Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software Part 7

I find Stallman sitting in a darkened room, tapping away on his gray laptop computer. He looks up as soon as I enter the room, giving me a full blast of his 200-watt gaze. When he offers a soothing "h.e.l.lo," I offer a return greeting. Before the words come out, however, his eyes have already s.h.i.+fted back to the laptop screen.

"I'm just finis.h.i.+ng an article on the spirit of hacking," Stallman says, fingers still tapping. "Take a look."

I take a look. The room is dimly lit, and the text appears as greenish-white letters on a black background, a reversal of the color scheme used by most desktop word-processing programs, so it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. When they do, I find myself reading Stallman's account of a recent meal at a Korean restaurant. Before the meal, Stallman makes an interesting discovery: the person setting the table has left six chopsticks instead of the usual two in front of Stallman's place setting. Where most restaurant goers would have ignored the redundant pairs, Stallman takes it as challenge: find a way to use all six chopsticks at once. Like many software hacks, the successful solution is both clever and silly at the same time. Hence Stallman's decision to use it as an ill.u.s.tration.

As I read the story, I feel Stallman watching me intently. I look over to notice a proud but child-like half smile on his face. When I praise the essay, my comment barely merits a raised eyebrow.

"I'll be ready to go in a moment," he says.

Stallman goes back to tapping away at his laptop. The laptop is gray and boxy, not like the sleek, modern laptops that seemed to be a programmer favorite at the recent LinuxWorld show. Above the keyboard rides a smaller, lighter keyboard, a testament to Stallman's aging hands. During the late 1980s, when Stallman was putting in 70- and 80-hour work weeks writing the first free software tools and programs for the GNU Project, the pain in Stallman's hands became so unbearable that he had to hire a typist. Today, Stallman relies on a keyboard whose keys require less pressure than a typical computer keyboard.

Stallman has a tendency to block out all external stimuli while working. Watching his eyes lock onto the screen and his fingers dance, one quickly gets the sense of two old friends locked in deep conversation.

The session ends with a few loud keystrokes and the slow disa.s.sembly of the laptop.

"Ready for lunch?" Stallman asks.

We walk to my car. Pleading a sore ankle, Stallman limps along slowly. Stallman blames the injury on a tendon in his left foot. The injury is three years old and has gotten so bad that Stallman, a huge fan of folk dancing, has been forced to give up all dancing activities. "I love folk dancing inherently," Stallman laments. "Not being able to dance has been a tragedy for me."

Stallman's body bears witness to the tragedy. Lack of exercise has left Stallman with swollen cheeks and a pot belly that was much less visible the year before.

You can tell the weight gain has been dramatic, because when Stallman walks, he arches his back like a pregnant woman trying to accommodate an unfamiliar load.

The walk is further slowed by Stallman's willingness to stop and smell the roses, literally. Spotting a particularly beautiful blossom, he tickles the innermost petals with his prodigious nose, takes a deep sniff and steps back with a contented sigh.

"Mmm, rhinophytophilia,"At the time, I thought Stallman was referring to the flower's scientific name. Months later, I would learn that rhinophytophilia was in fact a humorous reference to the activity, i.e., Stallman sticking his nose into a flower and enjoying the moment. For another humorous Stallman flower incident, visit: http://www.stallman.org/texas.html he says, rubbing his back.

The drive to the restaurant takes less than three minutes. Upon recommendation from Tim Ney, former executive director of the Free Software Foundation, I have let Stallman choose the restaurant. While some reporters zero in on Stallman's monk-like lifestyle, the truth is, Stallman is a committed epicure when it comes to food. One of the fringe benefits of being a traveling missionary for the free software cause is the ability to sample delicious food from around the world.

"Visit almost any major city in the world, and chances are Richard knows the best restaurant in town," says Ney. "Richard also takes great pride in knowing what's on the menu and ordering for the entire table."

For today's meal, Stallman has chosen a Cantonese-style dim sum restaurant two blocks off University Avenue, Palo Alto's main drag. The choice is partially inspired by Stallman's recent visit to China, including a lecture stop in Guangdong province, in addition to Stallman's personal aversion to spicier Hunanese and Szechuan cuisine. "I'm not a big fan of spicy,"

Stallman admits.

We arrive a few minutes after 11 a.m. and find ourselves already subject to a 20-minute wait. Given the hacker aversion to lost time, I hold my breath momentarily, fearing an outburst. Stallman, contrary to expectations, takes the news in stride.

"It's too bad we couldn't have found somebody else to join us," he tells me. "It's always more fun to eat with a group of people."

During the wait, Stallman practices a few dance steps.

His moves are tentative but skilled. We discuss current events. Stallman says his only regret about not attending LinuxWorld was missing out on a press conference announcing the launch of the GNOME Foundation. Backed by Sun Microsystems and IBM, the foundation is in many ways a vindication for Stallman, who has long championed that free software and free-market economics need not be mutually exclusive.

Nevertheless, Stallman remains dissatisfied by the message that came out.

"The way it was presented, the companies were talking about Linux with no mention of the GNU Project at all,"

Stallman says.

Such disappointments merely contrast the warm response coming from overseas, especially Asia, Stallman notes.

A quick glance at the Stallman 2000 travel itinerary bespeaks the growing popularity of the free software message. Between recent visits to India, China, and Brazil, Stallman has spent 12 of the last 115 days on United States soil. His travels have given him an opportunity to see how the free software concept translates into different languages of cultures.

"In India many people are interested in free software, because they see it as a way to build their computing infrastructure without spending a lot of money,"

Stallman says. "In China, the concept has been much slower to catch on. Comparing free software to free speech is harder to do when you don't have any free speech. Still, the level of interest in free software during my last visit was profound."

The conversation s.h.i.+fts to Napster, the San Mateo, California software company, which has become something of a media cause celebre in recent months. The company markets a controversial software tool that lets music fans browse and copy the music files of other music fans. Thanks to the magnifying powers of the Internet, this so-called "peer-to-peer" program has evolved into a de facto online juke box, giving ordinary music fans a way to listen to MP3 music files over the computer without paying a royalty or fee, much to record companies' chagrin.

Although based on proprietary software, the Napster system draws inspiration from the long-held Stallman contention that once a work enters the digital realm-in other words, once making a copy is less a matter of duplicating sounds or duplicating atoms and more a matter of duplicating information-the natural human impulse to share a work becomes harder to restrict.

Rather than impose additional restrictions, Napster execs have decided to take advantage of the impulse.

Giving music listeners a central place to trade music files, the company has gambled on its ability to steer the resulting user traffic toward other commercial opportunities.

The sudden success of the Napster model has put the fear in traditional record companies, with good reason.

Just days before my Palo Alto meeting with Stallman, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel granted a request filed by the Recording Industry a.s.sociation of America for an injunction against the file-sharing service. The injunction was subsequently suspended by the U.S. Ninth District Court of Appeals, but by early 2001, the Court of Appeals, too, would find the San Mateo-based company in breach of copyright law,5 a decision RIAA spokesperson Hillary Rosen would later proclaim proclaim a "clear victory for the creative content community and the legitimate online marketplace."See "A Clear Victory for Recording Industry in Napster Case," RIAA press release (February 12, 2001).

http://www.riaa.com/PR_story.cfm?id=372

For hackers such as Stallman, the Napster business model is scary in different ways. The company's eagerness to appropriate time-worn hacker principles such as file sharing and communal information owners.h.i.+p, while at the same time selling a service based on proprietary software, sends a distressing mixed message. As a person who already has a hard enough time getting his own carefully articulated message into the media stream, Stallman is understandably reticent when it comes to speaking out about the company. Still, Stallman does admit to learning a thing or two from the social side of the Napster phenomenon.

"Before Napster, I thought it might be OK for people to privately redistribute works of entertainment,"

Stallman says. "The number of people who find Napster useful, however, tells me that the right to redistribute copies not only on a neighbor-to-neighbor basis, but to the public at large, is essential and therefore may not be taken away."

No sooner does Stallman say this than the door to the restaurant swings open and we are invited back inside by the host. Within a few seconds, we are seated in a side corner of the restaurant next to a large mirrored wall.

The restaurant's menu doubles as an order form, and Stallman is quickly checking off boxes before the host has even brought water to the table. "Deep-fried shrimp roll wrapped in bean-curd skin," Stallman reads.

"Bean-curd skin. It offers such an interesting texture.

I think we should get it."

This comment leads to an impromptu discussion of Chinese food and Stallman's recent visit to China. "The food in China is utterly exquisite," Stallman says, his voice gaining an edge of emotion for the first time this morning. "So many different things that I've never seen in the U.S., local things made from local mushrooms and local vegetables. It got to the point where I started keeping a journal just to keep track of every wonderful meal."

The conversation segues into a discussion of Korean cuisine. During the same June, 2000, Asian tour, Stallman paid a visit to South Korea. His arrival ignited a mini-firestorm in the local media thanks to a Korean software conference attended by Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates that same week. Next to getting his photo above Gates's photo on the front page of the top Seoul newspaper, Stallman says the best thing about the trip was the food. "I had a bowl of naeng myun, which is cold noodles," says Stallman.

"These were a very interesting feeling noodle. Most places don't use quite the same kind of noodles for your naeng myun, so I can say with complete certainty that this was the most exquisite naeng myun I ever had."

The term "exquisite" is high praise coming from Stallman. I know this, because a few moments after listening to Stallman rhapsodize about naeng myun, I feel his laser-beam eyes singeing the top of my right shoulder.

"There is the most exquisite woman sitting just behind you," Stallman says.

I turn to look, catching a glimpse of a woman's back.

The woman is young, somewhere in her mid-20s, and is wearing a white sequinned dress. She and her male lunch companion are in the final stages of paying the check.

When both get up from the table to leave the restaurant, I can tell without looking, because Stallman's eyes suddenly dim in intensity.

"Oh, no," he says. "They're gone. And to think, I'll probably never even get to see her again."

After a brief sigh, Stallman recovers. The moment gives me a chance to discuss Stallman's reputation vis--vis the fairer s.e.x. The reputation is a bit contradictory at times. A number of hackers report Stallman's predilection for greeting females with a kiss on the back of the hand.See Mae Ling Mak, "Mae Ling's Story" (December 17, 1998).

http://www.crackmonkey.org/pipermail/crackmonkey/1998q4/003006.htm So far, Mak is the only person I've found willing to speak on the record in regard to this practice, although I've heard this from a few other female sources. Mak, despite expressing initial revulsion at it, later managed to put aside her misgivings and dance with Stallman at a 1999 LinuxWorld show.

http://www.linux.com/interact/potd.phtml?potd_id=44 A May 26, 2000 Salon.com article, meanwhile, portrays Stallman as a bit of a hacker lothario. Doc.u.menting the free software-free love connection, reporter Annalee Newitz presents Stallman as rejecting traditional family values, telling her, "I believe in love, but not monogamy."See Annalee Newitz, "If Code is Free Why Not Me?"

Salon.com (May 26, 2000).

Stallman lets his menu drop a little when I bring this up. "Well, most men seem to want s.e.x and seem to have a rather contemptuous att.i.tude towards women," he says.

"Even women they're involved with. I can't understand it at all."

I mention a pa.s.sage from the 1999 book Open Sources in which Stallman confesses to wanting to name the ill-fated GNU kernel after a girlfriend at the time.

The girlfriend's name was Alix, a name that fit perfectly with the Unix developer convention of putting an "x" at the end of any new kernel name-e.g., "Linux."

Because the woman was a Unix system administrator, Stallman says it would have been an even more touching tribute. Unfortunately, Stallman notes, the kernel project's eventual main developer renamed the kernel HURD.See Richard Stallman, "The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement," Open Sources (O'Reilly & a.s.sociates, Inc., 1999): 65.