Saint Stallman
Posted on 10/23/2006 9:07:01 AM PDT by N3WBI3
Software radical Richard Stallman helped build the Linux revolution. Now he threatens to tear it apart.
The free Linux operating system set off one of the biggest revolutions in the history of computing when it leapt from the fingertips of a Finnish college kid named Linus Torvalds 15 years ago. Linux now drives $15 billion in annual sales of hardware, software and services, and this wondrous bit of code has been tweaked by thousands of independent programmers to run the world's most powerful supercomputers, the latest cell phones and TiVo video recorders and other gadgets.
But while Torvalds has been enshrined as the Linux movement's creator, a lesser-known programmer--infamously more obstinate and far more eccentric than Torvalds--wields a startling amount of control as this revolution's resident enforcer. Richard M. Stallman is a 53-year-old anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software should be free of charge. He and a band of anarchist acolytes long have waged war on the commercial software industry, dubbing tech giants "evil" and "enemies of freedom" because they rake in sales and enforce patents and copyrights--when he argues they should be giving it all away.
Despite that utopian anticapitalist bent, Linux and the "open-source" software movement have lured billions of dollars of investment from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat and other tech vendors, plus corporate customers such as Wall Street banks, Google and Amazon and Hollywood special-effects shops. IBM has spent a billion dollars embracing Linux, using it as a counterweight to the Microsoft Windows monopoly and to Sun Microsystems' Unix-based business.
Now Stallman is waging a new crusade that could end up toppling the revolution he helped create. He aims to impose new restrictions on IBM and any other tech firm that distributes software using even a single line of Linux code. They would be forbidden from using Linux software to block users from infringing on copyright and intellectual-property rights ("digital rights management"); and they would be barred from suing over alleged patent infringements related to Linux.
Stallman's hold on the Linux movement stems from the radical group he formed in 1985: the Free Software Foundation. The Boston outfit, which he still runs, is guided by a "manifesto" he published that year, urging programmers (hackers) to join his socialist crusade. The group made Stallman a cult hero among hackers--and ended up holding licensing rights to crucial software components that make up the Linux system.
Stallman hopes to use that licensing power to slap the new restraints on the big tech vendors he so reviles. At worst it could split the Linux movement in two--one set of suppliers and customers deploying an older Linux version under the easier rules and a second world using a newer version governed by the new restrictions. That would threaten billions of dollars in Linux investment by customers and vendors alike.
A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won't comment on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by this writer. But his brazen gambit already is roiling the hacker world. His putsch "has the potential to inflict massive collateral damage upon our entire ecosystem and jeopardize the very utility and survival of open source," says a paper published in September by key Linux developers, who "implore" Stallman to back down. "This is not an exaggeration," says James Bottomley, the paper's chief author. "There is significant danger to going down this path." (Stallman's camp claims Bottomley's paper contains "inaccurate information.")
Simon Lok, chief of Lok Technology in San Jose, Calif., a maker of cheap wireless-networking gear, dumped Linux a few years ago in fear of the Stallman bunch. "I said, 'One day these jackasses will do something extreme, and it's going to kill us.' Now it's coming to fruition," Lok says. "Some of this stuff is just madness. These guys are fanatics." He adds: "Who do these people think they are?"
Even the Linux program's progenitor and namesake, Linus Torvalds, rejects Stallman's new push to force tech companies to design their software his way and to abandon patent rights. Torvalds vows to stick with the old license terms, thereby threatening the split that tech vendors so fear. The new license terms Stallman proposes "are trying to move back into a more 'radical' and 'activist' direction," Torvalds says via e-mail. "I think it's great when people have ideals--but ideals (like religion) are a hell of a lot better when they are private. I'm more pragmatic."
But then, Richard Stallman rarely is pragmatic--and in some ways he is downright bizarre. He is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating. His own Web site (www.stallman.org) says Stallman engages in what he calls "rhinophytophilia"--"nasal sex" (also his term) with flowers; he brags of offending a bunch of techies from Texas Instruments by plunging his schnoz into a bouquet at dinner and inviting them to do the same.
His site also boasts a recording of him singing--a capella and badly--his own anthem to free software. ("Hoarders can get piles of money / that is true, hackers, that is true. / But they cannot help their neighbors, that's not good, hackers, that's not gooood," he warbles, which culminates in polite applause from his followers.) He hasn't hacked much new code in a decade or more. Instead he travels the world to give speeches and pull publicity stunts, donning robes and a halo to appear as a character he calls "St. IGNUcius" and offer blessings to his followers. (GNU, coined in his first manifesto, is pronounced "Ga-NEW" and stands for "Gnu's Not Unix"; the central Linux license is known as the GNU license.)
And though he styles himself as a crusader for tech "freedom," Stallman labors mightily to control how others think, speak and act, arguing, in Orwellian doublespeak, that his rules are necessary for people to be "free." He won't speak to reporters unless they agree to call the operating system "GNU/Linux," not Linux. He urges his adherents to avoid such terms as "intellectual property" and touts "four freedoms" he has sworn to defend, numbering them 0, 1, 2 and 3. In June Stallman attempted to barge into the residence of the French prime minister to protest a copyright bill, then unrolled a petition in a Paris street while his adoring fans snapped photos.
Long ago Stallman was a gifted programmer. A 1974 graduate of Harvard with a degree in physics, he began graduate school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology but dropped out and took a job in an MIT lab. There he grew furious that companies wouldn't let him tinker with the code in their products. A Xerox laser printer was a key culprit. In the early 1980s he called on hackers to fight their oppressors by helping him create a free clone of Unix, naming it GNU.
Stallman and his allies hacked away for nearly a decade but couldn't get GNU to work. In 1991 Torvalds, then an unknown college kid in Finland, produced in six months what Stallman's team had failed to build in years--a working "kernel" for an operating system. Torvalds posted this tiny 230-kilobyte file containing 10,000 lines of code to a public server, dubbing it "Linux" and inviting anyone to use it.
Soon people were combining Torvalds' Linux kernel with Stallman's GNU components to make a complete operating system. The program was a hit. But to Stallman's dismay people referred to it as Linux, not GNU. Torvalds became famous. Stallman got pushed aside. The ultimate insult came in 1999 when his Free Software Foundation was given a "Linus Torvalds Award." Stallman accepted but said it was "like giving the Han Solo award to the Rebel Alliance."
As programmers wrote hundreds of building blocks to add to Linux, Stallman's Free Software Foundation persuaded them to hand over their copyrights to the group and let it handle licensing of their code. Stallman wrote the central license for Linux: the GNU General Public License or GPL. For his part, Linux creator Torvalds never signed his creation over to the group--but he did adopt the GNU license, granting Stallman further sway.
In recent years Stallman and the FSF have been cracking down on big Linux users, enforcing terms of the existing license (GPLv2, for version 2) and demanding that the big tech outfits crack open their proprietary code whenever they inserted lines from Linux. Cisco and TiVo have been targets; Cisco caved in to Stallman's demands rather than endure months of abuse from his noisy worldwide cult of online jihadists. Nvidia, which makes graphics cards for Linux computers but won't release enough of the code behind them to satisfy Stallmanites, also came under attack. "It's an enemy of the free software community, so we call them 'inVideous,'" says Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation.
Now the Stallman stalwarts are pushing a new version of the Linux license--GPLv3, with its tougher restrictions and a ban on anything that would protect or enforce copyright and other digital rights. Thus Stallman is living an anarchist's dream: The tech giants he has spent his career attacking send lawyers to sit at his feet and beg. Stallman has invited companies to comment on his drafts but insists he alone decides what goes into the final version, due in early 2007.
Often he won't listen. HP suggested changes in patent language in the new license. In a sign of how much fear Stallman inspires even at the largest tech company in the world, HP's lawyers emphasize they didn't "ask for changes"--they merely "suggested modifications." Whatever. Stallman rejected them.
In September a committee of leading Linux companies spent two days in Chicago discussing the GPLv3 with Stallman's representatives--and left worried. Stallman's camp refused to answer even simple questions about whether v2 and v3 code will be able to coexist. "They've been at this for nine months, and it's time to clarify. Everyone wants to make sure that Linux keeps accelerating," says Stuart Cohen, chief executive of Open Source Development Labs, a vendor-funded consortium in Beaverton, Ore. that employs Linus Torvalds and supports Linux development.
Most major tech vendors declined comment rather than risk tangling with Stallman's enforcers, such as his sidekick and attorney, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen. A spokesman for Novell, the second-biggest Linux distributor, says the company won't comment because negotiations are ongoing. Red Hat also declined to comment. Privately some Linux vendors say they hope Stallman will relent and soften the terms of GPLv3.
One big potential victim of the Stallman stunt is Red Hat, the leading Linux distributor, with 61% market share. Red Hat bundles together hundreds of programs contributed by thousands of outside coders. If Linus Torvalds sticks with his old kernel under the older and less restrictive version-2 license, and Stallmanites ship version-3 code, what is Red Hat to do? The two licenses appear to be incompatible. There's also the problem of forfeiting patent enforcement rights if Red Hat ships v3 code. Red Hat could stay with an entirely "v2" Linux system, taking on the burden of developing its own versions of whatever programs move to v3. But it's not clear that Red Hat has the staffing to do that.
"Red Hat gets a lot of code from people who don't work for Red Hat. They would have to replace all that and do the work in-house," says Larry W. McVoy, chief executive of software developer Bitmover and a longtime Torvalds collaborator. Even then, however, Stallman and his loyalists may carry on developing their own v3 versions. This "forking" of multiple incompatible versions could lead to "Balkanization" and derail Linux, the Torvalds camp warns.
Red Hat and other Linux promoters also may find themselves in an awkward spot with customers. "IT managers want to buy stuff that puts them at as little risk as possible. If there was a risk that Stallman could become such a loose cannon, that's something most IT managers would have wanted to know before they bet their companies on Linux," McVoy says.
Some customers are wary. ActiveGrid, an open-source software maker in San Francisco, originally planned to distribute its program under a gpl license but changed plans after a big European bank declared it wouldn't use products covered by the gpl, says Peter Yared, chief executive of ActiveGrid.
The biggest beneficiaries of Stallman's suicide-bomber move could be other companies Stallman detests: the proprietary old guard--Microsoft, which pitches its Windows operating system as "safer" than Linux, and Sun, which lost customers to Linux but now hopes to lure them back to an open-source version of its Solaris system, which doesn't use the GPL.
And a big loser, eventually, could be Stallman himself. If he relents now, he likely would be branded a sellout by his hard-core followers, who might abandon him. If he stands his ground, customers and tech firms may suffer for a few years but ultimately could find a way to work around him. Either way, Stallman risks becoming irrelevant, a strange footnote in the history of computing: a radical hacker who went on a kamikaze mission against his own program and went down in flames, albeit after causing great turmoil for the people around him. Collateral Damage
Richard Stallman's kamikaze attack on Linux could hurt tech companies that have built thriving businesses on top of this free program. These are the top targets.
We covered that pretty well earlier in the thread. Why don't you take the time to actually read it before you start bloviating.
True.
If Stallman really goes over the edge on GPL3, (it's possible he might realise the danger and back off- it's not final yet), I forsee many distributions advertizing themselves as GPL2. It might even be something Linus would do on his kernel builds. A 'uname -a' on my laptop reports "2.6.18-1.2200.fc5" for the kernel version. We could see it modified in the future to "2.6.18-1.2200.gpl2.fc5" so it would be easily identifiable by both humas and software.
quote of the thread...
That's the first thought that went through my head too.
The license goes with specific pieces of software, not a whole system. A vendor could easily modify the GPL2 kernel like TiVo, and include any GPL3 software, as long as the GPL3 sofware is not modified like TiVo.
Besides, the comment was "Linux software," and there's a lot of non-GPL Linux applications that are in no way affected by the GPL, or its terms. So the statement is absolutely false.
Sounds like even you are having trouble disputing the article.
You might think it's right because you pull the same stunts. He was making technically true comments in a way that is misleading or unfair given the whole picture. Remember, the second-best lie is the truth, twisted.
I especially liked his comments on enforcement of the GPL against OEMs. He has a problem with that, but I don't think he, or any of us, have a problem with Microsoft going after OEMs distributing Windows without proper licensing.
Another was going after the patent clause of the GPL, which only brings it up to speed with other open source licenses like Sun's -- which he mentions but doesn't complain about.
Obviously they were trying to do the same thing - write a kernel - types of kernels may be a reason Torvalds succeeded first but the article remains correct, and you left reaching for straws.
He was trying to say that one kid was better than Stallman's whole team, and it falls apart when you look at the facts. Again, misleading, distorts the facts.
LOL watching you try to discredit the Forbe's article was hilarious.
About the absolutely provable lies I caught. No comment on those?
Michael Moore learned how to technically tell the truth while misrepresenting it so much that the end effect is a lie. I think Lyons learned most of his writing from Michael Moore, although he totally blew it on the factual error of the GPL3 terms and the origin of the name "Linux."
If there's a split, expect the "V2" folks to win, because the folks shipping distros for profit are going to back the "V2" side. And, frankly, good... Stallman is over-reaching with the V3 license.
One thing GE and Stallman have in common is they overestimate the force that the extreemest can really bring to bear on the majority of OSS users....
I'm obviously not overestimating anything. Stallman has the power to create legally incompatiple versions of Linux, that could require Linux vendors to invest significantly more dollars to provide updates to Linux in the future. You can keep trying to close your eyes and wish it all away, but with 0 of the ~5,000 applications currently controlled by Stallman breaking with him over GPL3, looks like the kernel guys might be one of just a few if not the only one that refuses to convert.
So does Bill Gates, Steve Jobbs, Darl McBride, Myself, You, and Bill the Janitor. The problem for this whole group is because all key pieces ofa Linux Distro like RedHat are out there in a compatible format those versions can continue to exist. If Stallman was to say put the gcc compiler under a license that says 'this can not be used with gplv2 software' he cant unrelease the versions that are themselves under gplv2. He only has power if nobody has the will and resources to maintain that version themselves, unfortunately for him IBM, RedHat, HP, Novell, and thousands of volunteers will do what needs to be done to keep Linux healthy.
BTW add Sun to the list of companies that have an interest in keeping things like gcc open for use with DRM, afterall they include a good deal of GPLv2 code with their operating systems (like gcc)..
No he can't. He's not the copyright holder, so he cannot change the license it is distributed under.
He does own the copyright on many if not most of the GNU tools that Linux needs to operate. As I already mentioned above the developers of the tools signed over the copyrights to him as the ultimate tribute of their work to his cause. See post 16 from someone else for more info.
You didn't prove anything was a lie, at best you proved the author made an insignificant mistake on minor peripheral issues. A "lie" is something someone says when they know it to be absolutely false, such as the lie you willingly and knowingly perpetuated for months that some Unix developer was a Russian hacker when you were trying to defend actual Russian hackers who were violating US intellectual property laws. I'll be happy to link it, but since it was just a few days ago that you admitted it, I'm sure you still remember. THAT was a "lie", hopefully you won't confuse the two again.
Geez, is that just classic or what? GE lecturing someone on the difference between a lie and making an "insignificant mistake on a minor peripheral issue". I think my irony meter just broke. Next he's going to come out against someone twisting semantics.
I did prove there were "numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations," as was my initial claim in this thread. Lyons always has this problem when writing about OSS, therefore he should not be trusted.
such as the lie you willingly and knowingly perpetuated for months that some Unix developer was a Russian hacker
There's a difference between a lie meant to factually deceive and stringing along an idiot who should have been able to catch it if he knew as much as he claimed he did.
trying to defend actual Russian hackers who were violating US intellectual property laws
You see there's a little problem. They're in Russia. US laws do not apply. Aside from that, what I did say was legal was emulating EFI, which doesn't belong to Apple, but Intel, who has open-sourced much of the code for it anyway.
That's not a problem, that's the pathetic excuse you're trying to give for your endless defense of Russian hackers who violate US IP protection, including the lies you knowingly perpetuated for months that attempted to claim an American Unix developer was a Russian hacker too. Don't deny it, it's all on the record now, as you know.
1) He owns no copyrights in the Linux kernel.
2) He cannot retroactively "unlicense" anything previously released with a GPLv2 license. The only thing he can do is "fork" new development, in which case, as I poitned out earlier, the "v2" folks are going to win over the "v3" folks because the majority of folks using the programs are doing so on systems that will be incompatible with GPLv3 (unless they're running something obscure like HURD).
1) we already know the kernel is apparently staying v2, although so far it appears to be the only thing.
2) Yes, Stallman would create new v3 versions of his ~5,000 software tools, and encourage the devs to use the new versions. The can use the v2 Linux kernel on their v3 anti-DRM frankenstein O/S without needing a different kernel, and the anti-DRM folks across the globe willl likely rush to using it just like some use the "all-free" Debian now.
Saint Stallman
Only up to the time that the v2 and v3 forks have diverged sufficently. If they functionally differ its more than likely the linux kernel will not work with gpl3.
Stallman's GNU system will even run on top of Solaris (see Nexenta), the Linux kernel guys would have to pull a Microsoft and purposefully lock Stallman out which could land them in EU or other court.
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