Category: Tech

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Richard Stallman

Stallman

Here is an item from Richard Stallman which I find both compelling and sad. After I have struggled hard with GNU/Linux – I now learn that the kernel nay not be free (in the sense of having all the sources available). I have never seen my foray into this area as solely technical but always as part of a sort of noosphere probe. It still is that of course but what my probe is revealing is how big this battle for freedom is. This is not libertarian freedom either – but freedom for people to be able to work together to be creative. Freedom for one generation to be able to build on the creations of the previous. Which is the exact opposite of the freedom to build private empires.

It is very like theological debate isn’t it. I am not really up with the history of that but I imagine whole churches split over such finery. I know I can’t be that ideologically pure – but I am glad that RMS is.

I am not a programmer but I do make web pages and I’d never have been able to do that without the “source” button actually working. Imagine a web that was not open source in that way. It would not have happened at all. What is closed software preventing today?

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Every email is a significant act

E-Mail Notification Management
“I like to impose this extra bit of protocol on myself, to underscore that every e-mail is a significant act.”

Jon Udell is one of the few writers who takes a real interest in how our emails work, how groups work online. His column “Tangled in the treads” for Byte always has a good take on this or that aspect of online collaboration. I don’t always agree with the details (or understand the hi-tech stuff) but “that every e-mail is a significant act.” is a fine principle.

This article is about his first look at Outlook.

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Jim Kent & the Genome Data

O’Reilly Network: Keeping Genome Data Open [Apr. 05, 2002]

“Jim Kent was a graduate student in biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), when he wrote the program that allowed the public human genome team to assemble its fragments just before Celera’s private, commercial effort. His program ensured that the human genome data would remain in the public domain. Kent wrote the 10,000-line program in a month, because he didn’t want to see the genome data locked up by commercial patents.”

A hero indeed! One of the spin-offs from now using GNU/Linux is that it is easier to see how locking away human knowledge for the benefit of the rich is just evil!

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Psychological roots of political life

Free as in Freedom
Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software

The whole of this book is online.

amazon

“”If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution,” Stallman wrote. “Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far [sic] as society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”

I like that line from Chapter 7. I think that reward could well come from taxes – more govt payment for free software.

Edit: 20 April 2002

“I really admired the way Richard built up an entire political movement to address an issue of profound personal concern,” Sarah said, explaining her attraction to Stallman.

My wife immediately threw back the question: “What was the issue?”

“Crushing loneliness.”

Fascinating comment… the idea we do political things for personal reasons. I buy it. I am glad RMS has such a psychologically minded friend – I hope it is working out for them. But there would be an interesting twist to entertain: He had to set up a life of crushing loneliness so that he could fulfil his destiny as a political leader.

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Stanislaw Lem

Scriptorium – Stanislaw Lem By Nathan M. Powers

"If [Stanislaw Lem] isn't considered for a Nobel Prize by the end of the century, it will be because someone told the judges that he writes science fiction," predicted a Philadelphia Inquirer critic in 1983. Lem is arguably the greatest living science fiction writer, and even one of the most important European authors of his generation; yet he commands little critical attention, and has failed to reach discerning American science fiction readers who ought, one would think, to be most interested in him. The reasons for this may be sought, paradoxically, in the high demands he makes of his own work: Lem is a true original, but at the price of being marginal."

I want to read this man's books.

amazon

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