I obviously love the GPLv2 and use it as the license for all my projects that I care about.

How unfortunate to write negatively of Stallman in the very first sentence.

I was surprised to find that I have never seen nor heard of this movie before it just suddenly appeared in Google video today. Called Alternative Freedom the Movie I just couldn’t resist.

Cast:

Doseone (rapper: pop culture commentator) DJ Danger mouse (mix maker extraordinaire) Richard Stallman (The Grand philosopher of Free Software) Lawrence Lessig (Super lawyer, creator of Creative commons) Andrew “Bunnie” huang (reverse engineering pro)

I heard a phrase today that reminded me of my childhood: “…learning and sharing together”. I’m not sure if I ever heard this exact phrase, but it was definitely a theme that was central to my early education; it’s now a central theme of my life again, this time through free software. This link between free software and education was first made by Richard Stallman in his essay Why Schools Should Use Exclusively Free Software, and this link is now being reinforced by the work that’s going on with the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

A transcript is now online of: RMS’s April 1st GPLv3 talk. Audio and video recordings will be online later today. Topics covered in the talk include:

• What is free software?
• The GNU project
• Free software licences

Below is the table of contents for a transcript I just put online of a 2006 talk by Richard Stallman on “Free Software and the Future of Freedom”.

Twenty years ago, someone made a transcript of a free software talk he gave in Stocholm. There are quite a lot of similarities between the 2006 version and 1986 version.

Here’s the 2006 transcript:

• http://fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html

A few years back, Eric S. Raymond (or, as everyone else calls him, ESR), wrote a lengthy paper about this community. Entitled The Cathedral and the Bazaar, he wrote about how the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) community does what it wants when it wants to.

I don’t think he was entirely wrong; I just don’t think he was entirely right, either.

Which do you like best: the satisfying, rich taste of principle in free software? Or do you prefer the less morally filling and pragmatic goodness of open source? Do you wish people would stop endlessly rehashing the whole question of “free” versus “open source?” Or do you enjoy the chance to talk about goals and philosophy? As you might suspect, since I’m bringing it up…

I am writing this blog entry in Nicaragua. I could stay with my friend Phil, in a nice western house close to the town centre with water, 24/7 wireless internet, hot water shower, my own bathroom and toilet, and a modern kitchen. Or, I could stay with my friend Dora and her four children, who live in the outskirts of Esteli, with… well, put it this way: none of the above.

OK, so I admit: I can’t get enough news about SCO. It’s like the best and worst parts of a soap opera, train wreck, and slapstick comedy all rolled up into one big, sticky ball. This week’s entry into their history of shame is a claim to own the standard Unix executable file format, which is ridiculous for more reasons than I feel like going into right now. What I took away from the whole circus, though, is that you’re playing with fire if you entrust your company or personal computing to proprietary software vendors.