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01/20/2006

Stallman in eWeek

You can get a more serious look at GPL 3 from a number of sources including Linux Devices.

Here are some of the more entertaining parts of Richard Stallman in eWeek on GPL 3:

eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli: You said the main issues for you were making the license more easily compatible with other free licenses, as well as DRM (Digital Rights Management) and the whole patent issue. Tell me your thoughts on these issues.

Richard Stallman: DRM is an attempt to crush the freedom that copyright law gives the public. It is completely evil. DRM does not deserve to be tolerated and should be wiped out. It is tolerated because governments are not very democratic and the rich have too much power over governments and the media.

Another entry:

Galli: So, is the process now in the hands of the community?

Stallman: No. I will still be making decisions. The committees are going to take all the comments and boil them down to issues. Then they will start addressing the issues and looking at the various options. They will also try and decide how to deal with these issues, but ultimately I will be making those decisions. And, of course, if the community has found a good solution, they make that job easy.

One more:

Is Microsoft the greatest threat to freedom in software?

It is a mistake to think of the free software movement as an alternative to Microsoft. When we started this, Microsoft was not particularly important. In 1984, the system that people normally thought of as the system to compete with was Unix. That is why we have GNU's Not Unix: It couldn't be GNU's Not Windows because there was no Microsoft Windows then.

Microsoft is simply one example of a proprietary software developer, a software developer that tries to subjugate users to keep them divided and helpless. So what we are campaigning against, and trying to help people escape, is not any company in particular, but an antisocial system where software developers put restrictions on the users.

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