His professor thought he would have made a great biologist but Richard Mathew Stallman, had more important things in mind. He wanted to be a professional hacker at Harvard. He also wanted to wage a war against big corporations like Microsoft, seeking a monopoly on knowledge. Richard, however, is not a communist he is a symbol of freedom in the software industry. To him, intellectual property rights (IPR) is a sham in the age of globalisation. Freedom is too precious to lose, he says. His idea of defending freedom is to subscribe to the ideals of a free software movement. But free software does not mean freely available software without commercial interference, he says. Rather, it means subscribing to four basic rights freedom to run, copy, distribute, change and improve. On a recent visit to Kolkata, he spoke to Indranil Chakraborty on the free software movement. Excerpts:
How would you define free software?
Free software is all about freedom freedom of the users to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. I believe there are four kinds of freedom for the software users. I have identified four human rights. These are also rights that would define free software.
A program belongs to the free software if the users have these rights. The freedom to run the program as you wish for whatever purpose, freedom to study the program and make changes according to ones wish, the freedom to distribute copies to your neighbours and publications and the freedom to improve the program and give the improved version to communities.
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