A trickle of freedom

RMS: In this chapter I corrected quite a few statements about my thoughts and feelings, and smoothed out the unfounded hostility in the description of some events. Williams' statements are presented in their original form unless otherwise noted.

Ask anyone who's spent more than a minute in Richard Stallman's company, and they'll all tell you the same thing: forget his long hair, forget his eccentricities, the first thing you notice is his eyes. Just look into his green eyes once and you will understand that you are looking at a real adept.

To call Stallman obsessed is an understatement. He doesn't look at you, he looks through you. When you look away out of tact, Stallman's eyes begin to burn into your head like two laser beams.

This is probably why most authors describe Stallman in religious style. In an article on Salon.com in 1998, under the title "The Saint of Free Software," Andrew Leonard calls Stallman's green eyes "radiating the power of an Old Testament prophet." 1999 magazine article Wired claims that Stallman's beard makes him "look like Rasputin." And in the Stallman dossier London Guardian his smile is called "the smile of an apostle after meeting Jesus"

Such analogies are impressive, but not true. They portray some kind of unattainable, supernatural being, while the real Stallman is vulnerable, like all people. Watch his eyes for a while and you will understand: Richard was not hypnotizing you or glaring at you, he was trying to make eye contact. This is how Asperger's syndrome manifests itself, the shadow of which lies on Stallman's psyche. Richard finds it difficult to interact with people, he does not feel contact, and in communication he has to rely on theoretical conclusions rather than feelings. Another sign is periodic self-immersion. Stallman's eyes, even in bright light, can stop and fade, like those of a wounded animal that is about to give up the ghost.

I first encountered this strange view of Stallman in March 1999, at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Jose. It was a conference for people and companies associated with free software, a kind of “recognition evening”. The evening was the same for Stallman - he decided to take an active part, to convey to journalists and the general public the history of the GNU project and its ideology.

That was the first time I received guidance on how to deal with Stallman, and unwittingly. This happened at a press conference dedicated to the release of GNOME 1.0, a free graphical desktop environment. Without knowing it, I hit the Stallman inflation hotkey by simply asking, “Do you think the maturity of GNOME will affect the commercial success of the Linux operating system?”

“Please stop calling the operating system just Linux,” Stallman replied, immediately fixing his gaze on me, “the Linux kernel is only a small part of the operating system. Many of the utilities and applications that make up the operating system you simply call Linux were developed not by Torvalds, but by volunteers of the GNU Project. They spent their personal time so that people could have a free operating system. It is impolite and ignorant to dismiss the contributions of these people. So I ask: when you talk about an operating system, call it GNU/Linux, please."

After jotting down this tirade in my reporter's notebook, I looked up to find Stallman staring at me with an unblinking gaze amid the ringing silence. The question from another journalist came hesitantly - in this question, of course, it was “GNU/Linux”, and not just “Linux”. Miguel de Icaza, the leader of the GNOME project, began to answer, and only in the middle of his answer did Stallman finally look away, and a shiver of relief ran down my spine. When Stallman chastises someone else for misspelling the name of a system, you're glad he's not looking at you.

Stallman's tirades produce results: many journalists stop calling the operating system simply Linux. For Stallman, chastising people for omitting GNU from a system's name is nothing more than a practical way to remind people of the value of the GNU Project. As a result, Wired.com in its article compares Richard with Lenin's Bolshevik revolutionary, who was later erased from history along with his deeds. Likewise, the computer industry, especially certain companies, tries to downplay the importance of GNU and its philosophy. Other articles followed, and although few journalists write about the system as GNU/Linux, most do give Stallman credit for creating free software.

After that I didn't see Stallman for almost 17 months. During this time, he once again visited Silicon Valley at the August 1999 LinuxWorld show, and without any official appearances, he graced the event with his presence. In accepting the Linus Torvalds Award for Public Service on behalf of the Free Software Foundation, Stallman quipped: “Giving the Free Software Foundation the Linus Torvalds Award is like giving the Rebel Alliance the Han Solo Award.”

But this time Richard’s words did not make a splash in the media. Midweek, Red Hat, a major maker of GNU/Linux-related software, went public through a public offering. This news confirmed what had previously only been suspected: “Linux” was becoming a buzzword on Wall Street, just like “e-commerce” and “dotcom” had previously been. The stock market was nearing its peak, and therefore all the political issues around free software and open source faded into the background.

Maybe that’s why Stallman was no longer present at the third LinuxWorld in 2000. And soon after that, I met Richard and his signature piercing gaze for the second time. I heard he was going to Silicon Valley and invited him to an interview in Palo Alto. The choice of location gave the interview a touch of irony—with the exception of Redmond, few U.S. cities can more eloquently testify to the economic value of proprietary software than Palo Alto. It was interesting to see how Stallman, with his implacable war against selfishness and greed, would hold himself in a city where a pitiful garage costs at least 500 thousand dollars.

Following Stallman's directions, I make my way to the headquarters of Art.net, a nonprofit "virtual artist community." This headquarters is a barely patched-up shack behind a hedge on the northern edge of the city. This is how suddenly the film “Stallman in the Heart of Silicon Valley” loses all its surrealism.

I find Stallman in a dark room, sitting at a laptop and tapping on the keys. As soon as I enter, he greets me with his 200-watt green lasers, but at the same time he greets me quite peacefully, and I greet him back. Richard looks back at the laptop screen.

Source: linux.org.ru

Free as in Freedom in Russian: Chapter 5. Stream of Freedom

A trickle of freedom

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