By Joe Barr
Originally published at Linux World Today in August, 1996

Richard Stallman's Rasputin-like appearance, his long dark hair and beard, as well as his history of exposing reporters as bumbling idiots, had me on edge. But his voice and features, his eyes in particular, are remarkably warm and friendly. His message -- that software should be free (as in freedom, not as in price) -- has remained so resolute over the years that many, myself included, assumed the messenger would be just as hard and unyielding. I was wrong.

Joe Barr: As I was preparing for this interview, there was a certain amount of fear as I worried about things like offending you by saying "Linux" instead of "GNU/Linux."

Richard Stallman: It's not so much that I would be offended, and especially if it was a mistake. I'm mainly concerned, not with what you say to me, because after all I know the situation. What matters is what you say to other people as to whether you are setting them straight about the history of the system or spreading the usual confusion. That's what really matters.

Joe Barr: I read an interview that you did with Byte Magazine in 1986, and I was struck by two things. First, if I had listened in to that interview in 1986, I would have thought you were a madman to talk about the possibility of a system that would allow people to be productive with their computers based on all free software.

Richard Stallman: You see, I had an advantage. I knew it was possible. I was doing it, along with a bunch of other people back at MIT in the 1970s. We had a time-sharing system that had been developed by the hackers at the AI Lab. That was their job, developing the operating system. I joined that community rather late. It started in the '60s and I joined it in 1971. The system already existed and ran, and I added to it. So I knew it was possible. I didn't have to speculate whether we could succeed in developing another one. Whether we could get together enough people, that I couldn't be sure of. But that it was possible in principle, I didn't have to guess.

Joe Barr: I was also struck by the fact that in 1986 you were saying exactly the same things that you are saying today.

Richard Stallman: So either you can say that I am steadfast, or that I don't know how to learn anything.

Joe Barr: I think the results speak for themselves. But I think that it is remarkable that you had a vision, a consistent vision, and it's a big part of world today. It's a powerful force in the world.

What's lacking in the GNU system today? What's still to come?

Richard Stallman: Well, we don't have a really good, free Web browser, and there are a number of things like audio compression and video compression, which we don't have and we might be unable to have in the US because of patents. We are still working on a free replacement for ssh. People are working still on the free replacements for Microsoft Office. There are some free word processors. Whether they are good enough, I don't know. I don't think there is any free desktop-publishing software yet, but there needs to be.

Joe Barr: The things you are mentioning are almost all applications.

Richard Stallman: Well, the core of the system we've got, so that's not where things are missing. After all, the issues of freedom apply the same to application programs as they do to the operating system. I decided we should aim for the operating system first because you need an operating system first. You can't do anything without an operating system. Whereas these individual applications, any given application, maybe many people don't need it. They can do their work without it. But now that we've got an operating system, yes, it's time for free applications. So that freedom can spread across the whole spectrum of software and all computer users can have freedom fully.

Joe Barr: Is there a new operating system nearing life?

Richard Stallman: I'm sorry, I don't understand that.

Joe Barr: Like GNU/Hurd.

Richard Stallman: The Hurd is not an operating system, it's a kernel. The GNU operating system is working, but using Linux as the kernel. It works. It is a reliable, solid kernel. It's as good as any Unix kernel ever was, and as a result the GNU system with Linux as the kernel is a reliable, solid system.

Right now, work on the GNU Hurd is very slow, unfortunately. I wish there were somebody smart working full-time on it, but there isn't. The result is that we have it running but we haven't written the things to take advantage of the advanced architecture to actually give the user benefits from it. And until we find somebody to do that, it's not going to be really of direct, practical use to people.

So I hope someone arrives, but whether GNU Hurd succeeds or not, the GNU system as a whole has succeeded.

Joe Barr: You've written a number of programs. Emacs, gcc, gdb. I'm forgetting something major here, but with the software that you've contributed, with the GNU manifesto, with the Free Software Foundation, what do you think is the most important thing that you've done for free software?

Richard Stallman: Well, you're looking at all the various parts of something that's really important as a whole. The GNU Manifesto laid out the plan to build a community in which people could have freedom by using exclusively free software. Now to do this, we needed an operating system that was wholly free software. That's GNU. So the various programs I wrote are important because they helped us get there. They are pieces of the GNU system. But what is really important is the whole GNU system.

That's, after all, why Linux is important. Because it's used as a piece in the GNU system, in the version of GNU that people actually use. So, none of these individual pieces would actually matter all that much if we didn't have the whole system.

Of course, there are many pieces in the system, and some of them were written by others for completely different purposes. But whenever I wrote a piece, I was doing that to get to that ultimate goal. And so I don't think it's useful to look at individual pieces. If you want to judge their importance, the way to judge them is to ask "how much did they help us reach the overall goal" rather than "how useful is this piece of software in isolation."

Joe Barr: What do you take the most personal satisfaction from? Is the GNU Manifesto more important than the software?

Richard Stallman: I would say that determinedly standing for freedom and insisting that we should aim for a completely free system and not settling for anything less is the most important thing I've done.

Joe Barr: I've heard you described as a socialist, or a communist. Do politics enter into the Free Software Foundation?

Richard Stallman: Politics do, but I'm not a socialist or a communist.

Joe Barr: How would you describe yourself?

Richard Stallman: Well, I guess I am a sort of combination between a liberal and a leftist anarchist. I like to see people working together, voluntarily, to solve the world's problems. But, if we can't do that, I think we should get the government involved to solve them.

The idea of democracy is that it enables the citizens in general to put a check on the power of the richest, and these days in America we are failing to use that tool, which of course, leads to a harsh life for most people.

Joe Barr: Especially the contrast between the world's wealthiest man, Bill Gates, who has derived his wealth entirely from proprietary software, where people have no choice at all in the selection on the one hand..

Richard Stallman: Well, I should point out that people who are determined enough do have a choice. I was in the same position as lots of people said they were in, and I decided I wasn't going to use that. When I started the GNU project, Microsoft was not particularly important or particularly large, but what you can accurately say is that the only other choices were difficult ones. Most people look at those difficult choices and say that's too hard for me. Because they are not absolutely determined to get freedom. The most important thing about the GNU project is that it is giving people an alternative to proprietary software that is easier, and because it is easier, more people feel they can choose it. So that's the way it spreads freedom to people, by giving them a less heroic way they can get freedom.

Anyway, the people who call me a communist are engaging in Red-baiting. It's a standard thing. If anybody criticizes something about what business is doing, at the present, they get called a communist.

When people said, "Don't pour poison in the river," they were called communists. But they didn't want to abolish business. They wanted to abolish pouring poison into the river. The free software movement is a lot like that. It's a lot like the environmental movement because the goal is not to abolish business, the goal is to end a certain kind of pollution. But in this case, it's not pollution of the air or the water, it's pollution of our social relationships.

When somebody says, here is this nice thing that you will enjoy using but if you share it with your neighbor we'll call you a pirate and put you in jail, they are polluting society's most important resource, which is goodwill, the willingness to cooperate with other people.

Joe Barr: If I understand what you have said and written previously, that was the impetus for you.

Richard Stallman: Yes, that is the reason why I decided to dedicate my efforts to free software. To change an ugly system. And I don't mean a computer system. I mean a social system.

Joe Barr: I heard you last night, at the award ceremony, saying that you had lived for a time in your office at MIT. Do you still live at MIT?

Richard Stallman: No, they won't let me. I would like to, it's very convenient.

Joe Barr: How do you pay your bills? What revenues do you have?

Richard Stallman: These days I get paid for speaking. I've made a living in various ways. At one point, for most of a year after GNU Emacs was first developed, I was selling copies of GNU Emacs. And then for several years I was doing free-software support. I was accepting commissions to add new features to the C compiler, teaching classes about Emacs and about how to program gcc.

I guess I would have continued doing that except I got a big prize and didn't have to do it anymore.

Joe Barr: So you have your basic needs taken care of.

Richard Stallman: Well, they are now. But when I started the GNU project I couldn't be assured of that. I wasn't rich and I didn't know how I was going to make a living. But fortunately, I live cheaply. I've resisted acquiring the expensive habits that some other people pick up as soon as they get enough money to. You know, like houses and cars and children and boats and planes. Art collecting. People tend to think, "I have money now, let me look for some frivolous thing to blow it on." But my idea was, "I'm going to save this so that in the future I won't have any worries about it." Living cheaply helps doing that. It also enabled me to decide what I was going to do with my life instead of having money decide for me.

Joe Barr: Are you still writing software?

Richard Stallman: Not an awful lot. I've been forced to promote myself into management.

Joe Barr: So you're providing the leadership for FSF.

Richard Stallman: Well, I try to. I still find time to fix bugs in Emacs and to add new features. But it's not as much time as I wish.

Joe Barr: Do you spend most of your time on the speaking circuit? Doing shows like this?

Richard Stallman: I spend most of my time traveling. That's partly because when I go someplace, I try to enjoy it. So I don't just go there and go out again as soon as possible. Usually I stay there for a while. That's if it's a place I enjoy going. If it's a place that I don't particularly want to go, then I would only go there if I thought it was really important.

Joe Barr: It's a big thrill for me to meet you.

Richard Stallman: So spread the word, that this is about freedom.

Joe Barr: That is your message.

Richard Stallman: Urge people to endorse the free software philosophy instead of the open source philosophy.

Joe Barr: And the distinction being?

Richard Stallman: The distinction is the open source philosophy is about how to make reliable, powerful software. They emphasize the practical values. And they are not wrong, but they are not everything. I think that freedom is more important than powerful, reliable software. All else being equal, I want powerful, more reliable software. But if I have to choose between a more powerful program or my freedom, I would choose my freedom.

I will use free software even if it is less powerful, or less reliable, because freedom is the most important thing, and that is what the Free Software movement is about. How we get freedom. We want to make software powerful and reliable, because that way more people will use it and have freedom.

Joe Barr: Why doesn't the Free Software Foundation approach Netscape, AOL, whoever, and say "Give us Mozilla, and we'll complete the project."

Richard Stallman: Well, I never thought of it. I don't know if we can do technically a better job than they are doing, maybe we could. I see no reason to think that Netscape wants to give it up. Do they want to? I mean, I haven't heard. I suspect that they want to finish it.

Joe Barr: I'm sure they do, but there are a lot of people unhappy with the licensing, perhaps.

Richard Stallman: I'm unhappy with the licensing of Netscape. It's a free software license, but it has certain flaws. I've asked them to change it; whether they will, well, that's up to them.

Joe Barr: But they are not getting buy-in from the developer community.

Richard Stallman: That's an interesting phenomenon. I don't know why that is. I don't remember exactly what [Mozilla's lead developer] Jamie Zawinski said the reason was. Do you remember?

Joe Barr: Yes. He gave several reasons. Number one, it is very, very complex software. Expectations were too high to deliver too much too soon. It is not a trivial task. Number two, he said that Netscape was doing all the development, or 90 percent of the development.

Richard Stallman: What was his reason for why other people didn't join in? Does he have an idea of why that is? He wouldn't necessarily know. None of us would necessarily know. But he would have maybe been paying attention to figure out why people didn't join in.

Joe Barr: I don't believe he said why.

Richard Stallman: I don't know why. I think that maybe the fact that their license was not an unbiased license, it gave Netscape special privilege with other people's code. I can imagine that was part of the reason.

Joe Barr: Whatever the reasons are, it hasn't received social acceptance.

Richard Stallman: It's also conceivable that Netscape is competing with itself. People who are not firmly committed to free software and to freedom think it is okay to use Netscape. That is, not Mozilla, but the Netscape browser that is still available as binaries only. And if they are happy using that, then they see no reason to worry about or care about Mozilla.

Joe Barr: What browser do you use?

Richard Stallman: I use Lynx. I'm not terribly interested in pictures anyway. I consider eye-candy distracting and annoying in Web pages. It makes them hard to read and the ads are likely to be graphical, and I don't want to see the ads.

Joe Barr: I'm struck by the fact that two of the ways you've made a living since beginning this walk are very similar to what Michael Tiemann, co-founder of Cygnus Solutions, has done, except on an individual basis instead of on a corporate basis.

Richard Stallman: Absolutely. Indeed.

Joe Barr: Michael Tiemann told me that when he read the GNU Manifesto, he saw a business plan where others saw what you were saying.

Richard Stallman: Well, actually, he may have seen one aspect of what was there. Because I talked in the GNU Manifesto about ways that there could be free software businesses. But my main concern was not about business, it was about freedom.

Yes, I've done business. I've personally done free software business. I think that free software business is a good thing. But although we do business to make a living and live, there are things that are above and beyond that. Such as making the world a better place. So I was aiming for something beyond making a living. Yes, I do business to make a living, and I'm not ashamed of that. But if that's all I did, it wouldn't be so important.

Joe Barr: The concepts of freedom, as you have given them, as they apply to software -- to what other forms of expression should they apply?

Richard Stallman: Some of the issues transfer over to things to things like books and music that you may have on your computer, and some of them don't. For some of them it is useful to make modifications of them, and for some of them it's not.

Joe Barr: Because of their utility?

Richard Stallman: Because of how people use them and what they are made of. Making changes in novels is not as important as it is in software. Programs are made to be run, whereas novels are made to be appreciated. So, it is essential that people have the freedom to make changes to software and publish the modified versions. I don't think it is essential to have that freedom for novels.

But on the other hand, the freedom to make a copy for your friends is essential for any kind of thing that might be published and you might have on your computer.

Joe Barr: How can people get involved with the Free Software Foundation?

Richard Stallman: Take a look at www.gnu.org. We've got a number of suggestions for how people can help by writing code or helping to administer our systems if you're a good system admin wanting to work, or by writing documentation. We really need documentation. We need good documentation writers more than we need good programmers. So if you've got the skill to write good documentation, that's what you should do. When people show up to program, offering to write software, and I find out they can write documentation, I beg them to write documentation instead. Because good documentation is essential and for a free system we need free documentation. Documentation that we can distribute as part of the system. There are many manuals that are published about free software, but most of them are not free. Of course, I'm always talking about freedom, not price. The problem is that the text of these manuals is restricted. You are not allowed to copy them and redistribute them and publish modified versions of them.

Joe Barr: Have you heard about the book that IDG Books, LinuxWorld, Nicholas Petreley, and I are going to do? The OpenBook?

Richard Stallman: No, but I may be interested in it.

Joe Barr: It will be freely redistributable and modifiable.

Richard Stallman: Wow. Well if that's the case, then that sounds exactly like what we need more of. Be sure and tell me about it.

Joe Barr: I certainly will. It will be written by the community, Nicholas and I will only serve as editors.

Richard Stallman: What will it be about?

Joe Barr: It will be about "Essential Linux."

Richard Stallman: I hope you'll call it GNU/Linux.