Stallman: Only Victims Of Tyranny Should Use Facebook
Only victims of tyranny can justify use of Facebook says freedom activist Richard Stallman. He also spoke in favour of Julian Assange and against mobile phones
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“It is a system of unjust power,” he says. “The developer or owner has unjust power over the user, and the program is just the instrument of that power. This is an injustice and the idea of free software is to escape from that injustice and then put an end to it.”
Free software is defined by four freedoms, he explains.
- Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program as you wish
- Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code and change it
- Freedom 2 is the freedom to help others, the freedom to redistribute exact copies of the source code
- Freedom 3 is the freedom to help the community – to distribute modified versions of the program
“With these four freedoms, the users control the program,” said Stallman. “If they don’t have these freedoms, the program controls the users.”
People who use Windows have been “co-opted” into “promoting something that mistreats them and exploits them, because it looks like too big a job to change it,” he said – because it has been set up that way: “They set it up to be attractive in the short term, and set it up so it would be a bit of a pain to escape, and set up the network effect so each user puts pressure on other people to be users.”
“If people find enough strength they can say no,” he said. “Proprietary software companies get away with what they are doing because users don’t stand up and resist.”
“Because it is an ethical issue, this is more important than any mere technical issue,” he continued, “so the aim of a free software movement is the liberation of cyberspace. All software programs should be free, so the users of those programs are free.”
By contrast, he thinks open source misses the point. “We are aiming for a free society, open source organisations and leaders say they are aiming for better quality code. These are about as far apart as you can get.”
These are so far apart, that it is a mistake to use the open source message of lower costs and better quality as a Trojan horse to get freedom into your organisation, he said: “What I found is that talking to people about open source might get them to use some free programs, it might get them to contribute to some free software programs, but it reinforces their values which are the deepest thing that we would want to change. There is a big difference between getting someone to run some free programs and teaching that person to value freedom.”
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