Four freedoms good, fewer freedoms bad?

As is the way with passionate communities sometimes (and there is no more passionate a community in Manchester right now than the geek/tech scene), last night was a meeting of a cabal – to some, almost a religious ceremony – in Manchester.
300 developers, entrepreneurs, political activists and the intellectually curious packed themselves into a lecture theatre in Manchester University’s Renold Building. Some of them sat on steps or stood in doorways straining to hear what was being said for several hours. They were there for a very rare talk supported by the BCS, IET and the local Free Software UK group.
Richard Stallman was in town, and he was here to talk about “Free Software in Ethics and Practice”.

First let me introduce you to a couple of core concepts Mancunian Way readers may not be familiar with to help understand this a little better. When Stallman (or “RMS” as he is more often known), or the FSF or GNU project talk about “free software” they’re not talking about software you just don’t have to pay for. They are specifically talking about software where you, the user, have fundamental freedoms:

• Freedom 0: You have the right to run the software.
• Freedom 1: You have the right to study and modify the software for your own needs.
• Freedom 2: You have the right to distribute that software any way you want (including sharing it with your friends).
• Freedom 3: You have the right to improve the software and release it to the community.

If you think this sounds like a political philosophy, you’d be right. The core manifesto is best encapsulated in a software license called the GPL that explicitly lays down these rights you should have with the software you use. If you use software licensed under GPL, you have those rights.
For you to have these freedoms, you need access to the “source code” which is why some people refer to “open source software”. Such phrases are looked down by RMS and his fan base, however.
By the way, let me make it clear: he does have a fan base.
In the same way that political revolutionaries garner followings, RMS has a core base that is global, supportive and when it comes to the issues of software freedom they can be incredibly emotional. Many will refuse to use “proprietary software” from the likes of Microsoft, Apple and their ilk. They will sneer at those who say they run “Linux” and correct the pronunciation: “GNU/Linux” in recognition of the fact that the GNU project provided many of the tools needed for a viable working operating system – “Linux” is merely one component called the “kernel”.
Last night’s talk was an introduction to his philosophies and included several additions missing from his previous talks – specifically references to the politics of current UK and USA political administrations.
He asked – and answered in a way you might consider predictable – several important questions. Is it ethical for a company to control your computing experience? Is it right that you are not allowed to share a functional work with a friend? Is it fair that you may now, or in the future, be unable to play a CD or DVD in your computer because it doesn’t have the right “DRM” software? What rights should you have as an individual, and what rights should companies have? Should companies have rights at all?
I think it’s fair to suggest that when discussing these issues, RMS is a rather controversial figure in the industry. His personal style can be abrupt (like many geeks), and his arguments madden many who fall on the centre-right politically and who believe in powers of free markets.
Today, a mailing list dedicated to geeks across the North has been full of argument, speculation and analysis of what he said. Did he really advocate breaking proprietary software licenses and making copies for your friends? Were the parallels he drew between copyright law and detention without trial hyperbole and ill-advised rhetoric, or did they make a valid point? 119 posts on a list of around 400 users in under 24 hours tell its own story: he’s provoked a discussion if nothing else.
I personally am from a slightly different school of free software known as the BSD camp. The BSD license grants freedoms of use, modification and distribution like the GPL, but does not seek to explicitly protect them and tell you that you must release any modifications you make back to the community. It allows for example, for you to take a BSD licensed piece of software, modify it, and then keep those modifications to yourself selling the new piece of software.
Microsoft used BSD licensed software to provide Internet protocols in early versions of Windows without releasing their modifications back out to the community, which depending on your point of view is either great because it allowed tens of millions of people to connect to the Internet for the first time or horrendous because they might have put bad things in there and we’ll never know about it. Many believe – perhaps with just cause – that there are a lot of bad things in Microsoft software.
There are many people who disagree with what RMS says, finding his arguments too full of contradiction and suspect of human behaviour. I disagree with parts, agree with others. I got the chance to discuss things a little more with him after the talk as I was providing him with a sofa to sleep on for the night. My stance hasn’t changed much: I agree that proprietary software is a risk given civilisation now relies on so much of it, however I disagree with the level of enforcement needed to provide it.
I am after all like many a BSD fan a man whose thinking follows Adam Smith. RMS is a man of Gandhi and Mandela, and therefore his action is rooted in political activism. I am a centrist, he is at heart I think an anarcho-syndicalist.
Who knew software development could be so philosophical? So political? Well, the 300 of us in that lecture theatre last night for starters.
His talk was filmed and will be released online soon. I’ll post an update with a link to it when that happens and I look forward to hearing what those of you who might not be so close to the code face think of it all.