Notes from Richard Stallman's Talk at Loyola, March 17 2015

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These notes are just what struck me as worth writing down. It was a pretty standard speech of his, so some of this is the color you wouldn't necessarily get by watching a video online.

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He ran down the aisle shouting "dammit dammit dammit" when he arrived, which made a toddler in the back of the room yell the same.

He picked his feet.

My tea's not hot enough. It needs to be run through the machine again. The water should fall right on the tea bag if possible.

Run the program as you wish.
Study and change source code.
Make copies as you got it and transfer.
Make copies as you modified and transfer.

Even if you ignore licensing and make a copy of proprietary software, you still don't get modification rights, so still not good.

We should help people switch away from proprietary software.

Proprietary program is power grab, designed to subjugate the user.

Better to steal food than make the world a worse place by writing proprietary software to make money to buy food.

Windows is malware. It sends spy data back to server, has backdoors for remote control, and DRM preventing you from doing certain things. Mobile version censors what you're allowed to install on the device.

Amazon "Swindle" (Kindle) makes users identify themselves to buy books. It even sends book info to Amazon even if you get the book somewhere else. Doesn't allow you to resell or lend, since you don't own the book. Can remotely delete books, did it with "1984".

If you see someone drowning, and you can swim, "and they're not Bush", you have a responsibility to save them. We're developers, so have a responsibility to write free software.

By calling it Linux we're giving credit to Linus, and so weight to his opinions, which don't follow free software. So please call it Gnu/Linux with the g not silent.

When people start using computers, all they see, everyone they know is using proprietary software, so there is no debate / choice.

Open source leaves out ethical discussion, it is about practicality. "if I'm the father of open source, it was conceived through artificial insemination from stolen sperm without my consent."

Important when people are deciding how to advertise program; if it works well with a proprietary program, open source would suggest it, but free software wouldn't.

If any piece of a collection of software is non free the collection as a whole restricts your freedom. Only recommend free extensions to icecat, Firefox recommends non free.

Got immediately aggressive when someone questioned the difference between the iOS "Crapstore" censoring apps, and Icecat (the Gnu Foundation's Firefox derivative) refusing to list proprietary addons / extensions.

He sat down behind a large podium in the middle so no one could see him.

SaaS is proprietary malware because your data can be sent on / processed differently without your control.

At the end, dressed up as St ignucious of the church of emacs. One of their ceremonies is the fubarmitzvah. There is also the pilgrimage, where you invoke all of the commands of emacs in alphabetical order.