Richard Stallman on Australia: Q&A

Renai LeMay
Wednesday, 11 August 2010 13:30

IT People - People

Microsoft Office 365

Q&A Richard Stallman is a big name in the technology sector. The software developer and political activist is best known for his creation during the early 1980′s of the GNU Project, which combined with Linus Torvalds’ kernel programming efforts in the early 1990′s to form what we today refer to as the GNU/Linux operating system.

Stallman also founded the associated Free Software Foundation in the mid-1980′s and is the original author of a bunch of popular software projects — such as the Emacs text editor (although it does far more than that) and the GNU Compiler Collection.

In October Stallman will visit Australia to speak — among other events — at UNSW’s Clancy Auditorium in an event being supported by National ICT Australia. But we got in touch with Stallman ahead of time for a chat about the Government’s internet filter project, free software and why he likes to visit Australia for its parrots.

Going back to 2005, there was a strong debate going on in Australia about the potential for individuals and organisations to use the GNU/Linux operating system as a desktop replacement for Microsoft’s Windows platform. Since that time, in Australia, the debate has gradually died down, although the maturity of the GNU/Linux desktop and its degree of user friendliness has only increased.

Does this trend disappoint you, and how could the free software community best seek to reverse it?

I have no independent knowledge about this. If you are right, I hope my speaking tour will direct attention back to the question. Freedom for software users is no less important today than it was five years ago.

The definition of free software is that it respects users’ freedom. It’s free as in freedom — price is not the issue. Specifically, it means that you as user are free to run the program as you wish, study
the source code and change it so that the program does what you wish. and to redistribute copies with or without changes. With these freedoms, the users control the software and control their computing.