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I Don't Use A Cellphone As It Can Track Me: Stallman
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On a recent visit to India, Richard M Stallman spoke to EFYTimes about Android, Steve Jobs, Facebook, about not using a cellphone and the Indian Free Software community. Read on...
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Thursday, February 23, 2012:
When it comes to propagating Free Software, there can be no one as assertive as RMS (as Richard M Stallman is fondly known). Proprietary software, or anything that hampers freedom, is totally unacceptable to him. But before you meet him, make sure you are aware of all that he strongly believes in, or you could be caught on the wrong foot. Don’t utter the words Linux or Open Source in front of him---RMS doesn’t believe in them! He walks on the GNU/Linux and Free Software path.
On a recent visit to India, RMS talked to EFYTimes about Android, Steve Jobs, Facebook, his not using a cellphone and the Indian Free Software community.
You have expressed your rejection for Facebook. Why?
Facebook is not your friend, and is certainly not my friend. Facebook collects data on who was where, and when, and uses its so-called 'users' to collect its data. If you posted a photo of me in Facebook, people would be invited to label it as Richard Stallman—and their database will have more information about me. I don't want their database to have information about anybody.
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Why have you asked your followers to not do business with Amazon through Stallman.org?
Amazon's Swindle is malware. That's not its official name, of course. I am talking of an e-book reader which is designed to swindle readers out of their traditional freedom of reading. There is a freedom to buy a book anonymously paying cash, which is the only way I buy books. I never give my name to be put in any database with the books I have bought; I don't want any database to have that information. With the Swindle, however, Amazon forces users to identify themselves to get identified with the books they have bought. Amazon has a giant database that records each book that each user has read—and such a database, no matter who has it, is a threat to human rights. We must not allow that to exist.
Then there is freedom to give a book to someone else, or to lend it to other people, or even to sell it, perhaps to a book store. Amazon eliminates this freedom with digital handcuffs, together with end-user license agreements.
And there is also freedom to keep a book for as long as you wish, and pass it on to your children. Amazon abolishes this freedom with a back-door. We know about these back-doors by observation. In 2009, users observed that Amazon remotely deleted thousands of copies of a particular book. These were authorised copies, until they were wiped off by Amazon. The book was 1984 by George Orwell, which is the most ironic choice possible. The official name of the product is Kindle, which means to start a fire. Evidently, this product was designed to burn our books—so don't let it happen! Don't ever use that product, or anything like it.
You said “I am glad Jobs' gone”. Can you elucidate why?
People distorted what I said. I said it's not good that he is dead, but it's good that he is gone. The reason I said it was because he was an evil genius, who did harm to the world. He figured out how to make computers that were like prison for the users, and he made them attractive, so that many users get attracted to the glamour, to be handcuffed. After he did this, Microsoft started doing the same thing. So he changed the world for the worse, and we are still fighting the harm that he did. That's the reason for what I said. Of the various things that Jobs did, this was the most dangerous. I am glad he is not able to do any more of this. I hope that his successors would be less successful than him.
Why don't you use a cellphone?
Because cellphones can track my location or my conversation with anyone. Most cellular phones, even if they are not smartphones, have a processor running software and that (proprietary) software is malware, because it will send information about its users' locations on remote command—and it has a back-door, so it can be remotely converted into a listening device. Almost all software has bugs—but this software in itself is a bug.
Based on your interactions with the community in India, what are your observations about the Free Software Movement in India?
Well, there are a few activists who have campaigned strongly for Free Software, and they have had some successes. Some of the schools in Kerala switched to free software—but most of the Free Software community is not thinking about freedom, and there are obstacles from the government. Schools are required to teach proprietary software (at least, some schools are, because they are under the control of the universities that require it, who in turn are controlled by the government bodies that require it). This is wrong. So any government that tells people to teach proprietary software is essentially delivering the country into the hands of a company. The Tamil Nadu government is distributing laptops with Windows to the children. Well, that's delivering the future of the state to a company. It's wrong. I have heard that they have now settled for a dual-boot system. Dual-boot means providing some ethical software and some unethical software. That's like saying at a lunch in school, “We will offer the children water and whisky, so they could get to know both of them.” Switching to dual-boot is a step forward, but they must stop distributing Windows. It's wrong to ever distribute non-free software to the public—and when it's given to children, it's even worse.
What are your views on the Indian developers’ contributions to Free Software?
Well, I don't follow that. You see, there are hundreds and thousands of free programs, and most of them I have never heard of. I don't try to keep a track of who is contributing what, because I cannot do that. I have other work to do. As a result, I am not in a position to measure the contributions of people from any particular country. However, I do know of one Indian developer who has made an important contribution. His name is Krishna Kant. He came to a talk I gave, and said that there was no Free Software that could speak words from the screen, and so asked what he ought to do? I said, “Write some.” So a few years later, he came to one of my talks, and reminded me of what I had said to him earlier—and said that he had ‘written some’. So now he has made major contributions to the screen-reading software, which he and thousands of other people use.
Diksha P Gupta, EFYTIMES News Network
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