Meet My Next Guest, Richard M Stallman

so Richard we are here in Boston this is your city right I mean hold on is our city not mine so it's been so long since we met last time in Belgium so tell us first of all let's start with how much has changed well I don't remember what year that was mm I think 12 2012 yes well that's six years mhm well one thing that changed is Edward Snowden told us how much the US government and other governments are spying on everyone mm-hmm in 2012 what I was concerned about digital surveillance but if someone and people did ask me frequently whether I thought the US government was spying on me I said I don't suppose so I don't know of any reason why they would now I know that they don't need a reason they spied on everyone so they're spying on me and they're spying on you and they're spying on everybody who's watching this that is tremendously dangerous there's a lot of attention finally to the danger of surveillance based advertising mm-hmm but that's just one layer of the surveillance that we are subject to that's one layer which is carried out by businesses for business reasons but the data of course becomes easily available to the state in many countries where apps almost all and the result is it helps the state find dissidents and whistleblowers that threatens democracy but now we also know that collection of data helps manipulate elections and that threatens democracy from another direction but let's look at some of the other kinds of surveillance cameras to recognize people's faces or license plates as they go around the city in the street we've got to put an end to that mm-hmm and that requires strong measures no timid things like saying you can use it only by these rules because those rules always permit enough to put democracy in danger mm-hmm when the state wants to catch a whistleblower it will always find a justification for accessing the database and then put the whistleblower in prison and thus discourage people from enabling us to control what our governments do right so we got to go much further than that we have to limit the data they can collect not just how it's used there are other kinds of surveillance that threaten us for instance if you're carrying a portable phone which I refuse to do then your movements are being tracked and it can be converted remotely into a listening device right which would listen all the time once it's converted and once it's converted it won't shut off either right because portable phones are not made with off switches only a button that says oh sir phone would you please be so kind as to switch off and once it's been converted it becomes a liar it pretends to switch off but it's not really off it just acts to the user as if it were off right but it's still listening and transmitting I don't know what happens with airplane mode whether it actually stops transmitting and wouldn't put in airplane mode after it's been converted this way I would guess it doesn't mm-hmm I don't think that those are that the people who make those malicious conversions for the back door are paying much attention to laws right and then our more surveillance credit-card companies keep track of they find out from stores what you're buying mm-hmm and the stores find out who you are also so they know who's buying what that's dangerous to allow stores to know who the customer is is a threat it shouldn't be allowed at all you mentioned couple of points there you also mentioned the u.s. elections the u.s. is one of the biggest democracy in the world is it possible what they're supposed to be is I grew up in India and we have seen the label of corruption and how government is wants to have access to data and technology has given them that but in the u.s. it was assumed that we have you know a set of rules we have check and balances that will keep a tab but right now what we are seeing is that these these technologies are being used to as you said you know even change the outcome of elections which actually poses even more stability to try to write we don't know we don't know because they don't we don't know but there are many other dishonest things that are being done to change the outcome the corruptor did not win the 2016 presidential election it was stolen by Republicans they would have stolen no matter who the candidate was or at least gone a certain distance towards stealing it right and it was only because of that mm-hmm that he was able to apparently win the election mm-hmm and this corruption has this theft of the election has been identified in certain states mm-hmm it was done by blocking I believe hundreds of thousands of Americans who should have been allowed to vote from voting Republicans have various tricks they're called voter suppression laws they find they create excuses to stop lots of people from voting and those tend to be people who are poor or marginal in other words probably will vote Democrat mm-hmm they know this and it works pretty well mm-hmm but it's not democracy right now a study which I put a pointer to on Stallman org somewhere in the political notes in the past couple of years I looked at many different political issues what public opinion was and what the decision was and what laws were passed and found that public opinion had no effect on these to say since 1998 or so I don't know whether that was the beginning of their study there were there were certainly times like in the 1970s when we got laws of the people wanted even though they were unpleasant for businesses clean air clean water Endangered Species Act but nowadays you can't get that people understand that the United States doesn't actually practice democracy it practices an illegitimate form of government called plutocracy mm-hmm well was chosen by business have no moral authority can you explain bureaucracy for our audience another policy means rule by wealth mm-hmm and that's what we see how many how many congressmen in our Congress are billionaires and millionaires I don't know but it doesn't matter everyone is they're not the ones that rule makes it oh the people with the money that pay to get them elected right are the ones that rule but they also end up making money through them well they do yes and a lot of them are millionaires billionaires I don't know if any a billionaire president is billion in fortune you said Congress comment array this I don't I know that many in Congress and perhaps most are a millionaire right but I don't know whether very many are billion right yes really after all they're not the bosses they're the tools the flunkies so I don't expect them to get billions only money yes and that's true but what been drunk in that country what happened what happened was starting in the 1970s rich people took various measures that were successful over a long term to gain power over the United States government and they operate at various levels sometimes through obvious corruption they put a Supreme Court justice on I believe his name was Powell mm-hmm who advocated that business is deserved human rights which is absurd a corporation is not a human being and doesn't deserve human rights you cannot execute a corporation but you cannot put them in jail you cannot yeah well you can you can put the CEO erase one yes you know yeah a dissolve corporation and hand out its assets to whatever right but the our government basically doesn't dare do them because it's too much under the thumb of those very big businesses but you notice that President Reagan gutted antitrust law right and what we mane dove it was eliminated by dubba and since then mergers have gone on like mad producing oligopolies with very few competitors but what is interesting is that it's not just that there are only a few sellers in a certain field it's that there are only a few buyers for labor in many fields let's call them illegal Sony mmm-hmm and the point is that that's pushing wages down right because there aren't a lot of companies to compete to hire people and I saw in a study that estimated a 16 percent effect of this the details are in a political note recently posted in Stallman org the point is what do plutocrats want they want to keep wages down mm-hmm so even they want to push productivity up and not pay workers anymore for it and that's what they've been doing since the 1970s that's why the minimum wage hasn't been raised that's why they have been working to crush unions in many different ways you see they have many tactics but they add up to the same thing you don't get paid much if you're out of work you don't get much help they want the workers that aren't needed to be in the cemetery right and there they've been very effective at this but now what we see is lots of people are aware of this and they're trying to fight back if and I'm one of them and if we succeed in organizing ourselves we'll undo what the plutocrats have done it is possible I believe to restore democracy in the United States and make those plutocrats pay a lot of money in taxes means that we can have a decent country again where things work and this is the way to make America great again mm-hmm do you see any hooping I see some hope but that doesn't mean we can't lose mm-hmm whether that depends on everyone who can help in this mm-hmm everyone every American who wants democracy who wants a decent country where people who work get paid and people who can't work at help you got to join in this fight you've got to support progressive candidates look at the primary elections for the Democratic Party see if there's a progressive candidate because a lot of Democrats are toys are the plutocrats too right yeah it just because someone's a Democrat that doesn't mean the person is worth voting for right like Hillary Clinton like just like her husband were not worth voting for him when I saw what Clinton did after he was elected I decided I'm not gonna vote for him again and that's what I've thought about every Democratic presidential candidate ever since Clinton Hillary Clinton is even worse than Bill Clinton because she's a militarist - yes and so when I saw that she was running mm-hmm I decided I'm certainly not gonna vote for her mm-hmm and then interesting I tried to go to Harvard bookstore mm-hmm one evening but it was closed because she was having a book signing there and there was a line of people outside waiting to get a book and have it signed so I shouted to the people on the line when I was young we had a name for politicians like Clinton Republicans and so even if she calls herself a Democrat I'm never going to vote for her she's too right wing for me right that's me if you want to vote for a woman why not vote for the progressive one Jill Stein mm-hmm who was the Green Party candidate that I actually voted for I thought you were endorsing not endorsing but Bernie Sanders was but that was what during the PRI I also bought it for him but then didn't happen then right what point is of course I supported Sanders in every feasible way until he lost I don't know in lost or it was just a very public until the election the audience's to know well the DNC was biased and there are leaks proved that and then Donna Brazile a I don't know how to pronounce her name correctly but she admitted that the DNC was biased all right not too long after the Democratic convention mm-hmm I posted a petition on move on I think mm-hmm addressed to Hillary Clinton calling on her to step aside saying that she didn't support what America needs didn't didn't support what Democrats want and she was losing and yes right I only got seven signatures on this petition but on this video I think a lot of Democrats did not go out and vote because of her because they were so demoralized they they were discouraged so they did not go so I don't know what role Russia played but I'm certain that because of Hillary Clinton also yeah it demoralized right I mean it's it's outrageous that Russia tries to manipulate us election you don't have to well I mean it might have made some difference that's not the point the point is that there were lots of reasons why this would have made a bad president right that's true and didn't deserve our support now I got fed up with voting for the lesser evil because as others pointed out and I read and recognized is true voting for the lesser evil gets you more evil and more evil every time yeah because you're just lowering the bar lowering the world in the end all you will get a bit evil people there won't be any good because that's your bar yeah so I have hope that Sanders will win next time mm-hmm but I also have hope that progressives win in November and stop the corruptor from doing a lot of the nasty stuff he does I have various names to call him the reason I prefer not to use his name is that he's a narcissist and he likes to see people using his name right right so I'm denying him a pleasure mm-hmm it's not a taboo I can say Trump you know I can say that what he does is trumpery but I prefer usually to call him by a more descriptive name what is that name which one well various one sometimes the bully sometimes the sometimes the infant yeah the sometimes the troll oh yeah I mean we can use a lot of other names but we won't use on camera do you think that technology can play any role in chained improving the situation or not well it is to some extent people are spreading the word about organizing using some digital technology and including some evil digital technology like Facebook mm-hmm so bad we have kind of switched change the gears to technology nowadays technology it is just a tool you know it can be used to kill somebody or it can be saved somebody you started a movement a couple of years ago which has also celebrated you know silver well I started it 35 years ago right yeah almost 35 yes so say 40 can you talk about those four principles that drove the well that's actually anachronistic mm-hmm at the beginning when I started the free software movement I had a simple idea users should be free to chip to share and change the software they use nowadays I know how to explain this it's a matter of giving users the control over the software they use and that's a matter of separate control and collective control mm-hmm separate control means you're free to change the software you use mm-hmm which means you've got to get the source code and then you're free to use it any way you like but separate controls not enough because most users are not programmers and they deserve control over their computing too how can they have it mm-hmm through collective control which means that the users of a program control what it does and they could work together to exercise that control so that we're not limited to making all the changes we want separately each user making the same changes if they want the same changes right no collective control means that you're free to collaborate with other users that want to collaborate with you mm-hmm and then together you make the program do what you want and these kinds of control are there in parallel all the time so a group can make some changes you can participate in that help decide what changes to make but then if the group's version is doesn't do all the things you want you could make some other changes or you could find other people who want to make another change in that would be another group and thus using collective control but you could always make individual changes in your copy you can offer that to others so to give users these four freedoms requires the four essential freedoms I didn't work those out until some years after I'd started the movement mm-hmm the four freedoms our freedom zero freedom to run the program any way you wish for any purpose freedom one is freedom to study the source code and change it so the program does your computing activity the way you wish and the source code is essential for this freedom to be more than a sham free and those two freedoms are needed four separate control and for collective control freedom too is the freedom to make a mock to make exact copies sorry I'm a bit sleepy freedom to is the freedom to make exact copies so as to give them or sell them to others when you wish right and freedom three is to make copies of your modified versions and give or sell them to others when you wish right so free software refers to freedom not price making copies and selling them as something everyone's welcome to do that has created a lot of confusion then we go out and talk to people they often say they offer free software mean I should not pay but I think that I understand it's a misunderstanding English doesn't give us a good word for this so sometimes I will add the word Libre mm-hmm which is a French or Spanish word pronounced as if it were English and in those languages it means free isn't freedom mm-hmm it doesn't mean zero price all right so it's okay to make money from free software's just like any other more power to you will for make money contributing to society in an ethical way not mistreating people you can fine right I don't believe in stopping anyone from making money I don't believe that we should all have the same amount of money or anything like that I believe we shouldn't let anyone suffer in poverty we should help those people mm-hmm but that's far away from saying we should level everything mm-hmm so I don't want to get rid of business I just want to get rid of the businesses that mistreat people and doing justice to people and that's what non-free software does right because when when the users don't have the four freedoms then the users don't control the program instead the owner controls the program and the program controls the users so that program is an instrument of unjust power mm-hmm it shouldn't exist developing it is doing evil and we should put an end to it so if you look at it from a different perspective does that also mean that companies who are either offering services around free software are selling free software there are more ethical companies there their employees they should be hire more ethical because there's nothing obviously unjust in the nature of their business whereas with a proprietary software company mm-hmm it's basically offering you something that will give that company power over you hmm that software shouldn't exist that companies shouldn't be doing that but now that's just the basic injustice of non-free software nowadays they typically add other secondary and Justices malicious functionalities that standard practice nowadays when I started the free software movement in 1983 malware was rare mm-hmm sure a non-free program was an injustice but it probably wasn't coded to mistreat you as well nowadays it probably is coded to mystery to the future well it's a feature as far as the developer is learned they have no shame mm-hmm they frequently they they even admit that they're doing malicious things I'll give you example like apples the iOS with the previous version they added a button earlier the new switch as you actually mentioned it that when you do that weather so it was a button where you put up it's a virtual button it turns the Wi-Fi off now with an it latest update when you turn it off it doesn't turn the Wi-Fi off you have to go deeper in the in the in the UI that's where the toggle switches so a user may think hey you know what after the Wi-Fi all the users yes being surveilled yeah you you think oh I have turned the Wi-Fi off so it's saving my battery or it's not you know but it's not so it's well if it were free software the users could correct Bernadette yeah this is why free software typically doesn't have malicious functionalities because not only that the users could correct them if they were there but that the developers know the users could correct them and this deters them from even thinking about trying to mistreat the users I mean there have been some effort I think the last time we talked about one two also there's a lot now it's a long time but they're they tried to put ads in the yes yes well not only that but they this search feature on the desktop gave I can't remember which company it was any more data about what the user was searching for mmm-hmm and gave when to some data to and I condemned a buncha for this and eventually they made that no longer be the default right but you see Ubuntu is an example of a big problem in our community which is good news / Linux distros developed by people that don't care about freedom don't even use the term free software you'll notice the bun to only talks about open source mmm-hmm the term open source was coined in 1998 by people who liked free software but rejected our ideals of freedom mmm-hmm they wanted a way to cut the programs away from the philosophy right an open source was their way by using the term open source and never saying free software anymore they were able to disconnect our entire practical activity from the philosophical demand for freedom and it was very little tightly coupled that for the whole point to give the freedom to the crowd always people who heard them right didn't hear anything about freedom or right or wrong you see the the free-software movement is it's wrong for a program to be non free it's an injustice it shouldn't exist software should respect people's freedom I software developers have an obligation a moral obligation to respect users freedom mm-hmm that is what open-source discarded and buried so they said if you're developing a program think about whether it's in your practical self-interest to let users change and redistribute the program because they might contribute to it they might improve the code quality so what's gone is the idea that the users have rights that software developers are bound to respect hmm right but that's the crucial idea mm-hmm this is why I reject association with the term open-source you have a choice of course in what you say and everyone else does to people who value this freedom can support our cause by saying free Libre software and people disagree with it can work against our cause by saying open-source right and people have the right to do whatever to say whatever their views whatever use they want to express but if you agree with us please show people mm-hmm you're not helping us just by thinking it inside but when you express it then you're helping us right now I started to talk about the malicious functionalities but I didn't get through more than one mm-hmm I think actually I didn't get through any of them I didn't get to state what they were well they're spying on the user very common windows macaws Android iOS and chrome are all spying on the user lots of applications spying on the user many applications require users to identify themselves and it's hard to give a fake name because you may have to give your credit card as well and they'll get the name off that you you have to log into your account online account before you most of these devices you cannot even used exactly what you can in theory you could give a a false name to the online account mm-hmm of course but it isn't your friends then you will not be able to say well you know well I I would if I connect it to some other email site right different names yes but yeah the way it's set up to work is to survey Oh everything everybody by default by design and by the way the terms and conditions for a Google account include things that I would never agree to mm-hmm I should double-check what they are and write an article about that but beyond just surveillance many applications and also programs in appliances are tied to a particular server and the only way you can fully use them is by connecting through that server the first example I heard of was the Fitbit mmm-hmm that it sends the users personal data to the manufacturer which offers to sell the data to the user whose data it is did you hear the case of your US military people the abroad there they were tracking this right so those those locations will never disclose the basis now everybody knows well you know even an evil thing can easily backfire that results but not that doesn't excuse the Fitbit you know right the Fitbit is an outrage people shouldn't use that but there are many other such project products all right let me let me address it one because there'll be so many point let me add just one point of time when you say law you know you have terms agreement should there be a law that you know if some time I've seen is smart TVs where you turn a Smart TV on so God is marking me if you disagree to the terms and conditions you cannot even use the TV just as a dumb box right so should they be Evo Evo it shouldn't it shouldn't be allowed no that's what it should there be some I mean we cannot expect from this administration but some things are happening in Europe that should be allowed sorry that should be illegal illegal I should be able to use the device by declining the terms and conditions object tracking well I would never agree to them exactly so but a user should be able to it should not be the case either you don't know is that a cable box nowadays just spying on the US that should be illegal too yeah an ISP should be forbidden by law to take note of what internet connections a user writes right unless there's a court order to do tracking to a particular line mm-hmm but but these technologies are also helping with surveillance of states so they see a vested interest in instead of regulating them they can make what this is part of plutocracy exactly a radical rule right but that doesn't legitimate you know of course in any case I want to mention the other but more before we move to you mentioned mobile phones and everything these days get also seen Tesla cars they are actually you know computers on wheels there you go the other cars are a connected car is being tracked everywhere no the through its mobile phone no the worst case with Tesla could be what I see is that let's say you want to go to a protest protest right what is it happening let's let it not drive you because it has the power to stop the car right that's what if you did not pay the bill if they have the right to even worse with a self-driving car and that's what there is a back door and there will be a back door on there will be there they could send a command saying take this person to the secret police that's what I'm saying Tesla head tells Tesla has the self-driving test as well yes and no not now there is a steering wheel yes all right may I don't know if the Tesla can forcibly take you somewhere it's a self-driving car you don't have to touch the vehicle that's why all the accidents are happening is you don't have to touch the car it is it has an auto necessary autopilot doesn't drive the car on its own it is cysts on things like staying in the lane is what I must give the demo when you announce the car earlier that you just you're standing outside the car you push the button on your phone and the car open the garage the car will come out and I mean it's just minor tweak you know you sit in the car I have seen a lot of videos where the guy just sits there if that car drives them around it's not the cruise mode it's Auto Nova's driving mode so as the technology develops further there are more risks that you cannot and if you're using more and more these technologies right what we have to forbid this no it's too dangerous so yeah I look at it two ways as a science fiction writer that too has either we forbid it or we become so active participants that we become the vector of change or influence we could only do that if it's free software if the car has no outside connection mm-hmm then it can't be given remote commands if the car can't identify its passenger then it's safe for us against surveillance suppose there's a self-driving taxi but it can't tell who the passenger is and it can't get any commands to go there instead of the other place and then it could be safe it's as safe as a taxi driver but if it knows who the passenger is it's dangerous and if it could be remotely told to go somewhere else it's dangerous there are people who have who buy cars now but have a tracking facility it's a cellular modem right one of my friends disconnected the cellular modem you cannot drive the car anyway yes you can you can sure he can okay all right he does Drive it okay he bought it he looked up in the plans where the cellular modem is he unscrewed it now he drives but the car can't tell anything about him mm-hmm digital restrictions management means the program is designed to refuse to do what you tell it to do right that's a malicious functionality I believe that people who design such software should go to prison for a long time um or design or distribute or import whatever to get others to use software that's mm-hmm designed to chain them should go to prison another thing is a back door of any kind for instance the Amazon swindle Amazon's ebook reader is designed with a backdoor for erasing books in 2009 Amazon remotely erased thousands of copies of a particular book right in a giant Orwellian act and what was the book it was 1984 by George Orwell right so obviously a backdoor is malicious its purpose is to do something harmful or nasty to the user if the thing they wanted to do we're not harmful or nasty they would make it a feature and let users do it when they want to mm-hmm uh then there is censorship Apple started censorship censorship of apps the iPhone was the first general purpose computer in which users could only install approved applications Apple practiced the censorship power arbitrarily according to its business interests and his political stands until last year when Apple was shocked to realize that it was compelled to censor for China mm-hmm of course the Chinese state is tyrannical and oppressive mm-hmm and one thing it does to oppress the Chinese people is ban VPNs China ordered Apple to ban VPN applications but and China did them so soon lots of states will order Apple to censor for them and the reason Apple has to do it is that it gave it self-censorship power in the first place if the iPhone couldn't set couldn't restrict what apps users install then Apple would be able to say well what you're talking about people we can't control what users install and China would have had to accept that but because Apple gave itself the censorship power now it's the flunky of China Apple is the flunky of China and then there are universal backdoors which mean means a backdoor with the power to impose changes in the code Windows has a universal backdoor first detected in Windows XP it allows Microsoft to forcibly change the code in any way at all so Windows has zero security against Microsoft mmm-hmm when Microsoft did not acknowledge that Windows XP had this backdoor but with Windows Vista it announced proudly the presence of this backdoor but instead of calling it a universal backdoor Microsoft called it auto upgrade which is a nice sounding name the same malicious functionality what do you expect if you're using non free software it's malicious most of it is malicious but all of it puts you with the mercy of the developer mm-hmm and creates an enormous temptation for Dula developers to make the software malicious which is why it's so often is malicious once you basically surrender totally to the power of some company what's it going to do it's going to mistreat you mm-hmm so if you want software you can't have any chance of trusting it's got to be free software and that's why I absolutely refuse to have any non free software installed in my computer mm-hmm so anyway these these are the some malicious features you're talking yes if you want to see a list of them look at the new org slash malware we have hundreds of examples listed there right have you heard of Amazon key oh right that's where you make a key available so delivery people can open the door is that it it's there is no physical key you know the you install a smart lock in front of your house and then the delivery people just walk into your house without you even knowing so because you're talking on a Kindle where they can delete I call it the swindled swindle they this is the next level and a lot of people have bought it and a few months ago there was a demo where a developer gave a demo that anyone you know a developer delivery book guy can enter your house and when you have somebody has key to enter your house imagine don't event then the law-enforcement authorities they want back during iPhone won't they bought or want backdoor in the in your actual key I say will I see I smell though well they there are strict rules by which they could get in trouble if they use that to get into your house without having a warrant right right we know but what if you don't even get to know there was someone in your house that's true they could sneak in when I search your house and or am I like a parallel construction to give them an excuse regards you right and never admit what they did right it's illegal but you can't expect them to obey laws if they were obeying the laws we won't be taught having this discussion today so there are a lot of things are happening today which are even more dangerous that we you know initially thought okay this is something that you I know this is something sensitive but when I started my own journey since then I'm using the word that you don't like it but I'm using just for to give the context these days everybody is talking about open source it everybody is even Microsoft day before yesterday they knows as your asphere OS which is running Linux you know so I asked the kernel Linux the kernel and they are customized so I asked them very clearly that since Linux is known as the kernel is released under the GNU GPL version 2 will you also be releasing the source code and so this is yeah will comply with all the licenses that goes that's good that's C that program is free software yes it's released under a free software license I wrote which requires redistribute errs to respect the freedom of users and Microsoft is even going to respect the users freedom with regard to that particular program well I'm glad about that mm-hmm I however have to acknowledge that the people who coined the term open source as a reaction against AI free software movement have done us a lot of harm until 1998 as our software including the new / linux operating system spread it made people aware of our ideas not with 100% effectiveness but sometimes it did mm-hmm but in 1998 they coined the term open source to disconnect our software from our ethical ideas and they were fairly effective at that since then we have to work hard to teach people even the users of our software that there's such a thing as the free software movement that it's a movement for their freedom that this is not just a matter of more convenient more reliable software and those are secondary desirable things but they're not as important as freedom freedom is crucial right so we do the work we continue teaching people about the free software movement we no longer get help from our software as much but we still do it the people who started this the people who started open-source they hoped that we would feel pressured to use the term open source to and if I had been thinking in a short-term way I would have done it but I realized that if I did that our ideas would be totally buried mm-hmm but that if I continued to say free software and use it to distinguish our ideas from theirs at least we would have a way of getting known making our ideas known to people and so I'm sure I did the right thing when I decided I would not use the term open source right the reason I was building the core neighbor to number one how do you feel that Microsoft a company which was kind of providing now they are going to release something which has gonna GPL but it's just the beginning I'm sure there's going to be a lot of non free so do you feel everything happy are good about it I see it as a small step mm-hmm remember the goal is kick non-free software out of your life you can kick it out of our society we should all be free right so when you compare this step with that goal I see it as a small positive step right now the second part of the question was that the reason I gave the example was and I once again was I'm you couldn't code open source term that everybody using it what is the reason that while quote-unquote open source has become so pervasive but you know free software the term or the ideology is still kind of there's a reason for that which is quite clear which is that we stand for a controversial ethical position which open source threw away mm-hmm so for the businesses that disagree with the ethical ideas of free software that want to control the users in various ways and impose malicious functionalities on them they can say open source without embarrassing themselves with a contradiction mm-hmm but if they talk about free software and freedom and then they don't respect that freedom mm-hmm there will be an meshed in the contradiction between what they say and what they do this is why the companies in the community were so quick to switch to say open-source mm-hmm yes most of them right did you see any any scope or possible of changing the situation I don't expect it to change drastically but we do inform more people about the idea of free software mm-hmm I mean any driver people because these days the political landscape is changing we are seeing a lot of movements positive movements where there is the Equality or whatever so do you see there there can be a possibility as Millennials are coming in there's a possibility but because open-source blocked us off from most of the media and our ability to take advantage of it is limited okay but people are somewhat getting the word mm-hmm and how what is the situation what is the how sustainable is free software foundation these days oh we're getting our members are increasing gradually our income is increasing gradually so on that score we're doing okay mm-hmm and okay this this is not a question that I want to ask but what after return amidst almond what will happen to the free software foundation I won't see it yeah but have you ensured that they're like yeah I can't mm-hmm I don't know a person to recommend as my successor mm-hmm I wish I did but what can I do do do you I mean what do you feel about it this is your legacy this is your sorry it's a meaningless question know that it's meaning that's question for you but the thing is and the word ice myrtle I'm sorry I'm unable to do what I can't do it's no use asking me how I feel about it that won't help me do anything if I could find someone someone sufficiently steadfast to recommend I would in fact I might do more than recommend that person I would try to give that person experience and firm that person up any any other topic you don't touch upon I have so many things but I need a 12-1 of their two big areas of harm that we've seen mm-hmm one is the surveillance yes and the other is mobile device hmm computing on mobile devices is well it's even worse than computing on PCs was in the 1980s because they do so many things to make it hard for us to liberate them before mobile devices it was there were it wasn't very hard to write a different operating system and run it on your machine now there are obstacles and before mobile devices you would install a few general-purpose application programs and each one you would use to do many different things at least potentially and so we could replace them with other general purpose applications they didn't need to be hundreds of thousands of them we only needed them to be dozens or maybe hundreds we did that but now that each company each organization makes its own app mm-hmm its proprietary it spies on people and it's talking to a server through a secret protocol so we can't replace those the only thing we can do is say no to them but now the World Wide Web has been thoroughly broken hmm by JavaScript the World Wide Web initially was a declarative protocol for expressing presentations of information hypertext so the website would send the hypertext to your computer and your browser would show it to you so once we got a free browser in a free web server program okay you could browse the web and freedom but when the site has JavaScript code which is essentially code that sent in the web pages to be run on your computer in your browser well that means the communication between the site and the user is no longer in a state and declarative protocol is just setting arbitrary programs to run on your machine and of course nobody should be able to send programs to run in your machine that takes away your freedom and a lot of them spy on people mm-hmm so we just have to block the non free JavaScript code if the JavaScript program carries a free license well with a little improvements in browsers we could make it convenient for users to maintain their modified versions of those programs and start getting the benefits of freedom like making sure it doesn't spy or mistreat you but when the JavaScript program is non-free and often it's compiled you could say view source but what you see is actually a compiled program not source so I would say that it has destroyed the World Wide Web mm-hmm and turn it into a proprietary program delivery system right to resist this the crucial thing is make sure your website runs if the user is not running JavaScript mm-hmm and there is never a reason why you need to make the user run JavaScript I'm told that JavaScript programs can make certain interface constructs look nicer well if you send free javascript code for those limited purposes then your site will still work even if Java scripts turned off and they won't do any great harm put a free software license on them and it's okay but beyond that you shouldn't make your site use JavaScript mm-hmm you mentioned mobile phones yeah nowadays people are using IOT devices which are even worse well I won't use that term I know that's what I would always be it for you to give me something I talk about the Internet of stings cheaters and spies and telemarketers so in the internet of things they're becoming so pervasive I mean these whether it's thermostats or the doors have to have most houses don't have them most officers do have them it's going to be a thirteen billion in dollar industry I cover I cover Internet of Things so it's a big massive industry people should not buy any of those things yeah I understand you only computerized appliances you should use are those with free software that talk only to your computer that's what it takes for them to be ethical a very limited purpose device you may not care whether it has software in it if the software is never going to be upgraded and it can't talk to anything except your controller it doesn't matter to you whether it's software or a circuit they're equivalent so if you get some a controllable light bulb and it talks to a controller and the controller is run by free software you don't have to care what's in the light bulb but other than that these devices are malicious and dangerous and unjust anything that can have non-free software in it and talk to the Internet is it injustice most of these device has done on the Linux kernel it doesn't matter if they've got very software what matters is whether they have some non free software because that's enough to put a malicious feature into right that is the easy answer because but as I said the market is growing the answer that I'm looking from you is that what can we do instead I don't buy them is what you can do I'm serious we have to develop the strength to say no people who haven't got the courage to say no and make it firm are going to surrender their free left let me distances are great our expert at manipulating people in to the point where it will take firmness to say no and at that point you lose unless you have courage unless you have firmness some people see a lot of unwanted use of these devices people who think more that practical advantages are more important than freedom are going to lose their freedom let's stop thinking about what they think to hell with them if they are ready to give up their freedom I can't stop them I'm gonna talk to the people who value freedom enough to make a sacrifice for it let's let's take example of a big giant boat okay there hundred people in that boat out of those hundred people 70 70 people are poking a hole in that board you are one guy who says no I will not poke a hole and you have 20 people with you what's your point the point is that if the boat is going to sink the rest of them I am going to sink too so how can I stand those people are not going to stop so what I am going to get out of that boat if necessary yeah if I I'm going to do my damnedest to convince people to fight for their freedom and if I lose I will protect myself as much as I can I won't have any of those devices in my house I'm looking at a different solution let's look at Airlines an airplane okay we trust the airplane but because of regulations because of technology is because of pressure we have made it secure so can there be a way that we can use this talking about security I'm not I'm just giving can you let me scan you I'm not talking death security can you let me build the context please so what I'm saying is that is there a way through free software or as you said in the beginning that the companies who do free software work are more ethical than that so I'm talking to all this because of some context I'm not jumping at you so you have to listen to me also and you have to listen to me if you send me too so what I'm saying is that is there any way that for the technology perspective we can use free software at the same time we can also build companies who believe in free software so even if they do deploy these IOT devices or more they are ethical companies they are not stealing they are not spying on you I don't know I'm having heard of a some little helper ISM yes what do you think about there's this man what do you think whatever change the subject I'm not sure your subject they're not building these Internet of stings devices as far as I know they're mobile they are building mobile for me yes please I can't answer these questions in fragments you've asked a different question in you asked first of all but is it volt you raised the issue of the internet of stings and then I am and then as I try to answer it you said other things which make it hard for people to see what I'm saying and now you're trying to change to a different question I'm not I can't do that i underst I don't think I'd tell you what I've got to do one at a time look can you finish look at the internet of sting okay let's let's do that and you're basically asking the question can you one person stop this disaster and the answer is obviously I can't unless other people join in okay I'm not trying to claim to have the powers of a Superman I'm only telling people about a danger hoping that they will join in resisting it but your question effectively assumes that that's not good enough either I am so strong that I can defeat you through Sunday morning man you won't the point is how big is the free software movement that depends on the people who are watching this they can either join in or not they can either say no to the non free devices that are free normally malicious in the internet of things or not most internet of stings products that I see being offered to consumers are malicious mmm-hmm they talk to the manufacturers server which uses them to spy on the customers that buy the products if you have any sort of self-respect you should it should be obvious to you that you don't want that in your house and you won't let it be in your house you'll kick it out but you know how many people can I convince that's up to them mmm-hmm so let's not waste time on an imponderable we don't know what the viewers of this interview will think that's up to them so why should we waste any time asking about it they'll show us what they think so I'm more interested in providing them with reasons to think what I'm arguing for and I may convince some mm-hmm there is a sex toy mm-hmm which was designed to be controlled remotely over the Internet mm-hmm and that has some nice uses right I don't know well I haven't either but I can envision uses that might be enjoyable mm-hmm if they're lovers who are not physically near each other they might they might find this an enjoyable thing to do but the only way to send commands to it is through the server blowing to the manufacturer mm-hmm so I wasn't surprised to find out that the server is spying on the users all the time and they even built the product for spying it wasn't uh it wasn't an afterthought it's not that they built it and then they decided to keep track of the data no they built it to give them more data they put in a thermometer so it will tell them if the product is in contact with the human body but it might even tell them how much contact and what kind of content so they designed it for the purposes of spying on people that should be a crime mm-hmm well this made a scandal to some extent I don't know whether they're still selling that product mm-hmm when I saw that product my first thought was you can't trust this thing I don't want it if people teach themselves to say whenever they see such a thing you can't trust that I won't take it then we can defeat those things now I see a possibility that the business devices the things sold say for offices and factories might be better it's possible that the controllers sold for factories only talk to another warfare offices only talk to the master controller in the office and then if they put free software in those right they control it and if it's not talking to the internet then at least it's not spying on them maybe others maybe the manufacturers treat businesses better because the businesses have more money but I don't know that that's true I do know that the examples I've heard of have been in consumer products yes yeah they call it a IOT or in turn industrial Internet of Things yes you're right they have totally different mechanism and yes more lately it's more ethical I have no information about it mmm-hmm it is because I had I did some historian past and they talked to people and you're right about those devices they are much more controlled okay good for those businesses yes they deserve control over their computing and you and I deserve control over our computing mmm-hmm so I fight for all users of computing to have control over their computing and it looks like it's going to be a long fight so if businesses can have that control why can't be oh it's because the manufacturers think they can get away with more mistreatment of individuals I think the individuals are going to be suckers mm-hmm that is that is what I was trying to drive in the beginning that you know even with IOT device internal sting devices there can be raised as the way businesses don't get track even consumers don't get well they could it would certainly be possible to make an ethical device and ethical computerized appliance or an ethical thing to control your computerized appliances but it's not enough to have some free software in there for instance if Linux the kernel was in there that doesn't make it ethical right because the criterion is is all the software free software and have you got the source you know free software has delivered to you so you've got all the source code but there's another problem that happens with these devices which is they tend to have lousy security even companies that make them ship one model for a short time and then forget about it they don't try to maintain the software they delivered and the users even when it is free software the users are not set up to maintain it right there changing the models too fast we have to change that and I'm not sure how but I would guess that those devices also have some software that's not free mm-hmm and that makes it clearly unjust there are a few exceptions where all the software is free there for instance there's the there's a Wi-Fi hub called I think the Libre CMC runs with free software and people do upgrade it yes you see free software is the necessary prerequisite for trying to maintain good computing security and now a music security in the standard sense with non free software you can't even try but just having free software doesn't guarantee good security free software has bugs just as non free software has bugs right maintaining good security is very hard but at least you've got to be in a position to try which means reject the non free software which you're not allowed to patch right not allowed to debug is basically Security's hopeless they're right and there has been a lot of discussion even in the internal sting space that either through regulations or laws that a customer consumer should be able to put their own free software on those devices so even if the vendor either goes out of business or is not interested at least I should be able to maintain and manage of course now I wouldn't wait for the vendor to go out of business or cease to be interested in the first day of work from the first day yes or and have the thing yes I wouldn't I be I would distrust it yeah but it's like one step at a time well sure I mean if if they did that mm-hmm that would to some extent redeem it although I would still stay away from those things once I was staying in a house where there was an Alexa device I unplugged it mm-hmm I didn't want it listening to me I don't trust it at all yes did you hear the case where Amazon handle ended over Alexa to the law-enforcement authorities there was a murder case so that also means that maybe even if says that when you used the hard word Alex I start listening then what is the point you know why are you giving that device to law enforcement well I don't know what it means to give the device give the device means that may have may have captured audio that is so they hand it over in case it had captured so commands I'm Amazon knows that what it Cabot's is not yet any software so Amazon knows what it captures or not captures right well the things the things that follow the word Alexa they're transmitted to Amazon servers mm-hmm right so Amazon might have handed over that data from its own servers hmm I don't want Amazon to get any data from I don't trust them at all and I don't even know whether they're listening and capturing all the time and then using machine learning cable did they just say oh no I don't want them to get any data from me this is why I say what we need in order to take a real bite out of massive surveillance is laws that systems have to be designed not to accumulate data about learning we have to limit the collection of data not merely regulate how it will be used yes yes and users should have total control if you are if you are willing to have compromise but if I don't want at least I don't actually know it should system should not be allowed to ask you for excessive data any service that's offered has to be should be required by law to be designed to ask for the least possible data for that service right in other words the users consent is not an excuse for spying on people this principle is necessary because companies have become adept at manufacturing consent mm-hmm now I'm deliberately taking a term that Chomsky used to refer to with consent to government decisions and that here it's consent to a surveillance practice but companies are so good at maneuvering almost everybody into consenting that they've taught people mostly not even to care how much they're being snooped on and I think therefore we need to put an end to this manufacturer of consent by saying you're not even allowed to ask for certain data if it isn't necessary for the basic service you're doing so for instance if the basic service is providing transportation to people we know that can be done without requiring them to identify who they are therefore the law should say you're forbidden to try to find out who the passenger is right that's hopefully which means you have to accept cash payment too because if the user has to pay through a non anonymous method you find it the service would find out who that user is so they must be required to accept cash yes I think we need a lot of changes a lot of positive changes to build the kind of society we really want to live in it's the most interesting how many people are willing to make that compromise as you said you know well my mission is to teach more people to stand firm for their freedom because given we're in the earlier stages of this fight with the free software fight maybe we're halfway there there's a long way to go that being so the crucial thing is to teach more people to demand freedom and refused to give it up right so my long-term plan since I can't make detailed long-term plans for ten years from now or even three years from now my long-term plan is do everything possible to show more people why they need to reject these digital things that subjugate people and hopefully we will see some changes in in coming years we are going through some revolutionary times right now so maybe that bill also happen and yeah thanks a lot for your time today I'd like to suggest that people look at the new org for more information about the new operating system and the free software movement fsf.org for more information about how the free software foundation campaigns for free software and to sign up as a member please do join we need your support and also separately Stallman org you'll find a menu listing various companies and why you shouldn't do business with them thank you including Amazon Boober Google Microsoft Apple Facebook yeah these days we need to teach people that the danger of surveillance is not limited to Facebook yes the amount of disgust for Facebook is delightful to see but in order for this to lead to a change that makes a real difference we have to not just replace Facebook with something that treats people decently but also a lot of other things and they're not just companies right thank you for your time today and hopefully we'll see you again next time I hope so happy hacking hacking

Channel: TFiR

Views: 35,720

Keywords: Richard M Stallman, Free Software Foundation

Id: VMM6D9vuHkY

Length: 72min 51sec (4371 seconds)

Published: Thu May 03 2018