Joly MacFieRichard M Stallman - 'What's GNU?' (2006)

Kaplan Prep Center, NYC - Jan 4 2006. Jointly sponsored by GNUBIES and LXNY - Richard Stallman gave a general, and mostly non-technical, talk about the development of the GNU operating system, the GPL, the justifications of free software, and the mortifications of proprietary software. When this cameraman asked whether there might be a 'free' video codec that would be acceptable for webcast - theora was recommended. Here you have the whole speech, plus a small sample highlight - an appearance of St IGNUcius - all in that format. Audio version can be found here.

More info: http://punkcast.com/905

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Write a review Reviews

Downloaded 1,801 times Average Rating:

Reviewer: blackbelt_jones - - February 9, 2006
Subject: Stallman is THE MAN!

When Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel in the early 90's, Richard Stallman had already been working for years on founding the GNU project, which would invent practically all of the software that now runs on the Linux Kernel. Torvalds, of course, deserves enourmous credit for his technical virtuosity and his generosity in creating and releasing the kernel, but Stallman is the real founder and philosopher of the free software movement.

Here, in all his soft-spoken and unkempt glory, RMS lucidly outlines the philosphy of goodwill and freedom that may yet change the world, and which holds out a bit of hope for sanity in an age when even the genetic code in our bodies is becoming the intellectual property of corporations.