The Freedom of Speech in Source Codes and Conferences

Richard Stallman was in Kolkata recently. He made the inaugural speech at a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conference held in Science City. Some of you may know Richard Stallman; he’s the man behind the GNU GPL (GNU’s Not Unix, General Public License) free software license. Free software is a big deal for some people, programmers, I.T. professionals, companies that deal in I.T. solutions and distributions.

He began a movement that declared that the source code behind the program be made free, too, for the User to manipulate and play around with the program and distribute it. For him, as a programmer at MIT, it was imprisonment and simply against our fundamental Right to Freedom to contract with and be bound by the terms of Click-wrap contracts and the like that some software licenses (Read: Microsoft™) abound in.

So at the FOSS conference, Richard Stallman came onto the stage and told us that there was no such thing as ‘Free and Open Source’. It was the Free Software Movement (FSM) that he spoke for, and he shed light on a past episode with Linus Torvalds that led to the branching of the FSM into the FSM & Open Source Software Movement that has given us Linux. His speech went on to describe the advantages of adopting Free Software and discussed its many merits, at the same time dismissing Microsoft™ as a dictatorship and the U.S. Government as a terrorist organisation. He said that there were four basic freedoms associated with the Free Software Movement: 0) to run the program as you wish; 1) to make changes to the code and run the program; 2) to be able to pass on the software to your friends; 3) to be able to pass on the altered or customized code to your friends. “Free as in mukhto,” he said.

The second day witnessed a lot of new inputs on the subject and its applicability in businesses, e-governance and the legal aspects of it. The IPR Chair of our University, Prof. Shamnad Basheer was there to make a presentation on the legal aspects of FOSS (“(de)coding the Law”) in the course of which he made some use of the phrases ‘Intellectual Property’ and ‘Intellectual Property Rights’. Naturally, you would say. But St. Ignucius here took serious umbrage to it, booing during the presentation, accusing our Professor of resorting to their terminology and thus persuaded by their beliefs and denied the existence of notions like Intellectual Property at all. And fireworks followed, and we all watched, and clapped, of course.

But the audience was mostly unresponsive on both days, and was only mildly discomforted each time the firebrand speaker (with the big belly and the flaming, open hair like a has-been rockstar) came onto the stage to make his point.

The conference was quite well organized, with a comprehensive kit for every participant, and lunch and tea and snacks served on both days. Also, the range of related subjects that were touched upon along with FOSS was impressive, like FOSS and Sustainable Development, FOSS and Information Technology, FOSS and businesses. Anyone interested enough in the topics would have learnt quite a bit.