INTERVIEW: Richard Stallman on 20 years of GNU

Posted on 13 Jan 2004 at 11:28

Last week saw the 20th anniversary of Richard Stallman's decision to quit the MIT and start the GNU Project in 1984, with a goal to creating a platform using 'free' software that a user can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve: the GNU operating system which used widely today in its GNU/Linux form. A year later he founded the Free Software Foundation, a body that seeks to further the development and use of free software. He is also the author of the GNU General Public Licence, the licence under which free software can be distributed.

In the GNU Manifesto, you state that you resigned from MIT because you 'cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement,' and that MIT 'had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such things are done for me against my will'. Do you think such institutions have changed 20 years on, and with the GNU project now in existence? Would you have made the same decision were you working at MIT today?

Things have changed, and today an MIT staff person could perhaps get MIT to agree to use the GNU GPL for releasing such software. It might be somewhat more difficult for me as the author of the GPL to be an MIT employee and use it, since MIT might have made me negotiate with MIT lawyers about what to put in the GNU GPL. Overall it is still better that I left.

On the other hand, MIT no longer employs operating system developers very much, and has not since the 80s. I cannot assume that MIT would have wanted to continue paying me all these years while letting me spend my time developing the GNU system and promoting free software ideals. I might have had to leave willing or not.

How does the GNU system, in its current state, compare with your original vision for the system?

The GNU/Linux system, which is GNU with Linux as the kernel, has gone far beyond the specific technical vision I had 20 years ago. At the same time, it falls short in one important respect: the widespread inclusion of non-free software in versions of GNU/Linux means that installing a GNU/Linux system does not reliably give you freedom.

The point of the GNU system was to be entirely free, so that the users would have freedom. If you include even one non-free program in the system, it is no longer a free system, and it does not achieve the goal.

A system including just one non-free program may come close to the goal, in a practical sense. How far it falls short depends on how painless it is, practically speaking, to remove that program. But inclusion of any non-free program always conveys the message that non-free software is acceptable, and that affects our community's further development. Whoever accepts one non-free program usually sees little reason to object to the second, the third, or the fifty-third. Thus, we face a tendency to add many non-free programs, often in important system roles that other programs depend on. In
particular, any time a law blocks free software from supporting a desired feature, someone is likely to offer a non-free implementation as a 'solution' to the problem.

People who are accustomed to seeing non-free software in the system tend to construct philosophies that legitimize it. We face the danger that the GNU/Linux system will degrade into a hybrid of free and non-free software, whose free portions will be of little use on their own. The goal of using a computer while living in freedom may be completely lost.

What has been the most significant application developed for GNU?