from the soviet union. paul finds around supremely guilty and absentia blaming tehran for helping the nine eleven terrorists but critics say it's part of a smear campaign paving the way for a new war. next taking a hard line against the software giants who charge a fortune for the program. that's next. hello again and welcome to the spotlight way until you show on our to our end alvin and its name my guest on the program richard stallman. the computer world is divided in two confronting candidates with two totally different to last on the one side are the corporations which sell programs gaming bets on the other the

people who believe software mostly three. former obviously dominates the market yet play software products are starting to be commercial how can this happen why isn't the market always working properly in the software world poor asking the number one person in the free software movement a true computer genius who has always confronted business with steve jobs and well yes spotlight gives you a unique opportunity to hear your questions answered directly by richard stallman a programmer turned philosopher. richard stallman sas the purpose of his career is to come pain for users writes back in the seventy's he was a product a programmer and a part of the newly born hacker community he could have continued in a software developer career but an attempt to introduce a totally free operating system made him

a true philosopher the launch of the g a new project started the free software movement it finds for running changing and redistributing computer programs without charge thanks to richard stallman and his friends most commercial software has free alternatives stallman himself believes in a static line of lectures and promotes his philosophy around the globe. i will richard welcome to the show and thank you very much for being with us well first of all you just when you were listening to that intro you said that it's a mistake to confront free software and commercial so really want what we are these are two unrelated questions a program is free or proprietary depending on whether the users control the program or the program controls the users whether the program is commercial or not that's a totally different question it's commercial if it's developed as part of a business there are businesses that develop free software and there are

individuals that make proprietary software isn't necessarily commercial also resort where means free as in freedom it's not a matter of price free software is often available gratis but not necessarily you can sell copies you're free to sell copies and proprietary software non free software is sometimes gratis for instance flash player is gratis proprietary software it's not free software and it has malicious features so it subjugates the users and abuses them but it's gratis if you like that producing and working on free software can be a business i mean yes it is it can be a million people who are paid to do this and the companies do this there are people who have small businesses where they develop solutions for clients and they improve as they go the free software that they use in the solution i think you partly through the question that we got on facebook from mr jewett who are six who can

afford to work for free so well actually lots of people do there are many people who volunteer for courses and many people who have hobbies so developing free software is a sort of hobby for many people and it's a political cause for many people but the crucial thing is there is lots of free software if somebody believes a c. . minded economic theory that says there can't be free software well that theory must be false it's like someone who has a theory saying satellites can stay up well they do look up at the moon one day and you realize satellites can stay up so that theory must be wrong now you might want to ask how people develop free software that's an interesting question but to say i don't believe it could exist when it does exist that's just a false belief if god wanted people to fly you would have given the wings who think there is no god but it's not really

a meaningful question but. basically for software regionally was frequently free back in the one nine hundred fifty s. as soon as there were more than one computer that was an identical model and that the same programs would run on and there were various users doing things that sometimes had an overlap they started sharing software between them and free software was still common around one nine hundred seventy when i entered the field but during the seventies it was driven out by user subjugating proprietary software but i had the good fortune to work at a place where the software was free so i experienced life in freedom but then that community died in one thousand nine hundred eighty two a proximately and i saw myself facing a life of proprietary software and it was ugly it was disgusting so i said i'm

going to dedicate all my efforts to creating another free software community to replace the one that was gone and the other question we got from facebook came from nick alley and here's what he writes what motivated you to pour in the of the free software movement when everybody else thought this was insane well i it all and you're literally. i had already exist experience life in a free software so why knew that it was possible and that it was a good way of life and i didn't think that money could compensate for the ugliness of life that i would have with proprietary software i didn't want to be subjugated and i didn't want to subjugate others in fact it made me morally ashamed of the idea it was it was morally wrong in my view so the only thing that was worth doing with my skill as a programmer was creating

a free world richard you say i quote it will take many steps the many years to reach a world in which it is normal for software uses to have freedom and quote do you think the existing economic system should be changed to to help your dreams or that's not necessary the free software movement which started in a capitalist society and has always existed in a capitalist society there is no in compatibility between free software and capitalism now extreme capitalism the empire of the corporations which is what we have since the globalization and the unfair trade treaties of the ninety's that's a different story i don't know if anything decent in society can co-exist with extreme capitalism extreme capitalism means that in each area of life the business

is interested in that area rule society control the government and in particular the oil and fossil fuel companies control energy policy and they are driving us towards the kind of disaster we want to have food to eat that was only a year and a half ago in russia that the harvest burned up due to an extreme heat event of course global. heating makes those happen more frequently as well as creating floods and droughts and many kinds of disasters so. we're heading for a total disaster if we don't put into extreme capitalism and reestablish democracy but this doesn't mean eliminating capitalism just to eliminate the empire of corporations doesn't mean we stop having businesses so we don't need to stop having businesses we don't need to get rid of capitalism free software combines capitalist ideas and socialist ideas and at our cost ideas it doesn't fit into any one of

those camps richard end of the. discussion that's going on in the in the internet in the in the world in general is a sparkle by wiki leaks do you think that the public knowledge in depth from the public knowledge of government secrets diplomatic secrets is good is it justified is there a lie it's necessary is there a line that should be generally now that our governments betray the citizens when the empire of the corporations imposes its governments of occupation these governments exist to keep the public under control of business there they may have democratic form but they don't really carry out the law say that the best way to control the public is free software internet free software doesn't control the potter no it's the opposite free software is software that the users control.

in order for the users to have control over the programs they use and have control over the computing they do with it they need certain freedoms these for essential freedoms are the criterion for whether a program is free if the users don't have control over the program then the program controls the users and of course the developer controls the program and that means that this non free program is an instrument of power you know what my dad always taught me and i was raised in a capitalist society in the in england in france with my parents he said listen. as long as you can afford to buy things here free but as soon as you start getting things for three he hooked free software doesn't mean it's for free so you know misunderstanding here but in this case he is assuming your father was assuming that when you buy something you control it yeah and that used to be true and waffen it

still is true but not was software if you buy or even get gratis a copy of a proprietary program you don't control what it does it's designed frequently to mistreat you it's very common for users of proprietary software to have malicious software this is where we tell you some examples microsoft windows has known malicious features as features to spy on the user features to restrict the user these are called digital handcuffs and it has known back doors with which microsoft for instance can change anything remotely. mac os has known digital handcuffs to restrict users the recent apple products the i things these have a known back spy features known digital and coughs the nastiest ever and unknown back door flash player which is gratis but not free software has surveillance

feature and digital and coughs most sell your phones will transmit your location on remote command that's a surveillance feature and a back to work together thing to control use your credit card i mean what exactly what i that's why normally buy things only with cash. point is that free software because a corporation typically it's a corporation has control over the users through this program it uses that power to abuse them it puts it intentional malicious features how can we protect ourselves free software is the only known defense says richard stallman founded all of the free software and spotlight will be back shortly for a great stay with us continue to.

looks like it's.

lists please. welcome back to spotlight algor novel. just a reminder that my guest on the show today is richard stallman founder of the free

software movement richard we've got we've got dozens of questions from our viewers and here's one from a man called k.z. and andre he put a question to you on our website what can the free software movement do to convince people to use free software instead of by have only more acute in proprietary products because most people still believe that windows are mad well it works better than them for it so well they don't realize that it's full of malicious features it's basically an instrument to give someone else power over them and this power is being abused constantly so what i do to try to show people why they should move to freedom respecting free software. is i don't talk about practical things mere convenience because you know free software in some cases is convenient

and in some cases less so just as proprietary software in some cases given that in some cases less so they're not all incompetent i'm not going to claim that but they never respect your freedom and once you have come to understand this then you'll realize that it's worth making sacrifices to gain control over the things in that you live your life with the same control that your father assumed he would have when he was what is he been ideal is that how can you consider yourself to be free if you have a computer if you have a computer you hooked if you live in europe your russian gas because your son alex was ari's are so you're not sorry you are free from the earliest years stretching the word for if we yeah to include a lot you are here to see the earth results i'm using it in a very specific way meaning freedom is having control over your own life it doesn't mean you can get anything you want if you're asked to supplied by the russians your

life is controlled by the rich who actually know what it means is western europe is to some extent vulnerable to threats from russia. but after all it's an interdependent world to some extent but that doesn't mean an individual person in western europe doesn't have freedom and no i'm not i am i don't want to be free but again that's a different issue i want to tell you. but that's different you see freedom doesn't mean that you have no social relationships it doesn't mean you're an island what it means is nobody is controlling you and making you do this and making you do that now but in a free society people generally have. their homes where they have where they own things and they can do with those things what they want to do of course their thing

there are things where you affect others where you have to respect their rights but . you have a sort of smear of your own freedom around you but not if you're using a computer with proprietary software because they're the developer the owner of the program controls everything misalignment a what's your opinion on the g n u linux based national operating system funded and co financed by the government which government or government bodies or any garrido well first of all good new is the name of the operating system i started in one thousand nine hundred three but i was given good linux is a kernel which one program that we use with the system that was the one piece that we hadn't developed and mr torvalds provided one so good newsflash linux is the combination it's basically could do with linux so this is a complete operating system now in fact it's normally not funded by governments but we're happy to have government help in improving it so some pieces have been funded

by governments along behind and government agencies must insist on using only free software for the sake of the computing sovereignty of the state if a state agency uses a non free program that means a private entity has control over the state's computing that must not be ok commenting on the death of steve jobs you are quoted to say i'm not glad he's dead but i'm glad he's gone well i think the same thing was said about the mayor of chicago about his something similar yes i think survivor i'll try to do that i didn't quote it exactly right i posted an excerpt of correction well what's what was wrong with me mean the idea is easy jobs figured out how to build computers that were prisons jails for the user and how to make them stylish and chic which said that if you need us we will make you late in an evil genius he did harm to the

world because he convinced people to rush to stores saying put the handcuffs on me please. and that is extremely harmful. that's what we fight against so so does that mean that that like motorola phone is better. i'm not sure i don't think it is what kind of phone to use my mobile phone you know for great because all mobile phones are surveillance and tracking devices what's wrong use what you are available and sign for anybody even from a sad so you just write i don't care i do care because i don't want big brother to know all about me or all about you. isn't big brother doesn't have enough money to spy on everybody else and with he with mobile he owns if you will it's automatic he will start spying on you doing when you start doing something you know not what you do something wrong that's assuming the government is

a good guy with member and we're talking about governments of occupation that support the empire and whose purpose is to keep the people in line i've seen a sabotage i've seen a witness the couple of governments comprised of good guys and they never survive more than six month i don't know that's not the point is that i reject the assumption that we should want the government to have more power. we're in a state that has too much power right now that's not the way things should be the u.s. senate just passed a law saying that even american citizens should be sent to guantanamo given no legal representation it's an attack on fundamental human rights so i don't want that government to have any more knowledge of anybody that it can than we can prevent it from having this go on with the with questions from the audience so that's why i don't have a mobile phone it's not that my movements are

a big secret or it's not that i actually am concerned whether they would know where i'm going. i am against any system whereby this state can see where everyone has gone good and then run from the audience wouldn't widespread adoption of open source code programs make the public more vulnerable to hackers who would be able to analyze the code and find its weaknesses well first of all i'm not in favor of open source open source is of the name of a philosophy that rejects my views so i am not in favor of any i don't talk about open source except to say why i disagree with it if you want to cross that out and replace free software then i could answer the question does first but then there's another problem with that question it assumes that hackers are speedball who are trying to hurt you how king means playful cleverness and computers are very useful

for if you want to be playfully clever if what they're not require is playful cleverness then the governing governing is competent clinton. people have misunderstood the word hacker since around one thousand nine hundred two i makar i'm proud to say a macher which means i practice playful cleverness in a lot of ways it generally has nothing to do with computer security it's a mistake to use the word hacker to mean breaking computer security i call that cracking and the people do order crackers so the question is if you use free software are you more vulnerable to cracking and the answer is no in pyrrhic li our software has better quality and you are not more vulnerable we found out. just a week ago that there was a bug in our i tunes security hole that apple knew about for years and only announced a fix a week ago and in the meantime they think that this might have been used by

governments to others to break into people's computers and take control of them well that's not free software you know our christopher county asks us on facebook rather asks you what do you think of social networks like facebook acting too so secretive in their finances and very secretive in their in their privacy plans well these are two different questions social that working is one question and facebook is another. so face to face with social well it's one cause it's one particular case social networking in the abstract i don't have anything against that i don't do it because it's not convenient for me but if it's convenient for you do it however facebook facebook is very nasty you should unfriend facebook today you should never touch it because facebook does systematic surveillance of people even

on facebook users if they if you visit a page that shows a like button of facebook facebook knows you visited that page well we're developing something that's going to cause these like buttons not to show up so that facebook won't know where you went but facebook does other nasty things like facebook if you're a facebook user facebook would use your face in paid advertisements without asking you so. i don't and there are many other bad things about facebook actual you shouldn't touch that but a social networking site can be ethical. question from a user nickname bathala me he announced you are known as being very wary of publication of personal data on the internet but what's your take on the problem of false online identity in order to deceive people the so-called sock puppets. i think that's bad but i don't think anything can be done about it because the kind

of surveillance system that would be necessary to prevent sock puppets would be a tyranny that i'd rather live with sucks up so thank you thank you very much for being with us it was really interesting to talk to pax and just to remind you that richard stallman was my guest on the show is the software freedom and that's it for now from all of us if you want to have yourself a spotlight or have someone in mind when you think i should interview next time to drop me a lot of the algerian are out of the t.v. dot are you and let's keep the champagne internet spotlight will be back with more comments on what's going on in and outside your show so then they are r.t. and. thank you thank you.

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