~terry
Mon, Feb 23, 1998 (10:15)
seed
Richard wants free. Not free in the sense of totally cheap, as
in no money involved but free in the sense that you can mod it and tweak
it anyway you want.
And the EFF recognized Stallman's contribution by giving him an award at
the Austin CFP98 conference.
~terry
Mon, Feb 23, 1998 (10:16)
#1
Check out Declan McCullagh's article at
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1754,00.html
" by Declan McCullagh February 20, 1998
Richard Stallman is nothing if not determined. For over two decades
this bristly MIT geek has championed an arcane cause: free computer
programs. Stallman wants you to have the right to twiddle your software
-- to be able to add features, rewrite it and, if you can figure out how,
teach it get down and do the fandango. Last month Netscape endorsed
Stallman's idea by deciding to open the lid to its software toolbox and
encouraging any interested programmer to tinker with it.
Yesterday Stallman won an award from the Electronic Frontier
Foundation for his efforts, including writing the popular (and, of
course, free) EMACS text editor. "I was trying to give people freedom,"
he said during the ceremony at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP)
conference.
Stallman is the type of fellow who frequents CFP, an annual event
that brings together academics, government officials and Pilot-toting
bitheads. Sparring is commonplace. Lawyers from the ACLU and the Center
for Democracy and Technology shouted at each other yesterday morning when
debating whether to cut deals on legislation in Congress. Former FTC
commissioner Christine Varney said that the government should regulate
corporations' privacy practices, and Solveig Singleton from the Cato
Institute argued on a panel that the private sector should (not that I'm
biased or anything). But the folks who trekked to Austin, Texas, this
week generally share a common goal: preserving the unique culture of the
Internet."