Stallman, the return

This is going to be a long one, bring a cup of tea and get reading.

Richard M Stallman (I will refer to him as Stallman from now on) visited KTH back in 1986 and held a famous lecture. At that time he and FSF also received a considerable amount of money from KTH as a thank for producing useful software for the university, 5000 USD I believe.

Last Tuesday he was back, this time it was not due to the computer club (in which I am a member) but by the union "Unionen" (it means "The union" in Swedish. Yes, I know, it's a terrible name).

Now, how does yours truly get into this mess of free software gurus, unions and university staff? You see, back in 1996 Stallman received an honorary doctors title from KTH, but he didn't attend the ceremony. I know one of our elder professors (he's a nice chap and I have helped him out in the past, I also look up to him as a teacher, but don't tell him ;) ).

The day before Stallman arrived I didn't know if I was to attend the lecture or not, after all, I pretty much know Stallmans opinions on software and I had a deadline that Wednesday. Then, out of nowhere comes an email and I am asked if I can help out with some things just before Stallman arrives and during the lecture. The next morning when my friends woke up I asked whether or not it was alright for me to take three hours off and help out at the lecture. They said that it was alright and I informed my friend the professor that I could help him with what he wanted and bring my camera in-case KTH wanted pictures. I also asked for three of the posters KTH had made for the event, you will learn more about those later.

Now, before we proceed you should know the following. When being awarded an honorary doctors title you receive a hat, it's a symbolic thing really. Because you don't really get to keep the hat.

FSFE (FSF in Europe) was to bring Stallman to KTH at roughly 17:15, so I was there at 16:30. F1 which is the largest lecture hall at KTH had half it's seats taken at 17:00 and we counted an approximate of 700 people (probably more) when the doors closed. It was packed, people in the stairs, I have not seen that many people in a lecture hall before. At ~17:00 Stallman arrived. Meeting him was a strange feeling, he looks like a hacker, talks like a hacker and certainly behaves like a hacker. He's very very frank, no "excuse me" just "I don't hear a word what you are saying." if you didn't speak up well enough. It took a while for yours truly to adapt from his usual very humble and nervous self. I should mention that I did not greet him or anything, picture me as the man in the background waiting for something to do, like bring this or that. My dear professor took care of all the official business.

Stallman wanted to prepare before the lecture (and plug in his laptop), so he was lead into a lecture room near F1. Unfortunately there was to be a lecture in German, so he had to leave in a hurry and was lead into the lecture hall before the huge crowd. He just relaxed, plugged in his laptop and a water boiler and waited for the clock to turn 17:30. I took the opportunity to take some photos, as you can see below. I also managed to talk to the photographer from Computer Sweden, he pointed out something about "Well, I prefer to use natural light sources, when he noticed my flash". I thought "Well, why not?" and switched from my normal zoom to my much more light sensitive 50mm lens and tossed my flash into the bag.

After being introduced by a representative from Unionen, Henrik Eriksson (the professor I mentioned earlier) took the stage.

Ironically, the best shot I got is probably the shot of him. Not one of the ones I took of Stallman, well well, I am still an amateur photographer. First Henrik asked how many that were present back in 1986, I spotted two people raising their hands, there couldn't have been more than 10. Henrik then explained how all went well that day back in 1996, cannon shots were fired (Stallman pointed out "But they missed me!" and grinned) at the doctors ceremony but no Stallman was there. After reading the text which explained why Stallman received the title of honorary doctor at KTH another professor approached him and placed the hat on his head.


Now, that's a picture that you won't see every day. For more images see my dA account, since this blog post is supposed to be more of a story, not a set of images.

Henrik then reclaimed the hat, he also mentioned that it quite looked like a magicians hat and that there probably were rabbits in it. Stallman the made a quick sprint, grabbed the hat and mimicked petting a rabbit, the crowd burst out in laughter.

Now, the main event. Stallman was to speak for roughly an hour and half. For those who don't know Stallman, he's about as radical as you get when it comes to software. You don't think software is politics? That software isn't closely related to the state of our society? Well, Stallman does, and he will tell you.

The speech was exactly what I expected from Stallman, he presented his view on how all software was to guarantee four freedoms for it's users. He made jokes now and then about software vendors and Bush. The only thing that surprised me was that he often pointed out that "Just because mentioned Microsoft as an example, don't think that this just applies to Microsoft, all proprietary software vendors are capable of doing this and many do". He also made an interesting remark about piracy, "When people ask me what I think about piracy, I say, burning ships is very bad", this made the crowd burst out into laughter once more.

To be honest, you can find a ton of better sources than me on Stallmans views so just read one of those instead of my interpretation. Instead I will present some points he made.


*Four freedoms of software and how the GPL guarantees them.
*How freedom of software guarantee a free society without unjust control.
*The GNU project and how it was like back in the good old days.
*How GNU/Linux is split into separate camps due to all the distros and this potentially stops what he wants to achieve with free software. He want users to care about what they are using, not just to go for "Well this works"
*How attitudes like Linus Torvalds hurts the movement since he won't side with the philosophy of the GPL.
*And more...

Personally, I agree with him on some of his views, for example that free and open source software might benefit our society in many ways. But in just as many ways I disagree with his views. I am happy for what he has done, but I won't stand beside him. His views are in many ways a religion, good and bad, it's all there.

The aftermath is Swedish papers has been very much about Stallman being paranoid. He mentioned a lot of things about cellphones being able to track you, programs spying on you, credit cards etc. etc. I agree that it might sound like he is all afraid of being tracked, but I think the answer is much more reasonable. Stallman is a freedom fighter, a radical one. He wants people to have, in a way, an ultimate power over their devices. He wants them to be able to choose whether or not they want someone to know anything about them. It's a philosophical stand, not a statement of some paranoia. I was once told that you should never rush to the conclusion that someone is stupid if there is a more rational conclusion, and although I am not a Stallman expert this very much seems to be the case here.

Afterwards, Stallman stayed and wrote autographs in exchange for a 30 SEK donation to the FSF. I got one for free on one of the posters which I handed to another Stacken member. He promised to put it on the wall in the computer club room. What ever you say about Stallman, he has been influential and probably will be for the years to come. For good or for bad? I guess we won't know for sure for at least another 20 years.