Elevating The Game | #5 - The Free Software Revolution Depends On All Of Us (feat. Richard Stallman)

If you've been following me you know that I love the hardliners. Regardless of what topic we are talking about, hardliners give us the luxury of seeing their essential, most forceful points of argumentation boiled down into a single lecture of (as some might call it) audacious calibre, allowing us to save a bunch of time and getting a good feel for "the other side" of the argument we have seldomly heard uttered with such passion.

And since I have not yet featured Richard Stallman on this blog and I read so little about the dude anywhere I want to take a moment today to briefly introduce the man and his mission to you in this little series of mine - a man bent on helping to create a world where only free (non-proprietary) software reigns supreme and users control their programs in a manner they see fit. And noone else!

Aren't we all doing that?

Well, i used to think so. But if you think about it, literally any piece of commercial software we use has been written by a company, adhering mainly to their business model, commercial requirements and their broader underlying agenda instead of the actual needs and preferences of the user.

As Stallman repeatedly points out: Either the user controls the software or the software controls the user.

As founder of the free software foundation Stallman has been working tirelessly to spread the knowledge about the power behing free software and the need for alternatives to proprietary programs that still dominate our era today despite all the warning signs. Despite our many insights into how survelliance and data collection have become an integral part of the software we use on a regular basis, the ambition to switch to non-proprietary software is rather slow and could use some more publicity.

Since I have been meaning to ditch Windows for way too long and want to make the jump to Gnu/Linux in the next weeks, what better time to share with you all Richard Stallman talking about his favorite subject - the liberation of software for a free society. I have yet to make the shift and am preparing all my data to migrate before I reset my system but finding out about the welath of awesome free programs has really helped me make the decision. Hell, just finding out about the audio capabilities of a system using JACK as audio intermediary for various applications has blown my mind lately, and I have this feeling that I will no longer constantly rage about this or that roadblock windows puts in my way but rather: enjoy software that was made to simply do its job by someone without alterior motives, no BS attached.

In his talk we get to hear a lot of interesting side notes on the topics of digital rights management (DRM), the user disadvantages of certain popular ebook platforms, and the integrated backdoors in popular operating systems like Windows or MacOS. We hear his stance on why open source software and free software are not the same thing and get a general feel for what it's like to burn with passion when it comes to spreading an important message in the public realm in times where we have all gotten really really cozy with our unfree software possessions and an insane level of surveillance.

There are many talks of this man online but I found the following particularly good as an introduction to the topic and genuinely interesting even to non-nerds, hope you'll feel the same way.