@Pernillan is Openhearted

Last night I went to see a talk with Richard Stallman, hosted by FOSS-Sthlm and The Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University. Richard Stallman, also known by his initials ‘rms’, is father of the GNU Project, the text editor Emacs and founder of the Free Software Foundation.

The Aula Magna, with 1200 seats, were almost full of computer geeks. I wasn’t very surprised to see that the audience mainly consisted of white men with beard and ponytails… My friend Martin Löwdin did a quick estimation that only 1-2% were girls. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement, this low proportion of girls seems to be the case.

The proportion of girls in proprietary software development is also low, but not that low. My personal theory to why this seems to be the case is that free software development is mainly done by people who has programming as a hobby. Most of my friends from Geek Girl Meetup and the girls I studied IT with at Uppsala University see programming as something they mainly do as a day job. They spend most of their spare time with family and friends and do not sit in front of the computer (to the same extent as e.g. I do…).

Another reason, that is more troublesome, is that there seems to be a quite “hostile” culture surrounding the free software movement. There seems to be unwritten rules of what is right and wrong and who fits in or not. I’m not sure where this came from, and I’m pretty sure not everyone agrees with me, but the talk with Richard Stallman last night gave me a notion of what it might feel like to approach the free software movement as someone who not entirely fits in.

I agree with many of the things Stallman said in his talk. I believe that software should be free - free as in ‘free speech’, not as in ‘free beer’, as described in the Free Software Definition. What I don’t like is the way he says things. It was mainly shown after his talk, when there were time for the audience to ask questions. I’m sure he has heard most of the questions before since he must have given this talk thousands of times by now, but I still think it’s very rude to interrupt people before they have finished asking their question. He said “I know what you’re gonna ask” and sometimes ridiculed the people asking questions and accused them of not having listened to what he said in his talk.

If that’s the kind of attitude that is shown to people who come with a sincere curiosity to learn more - then I think that the free software movement needs to find new spokespersons who are more willing to share their knowledge and opinions without patronizing their audience. After all - free software is about ‘helping your neighbor’ (Freedom 2) and ‘giving the whole community a chance to benefit’ (Freedom 3).

Since I’m a big fan of the concept ‘Sharing is Caring’ I thought I’d end this blog post by sharing some of the things Richard Stallman said in his talk, so that next time you meet an arrogant free software geek, you’ll decrease you’re chance of being ridiculed… And NO - I don’t think that all free software geeks are arrogant and patronizing, some are even among the kindest and most warmhearted people I know, but some are…

So, here’s a few parts of Richard Stallman’s message:

• There’s a philosophical difference between Free Software and Open Source Software. Open Source basically means ‘You can look at the source code’ and is thus weaker than the Free Software Definition.
• “GNU” is a recursive acronym that stands for “GNU’s Not Unix”. Nerds like recursive things and the GNU is a funny animal… You can listen to Stallman giving the full story of how the name came about. 
• GNU is a an Operating System that many computers run a modified version of. The most widely used today is often called “Linux”, but since Linux is just the kernel part of the system, you should call Linux “GNU/Linux” if you want to attribute the GNU project and name the operating system “correctly”… 
• Most distributions of GNU/Linux are not free according to the free software definition, i.e. the popular distribution Ubuntu (that I use..). Two that are fully free though are gNewSense and Ututo.
• If you choose between writing proprietary software or not writing software at all, it’s better not writing at all since you’re then are doing less evil.
• Being lesser evil doesn’t make it good.
• Almost all users of proprietary programs are users of malware, i.e. Windows and iThings users. (They also handed out iBad stickers afterwards…)
• Software as a service (SaaS) means running software on someone else’s computer. If it’s a US company who owns that computer you know what they’re gonna do with your data… “Software as a service is like using proprietary software with spy features and a universal backdoor. Don’t use it.”
• You shouldn’t use the term cloud computing. Cloud is a nebulous word. It means too many things…
• Giving proprietary software to schools is like giving needles to children with addictive drugs and say that the first dose is gratis… Proprietary software is the enemy of the spirit of education.
• It’s ethical to use proprietary software in order to put an end to it’s usage…

The talk also contained a humorous part referring to the cult around the text editor Emacs and the so called Editor war between Emacs and it’s rival vi. Personally, I’m with the Emacs people in that war, although I must admit I don’t use any of them nowadays when I program… I guess that means I’m not welcome in the “Church of Emacs” that Stallman presented as his alter ego “St. iGNUcius”… Here are some of the things he said (GEEK humor warning!)

• The Church of Emacs have no services, only software… 
• There is no other system than GNU and Linux is one of it’s kernels…
• It’s true that the vivivi editor is the editor of the beast…

If you appreciate this kind if humor, I think you should watch the full part of the talk with Stallman as St. iGNUcius, also including an auction of a stuffed GNU, with the sales argument “As you know, a penguin can hardly function without a GNU”.

Big thanks to Kjell Ericson who shared his photos under the licence CC-BY-SA!