26119
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 1
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 2 GNU'S NOT UNIX
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 3
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 4 Conducted by David Betz and Jon Edwards
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 5
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 6 Richard Stallman discusses his public-domain
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 7 UNIX-compatible software system
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 8 with BYTE editors
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 9 (July 1986)
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 10
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 11 Copyright (C) 1986 Richard Stallman. Permission is granted to make and
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 12 distribute copies of this article as long as the copyright and this notice
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 13 appear on all copies.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 14
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 15 Richard Stallman has undertaken probably the most ambitious free software
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 16 development project to date, the GNU system. In his GNU Manifesto,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 17 published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal, Stallman described
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 18 GNU as a "complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 19 that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it... Once GNU is
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 20 written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 21 like air." (GNU is an acronym for GNU's Not UNIX; the "G" is pronounced.)
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 22
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 23 Stallman is widely known as the author of EMACS, a powerful text editor
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 24 that he developed at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It is no
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 25 coincidence that the first piece of software produced as part of the GNU
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 26 project was a new implementation of EMACS. GNU EMACS has already achieved a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 27 reputation as one of the best implementations of EMACS currently available
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 28 at any price.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 29
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 30 BYTE: We read your GNU Manifesto in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 31 What has happened since? Was that really the beginning, and how have you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 32 progressed since then?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 33
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 34 Stallman: The publication in Dr. Dobb's wasn't the beginning of the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 35 project. I wrote the GNU Manifesto when I was getting ready to start the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 36 project, as a proposal to ask computer manufacturers for funding. They
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 37 didn't want to get involved, and I decided that rather than spend my time
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 38 trying to pursue funds, I ought to spend it writing code. The manifesto was
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 39 published about a year and a half after I had written it, when I had barely
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 40 begun distributing the GNU EMACS. Since that time, in addition to making
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 41 GNU EMACS more complete and making it run on many more computers, I have
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 42 nearly finished the optimizing C compiler and all the other software that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 43 is needed for running C programs. This includes a source-level debugger
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 44 that has many features that the other source-level debuggers on UNIX don't
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 45 have. For example, it has convenience variables within the debugger so you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 46 can save values, and it also has a history of all the values that you have
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 47 printed out, making it tremendously easier to chase around list structures.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 48
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 49 BYTE: You have finished an editor that is now widely distributed and you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 50 are about to finish the compiler.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 51
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 52 Stallman: I expect that it will be finished this October.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 53
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 54 BYTE: What about the kernel?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 55
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 56 Stallman: I'm currently planning to start with the kernel that was written
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 57 at MIT and was released to the public recently with the idea that I would
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 58 use it. This kernel is called TRIX; it's based on remote procedure call. I
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 59 still need to add compatibility for a lot of the features of UNIX which it
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 60 doesn't have currently. I haven't started to work on that yet. I'm
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 61 finishing the compiler before I go to work on the kernel. I am also going
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 62 to have to rewrite the file system. I intend to make it failsafe just by
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 63 having it write blocks in the proper order so that the disk structure is
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 64 always consistent. Then I want to add version numbers. I have a complicated
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 65 scheme to reconcile version numbers with the way people usually use UNIX.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 66 You have to be able to specify filenames without version numbers, but you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 67 also have to be able to specify them with explicit version numbers, and
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 68 these both need to work with ordinary UNIX programs that have not been
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 69 modified in any way to deal with the existence of this feature. I think I
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 70 have a scheme for doing this, and only trying it will show me whether it
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 71 really does the job.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 72
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 73 BYTE: Do you have a brief description you can give us as to how GNU as a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 74 system will be superior to other systems? We know that one of your goals is
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 75 to produce something that is compatible with UNIX. But at least in the area
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 76 of file systems you have already said that you are going to go beyond UNIX
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 77 and produce something that is better.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 78
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 79 Stallman: The C compiler will produce better code and run faster. The
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 80 debugger is better. With each piece I may or may not find a way to improve
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 81 it. But there is no one answer to this question. To some extent I am
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 82 getting the benefit of reimplementation, which makes many systems much
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 83 better. To some extent it's because I have been in the field a long time
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 84 and worked on many other systems. I therefore have many ideas to bring to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 85 bear. One way in which it will be better is that practically everything in
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 86 the system will work on files of any size, on lines of any size, with any
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 87 characters appearing in them. The UNIX system is very bad in that regard.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 88 It's not anything new as a principle of software engineering that you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 89 shouldn't have arbitrary limits. But it just was the standard practice in
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 90 writing UNIX to put those in all the time, possibly just because they were
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 91 writing it for a very small computer. The only limit in the GNU system is
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 92 when your program runs out of memory because it tried to work on too much
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 93 data and there is no place to keep it all.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 94
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 95 BYTE: And that isn't likely to be hit if you've got virtual memory. You may
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 96 just take forever to come up with the solution.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 97
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 98 Stallman: Actually these limits tend to hit in a time long before you take
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 99 forever to come up with the solution.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 100
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 101 BYTE: Can you say something about what types of machines and environments
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 102 GNU EMACS in particular has been made to run under? It's now running on
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 103 VAXes; has it migrated in any form to personal computers?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 104
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 105 Stallman: I'm not sure what you mean by personal computers. For example, is
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 106 a Sun a personal computer? GNU EMACS requires at least a megabyte of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 107 available memory and preferably more. It is normally used on machines that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 108 have virtual memory. Except for various technical problems in a few C
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 109 compilers, almost any machine with virtual memory and running a fairly
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 110 recent version of UNIX will run GNU EMACS, and most of them currently do.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 111
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 112 BYTE: Has anyone tried to port it to Ataris or Macintoshes?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 113
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 114 Stallman: The Atari 1040ST still doesn't have quite enough memory. The next
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 115 Atari machine, I expect, will run it. I also think that future Ataris will
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 116 have some forms of memory mapping. Of course, I am not designing the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 117 software to run on the kinds of computers that are prevalent today. I knew
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 118 when I started this project it was going to take a few years. I therefore
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 119 decided that I didn't want to make a worse system by taking on the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 120 additional challenge of making it run in the currently constrained
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 121 environment. So instead I decided I'm going to write it in the way that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 122 seems the most natural and best. I am confident that in a couple of years
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 123 machines of sufficient size will be prevalent. In fact, increases in memory
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 124 size are happening so fast it surprises me how slow most of the people are
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 125 to put in virtual memory; I think it is totally essential.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 126
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 127 BYTE: I think people don't really view it as being necessary for
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 128 single-user machines.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 129
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 130 Stallman: They don't understand that single user doesn't mean single
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 131 program. Certainly for any UNIX-like system it's important to be able to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 132 run lots of different processes at the same time even if there is only one
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 133 of you. You could run GNU EMACS on a nonvirtual-memory machine with enough
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 134 memory, but you couldn't run the rest of the GNU system very well or a UNIX
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 135 system very well.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 136
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 137 BYTE: How much of LISP is present in GNU EMACS? It occurred to me that it
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 138 may be useful to use that as a tool for learning LISP.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 139
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 140 Stallman: You can certainly do that. GNU EMACS contains a complete,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 141 although not very powerful, LISP system. It's powerful enough for writing
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 142 editor commands. It's not comparable with, say, a Common LISP System,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 143 something you could really use for system programming, but it has all the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 144 things that LISP needs to have.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 145
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 146 BYTE: Do you have any predictions about when you would be likely to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 147 distribute a workable environment in which, if we put it on our machines or
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 148 workstations, we could actually get reasonable work done without using
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 149 anything other than code that you distribute?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 150
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 151 Stallman: It's really hard to say. That could happen in a year, but of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 152 course it could take longer. It could also conceivably take less, but
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 153 that's not too likely anymore. I think I'll have the compiler finished in a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 154 month or two. The only other large piece of work I really have to do is in
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 155 the kernel. I first predicted GNU would take something like two years, but
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 156 it has now been two and a half years and I'm still not finished. Part of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 157 the reason for the delay is that I spent a lot of time working on one
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 158 compiler that turned out to be a dead end. I had to rewrite it completely.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 159 Another reason is that I spent so much time on GNU EMACS. I originally
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 160 thought I wouldn't have to do that at all.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 161
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 162 BYTE: Tell us about your distribution scheme.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 163
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 164 Stallman: I don't put software or manuals in the public domain, and the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 165 reason is that I want to make sure that all the users get the freedom to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 166 share. I don't want anyone making an improved version of a program I wrote
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 167 and distributing it as proprietary. I don't want that to ever be able to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 168 happen. I want to encourage the free improvements to these programs, and
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 169 the best way to do that is to take away any temptation for a person to make
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 170 improvements nonfree. Yes, a few of them will refrain from making
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 171 improvements, but a lot of others will make the same improvements and
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 172 they'll make them free.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 173
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 174 BYTE: And how do you go about guaranteeing that?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 175
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 176 Stallman: I do this by copyrighting the programs and putting on a notice
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 177 giving people explicit permission to copy the programs and change them but
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 178 only on the condition that they distribute under the same terms that I
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 179 used, if at all. You don't have to distribute the changes you make to any
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 180 of my programs--you can just do it for yourself, and you don't have to give
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 181 it to anyone or tell anyone. But if you do give it to someone else, you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 182 have to do it under the same terms that I use.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 183
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 184 BYTE: Do you obtain any rights over the executable code derived from the C
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 185 compiler?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 186
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 187 Stallman: The copyright law doesn't give me copyright on output from the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 188 compiler, so it doesn't give me a way to say anything about that, and in
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 189 fact I don't try to. I don't sympathize with people developing proprietary
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 190 products with any compiler, but it doesn't seem especially useful to try to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 191 stop them from developing them with this compiler, so I am not going to.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 192
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 193 BYTE: Do your restrictions apply if people take pieces of your code to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 194 produce other things as well?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 195
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 196 Stallman: Yes, if they incorporate with changes any sizable piece. If it
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 197 were two lines of code, that's nothing; copyright doesn't apply to that.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 198 Essentially, I have chosen these conditions so that first there is a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 199 copyright, which is what all the software hoarders use to stop everybody
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 200 from doing anything, and then I add a notice giving up part of those
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 201 rights. So the conditions talk only about the things that copyright applies
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 202 to. I don't believe that the reason you should obey these conditions is
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 203 because of the law. The reason you should obey is because an upright person
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 204 when he distributes software encourages other people to share it further.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 205
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 206 BYTE: In a sense you are enticing people into this mode of thinking by
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 207 providing all of these interesting tools that they can use but only if they
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 208 buy into your philosophy.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 209
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 210 Stallman: Yes. You could also see it as using the legal system that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 211 software hoarders have set up against them. I'm using it to protect the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 212 public from them.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 213
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 214 BYTE: Given that manufacturers haven't wanted to fund the project, who do
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 215 you think will use the GNU system when it is done?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 216
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 217 Stallman: I have no idea, but it is not an important question. My purpose
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 218 is to make it possible for people to reject the chains that come with
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 219 proprietary software. I know that there are people who want to do that.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 220 Now, there may be others who don't care, but they are not my concern. I
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 221 feel a bit sad for them and for the people that they influence. Right now a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 222 person who perceives the unpleasantness of the terms of proprietary
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 223 software feels that he is stuck and has no alternative except not to use a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 224 computer. Well, I am going to give him a comfortable alternative.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 225 Other people may use the GNU system simply because it is technically
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 226 superior. For example, my C compiler is producing about as good a code as I
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 227 have seen from any C compiler. And GNU EMACS is generally regarded as being
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 228 far superior to the commercial competition. And GNU EMACS was not funded by
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 229 anyone either, but everyone is using it. I therefore think that many people
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 230 will use the rest of the GNU system because of its technical advantages.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 231 But I would be doing a GNU system even if I didn't know how to make it
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 232 technically better because I want it to be socially better. The GNU project
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 233 is really a social project. It uses technical means to make a change in
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 234 society.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 235
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 236 BYTE: Then it is fairly important to you that people adopt GNU. It is not
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 237 just an academic exercise to produce this software to give it away to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 238 people. You hope it will change the way the software industry operates.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 239
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 240 Stallman: Yes. Some people say no one will ever use it because it doesn't
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 241 have some attractive corporate logo on it, and other people say that they
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 242 think it is tremendously important and everyone's going to want to use it.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 243 I have no way of knowing what is really going to happen. I don't know any
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 244 other way to try to change the ugliness of the field that I find myself in,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 245 so this is what I have to do.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 246
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 247 BYTE: Can you address the implications? You obviously feel that this is an
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 248 important political and social statement.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 249
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 250 Stallman: It is a change. I'm trying to change the way people approach
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 251 knowledge and information in general. I think that to try to own knowledge,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 252 to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 253 other people from sharing it, is sabotage. It is an activity that benefits
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 254 the person that does it at the cost of impoverishing all of society. One
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 255 person gains one dollar by destroying two dollars' worth of wealth. I think
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 256 a person with a conscience wouldn't do that sort of thing except perhaps if
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 257 he would otherwise die. And of course the people who do this are fairly
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 258 rich; I can only conclude that they are unscrupulous. I would like to see
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 259 people get rewards for writing free software and for encouraging other
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 260 people to use it. I don't want to see people get rewards for writing
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 261 proprietary software because that is not really a contribution to society.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 262 The principle of capitalism is the idea that people manage to make money by
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 263 producing things and thereby are encouraged to do what is useful,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 264 automatically, so to speak. But that doesn't work when it comes to owning
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 265 knowledge. They are encouraged to do not really what's useful, and what
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 266 really is useful is not encouraged. I think it is important to say that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 267 information is different from material objects like cars and loaves of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 268 bread because people can copy it and share it on their own and, if nobody
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 269 attempts to stop them, they can change it and make it better for
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 270 themselves. That is a useful thing for people to do. This isn't true of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 271 loaves of bread. If you have one loaf of bread and you want another, you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 272 can't just put your loaf of bread into a bread copier. you can't make
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 273 another one except by going through all the steps that were used to make
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 274 the first one. It therefore is irrelevant whether people are permitted to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 275 copy it--it's impossible.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 276 Books were printed only on printing presses until recently. It was
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 277 possible to make a copy yourself by hand, but it wasn't practical because
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 278 it took so much more work than using a printing press. And it produced
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 279 something so much less attractive that, for all intents and purposes, you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 280 could act as if it were impossible to make books except by mass producing
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 281 them. And therefore copyright didn't really take any freedom away from the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 282 reading public. There wasn't anything that a book purchaser could do that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 283 was forbidden by copyright.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 284 But this isn't true for computer programs. It's also not true for tape
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 285 cassettes. It's partly false now for books, but it is still true that for
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 286 most books it is more expensive and certainly a lot more work to Xerox them
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 287 than to buy a copy, and the result is still less attractive. Right now we
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 288 are in a period where the situation that made copyright harmless and
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 289 acceptable is changing to a situation where copyright will become
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 290 destructive and intolerable. So the people who are slandered as "pirates"
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 291 are in fact the people who are trying to do something useful that they have
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 292 been forbidden to do. The copyright laws are entirely designed to help
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 293 people take complete control over the use of some information for their own
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 294 good. But they aren't designed to help people who want to make sure that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 295 the information is accessible to the public and stop others from depriving
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 296 the public. I think that the law should recognize a class of works that are
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 297 owned by the public, which is different from public domain in the same
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 298 sense that a public park is different from something found in a garbage
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 299 can. It's not there for anybody to take away, it's there for everyone to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 300 use but for no one to impede. Anybody in the public who finds himself being
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 301 deprived of the derivative work of something owned by the public should be
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 302 able to sue about it.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 303
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 304 BYTE: But aren't pirates interested in getting copies of programs because
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 305 they want to use those programs, not because they want to use that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 306 knowledge to produce something better?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 307
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 308 Stallman: I don't see that that's the important distinction. More people
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 309 using a program means that the program contributes more to society. You
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 310 have a loaf of bread that could be eaten either once or a million times.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 311
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 312 BYTE: Some users buy commercial software to obtain support. How does your
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 313 distribution scheme provide support?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 314
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 315 Stallman: I suspect that those users are misled and are not thinking
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 316 clearly. It is certainly useful to have support, but when they start
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 317 thinking about how that has something to do with selling software or with
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 318 the software being proprietary, at that point they are confusing
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 319 themselves. There is no guarantee that proprietary software will receive
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 320 good support. Simply because sellers say that they provide support, that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 321 doesn't mean it will be any good. And they may go out of business. In fact,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 322 people think that GNU EMACS has better support than commercial EMACSes. One
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 323 of the reasons is that I'm probably a better hacker than the people who
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 324 wrote the other EMACSes, but the other reason is that everyone has sources
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 325 and there are so many people interested in figuring out how to do things
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 326 with it that you don't have to get your support from me. Even just the free
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 327 support that consists of my fixing bugs people report to me and
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 328 incorporating that in the next release has given people a good level of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 329 support. You can always hire somebody to solve a problem for you, and when
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 330 the software is free you have a competitive market for the support. You can
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 331 hire anybody. I distribute a service list with EMACS, a list of people's
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 332 names and phone numbers and what they charge to provide support.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 333
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 334 BYTE: Do you collect their bug fixes?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 335
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 336 Stallman: Well, they send them to me. I asked all the people who wanted to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 337 be listed to promise that they would never ask any of their customers to
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 338 keep secret whatever they were told or any changes they were given to the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 339 GNU software as part of that support.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 340
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 341 BYTE: So you can't have people competing to provide support based on their
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 342 knowing the solution to some problem that somebody else doesn't know.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 343
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 344 Stallman: No. They can compete based on their being clever and more likely
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 345 to find the solution to your problem, or their already understanding more
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 346 of the common problems, or knowing better how to explain to you what you
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 347 should do. These are all ways they can compete. They can try to do better,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 348 but they cannot actively impede their competitors.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 349
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 350 BYTE: I suppose it's like buying a car. You're not forced to go back to the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 351 original manufacturer for support or continued maintenance.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 352
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 353 Stallman: Or buying a house--what would it be like if the only person who
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 354 could ever fix problems with your house was the contractor who built it
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 355 originally? That is the kind of imposition that's involved in proprietary
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 356 software. People tell me about a problem that happens in UNIX. Because
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 357 manufacturers sell improved versions of UNIX, they tend to collect fixes
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 358 and not give them out except in binaries. The result is that the bugs don't
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 359 really get fixed.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 360
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 361 BYTE: They're all duplicating effort trying to solve bugs independently.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 362
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 363 Stallman: Yes. Here is another point that helps put the problem of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 364 proprietary information in a social perspective. Think about the liability
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 365 insurance crisis. In order to get any compensation from society, an injured
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 366 person has to hire a lawyer and split the money with that lawyer. This is a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 367 stupid and inefficient way of helping out people who are victims of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 368 accidents. And consider all the time that people put into hustling to take
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 369 business away from their competition. Think of the pens that are packaged
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 370 in large cardboard packages that cost more than the pen--just to make sure
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 371 that the pen isn't stolen. Wouldn't it be better if we just put free pens
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 372 on every street corner? And think of all the toll booths that impede the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 373 flow of traffic. It's a gigantic social phenomenon. People find ways of
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 374 getting money by impeding society. Once they can impede society, they can
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 375 be paid to leave people alone. The waste inherent in owning information
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 376 will become more and more important and will ultimately make the difference
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 377 between the utopia in which nobody really has to work for a living because
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 378 it's all done by robots and a world just like ours where everyone spends
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 379 much time replicating what the next fellow is doing.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 380
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 381 BYTE: Like typing in copyright notices on the software.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 382
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 383 Stallman: More like policing everyone to make sure that they don't have
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 384 forbidden copies of anything and duplicating all the work people have
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 385 already done because it is proprietary.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 386
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 387 BYTE: A cynic might wonder how you earn your living.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 388
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 389 Stallman: From consulting. When I do consulting, I always reserve the right
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 390 to give away what I wrote for the consulting job. Also, I could be making
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 391 my living by mailing copies of the free software that I wrote and some that
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 392 other people wrote. Lots of people send in $150 for GNU EMACS, but now this
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 393 money goes to the Free Software Foundation that I started. The foundation
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 394 doesn't pay me a salary because it would be a conflict of interest.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 395 Instead, it hires other people to work on GNU. As long as I can go on
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 396 making a living by consulting I think that's the best way.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 397
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 398 BYTE: What is currently included in the official GNU distribution tape?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 399
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 400 Stallman: Right now the tape contains GNU EMACS (one version fits all
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 401 computers); Bison, a program that replaces YACC; MIT Scheme, which is
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 402 Professor Sussman's super-simplified dialect of LISP; and Hack, a
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 403 dungeon-exploring game similar to Rogue.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 404
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 405 BYTE: Does the printed manual come with the tape as well?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 406
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 407 Stallman: No. Printed manuals cost $15 each or copy them yourself. Copy
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 408 this interview and share it, too.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 409
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 410 BYTE: How can you get a copy of that?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 411
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 412 Stallman: Write to the Free Software Foundation, 675 Massachusetts Ave.,
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 413 Cambridge, MA 02139.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 414
64079
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 415 [As of April 2005, this address is:
26119
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 416 Free Software Foundation
64079
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 417 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 418 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
26119
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 419 Voice: +1-617-542-5942
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 420 Fax: +1-617-542-2652
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 421 ]
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 422
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 423 BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 424
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 425 Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 426 same thing in other areas of software.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 427
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 428 BYTE: So this is just the first of a whole series of assaults on the
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 429 software industry?
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 430
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 431 Stallman: I hope so. But perhaps what I'll do is just live a life of ease
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 432 working a little bit of the time just to live. I don't have to live
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 433 expensively. The rest of the time I can find interesting people to hang
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 434 around with or learn to do things that I don't know how to do.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 435
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 436 Editorial Note: BYTE holds the right to provide this interview on BIX but
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 437 will not interfere with its distribution.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 438
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 439 Richard Stallman, 545 Technology Square, Room 703, Cambridge, MA 02139.
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 440 Copyright (C) 1986 Richard Stallman. Permission is granted to make and
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 441 distribute copies of this article as long as the copyright and this notice
+ 鐃緒申��申鐃緒申 442 appear on all copies.