Richard Stallman launched the GNU Project in 1984 to create an operating system and utilities and make it possible for people to use computers in freedom, that is, free from the power and control proprietary software vendors exert over their users.

Stallman spoke Friday at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City on free software and the hacker community, explaining how free software arose from hacking and how computer users benefit from hackers hacking free software. He also surprised many in the audience with a number of distinctly libertarian statements.

First, some definitions are in order. Stallman began by defining free software, the four freedoms it provides, and why software which doesn’t provide the four freedoms is evil. Yes, evil.

The four essential freedoms, Stallman said, are:

“Freedom 0, the freedom to run a program as you wish for any purpose;

“Freedom 1, the freedom to study the source code and change it;

“Freedom 2, the freedom to help your neighbor, to make copies and distribute them to others, including publication;

“Freedom 3, the freedom to contribute to your community, to distribute your modified versions of your programs.”

These freedoms are essential, Stallman said, to “make users free and give them control over their own lives, and that’s what fredom means.”

Without the ability to study and change the source code, you can fall victim to malicious software which contains digital rights management, backdoors and spyware. Stallman cited Windows XP and Interbase as examples of such software. He also levied criticism at TiVo for building a system which was technically under the GNU General Public License, but wouldn’t function if the user actually changed the code of the program running the system. He said that version 3 of the GPL would fix this problem.

Stallman explained the beginnings of the hacker community, and was clear to define hacker appropriately: “We were programming with joy, gusto, with enthusiasm, that was what it was all about. We were using our intelligence in a playful way. That’s what hacker meant, and that’s what it still means.”

“In 1980 or so some journalists found out about our community and misunderstood the term hacker, thought it meant breaking security. We’ve been struggling against that confusion ever since. Those who break security are crackers. To be a hacker means to amuse yourself by using your intelligence playfully, doing any kind of thing. It doesn’t have to be with computers, you could spring a surprise party on your friend. That’s a hack. You could write music. That’s a hack.”

Stallman said that industry consortia responsible for taking control of computers away from their users should be outlawed.

“Conspiracies of large companies formed to restrict and oppress the public. Conspiracies such as the one that controls the format of DVD. The one that implements treacherous computing. Then there is AACS, which is designed to forbid ananlog outputs for playing video. These conspiracies ought to be prosecuted. All companies ought to be prosecuted for conspiracy to restrict the public. Such conspiracies should not be allowed to exist anymore. Part of reason is that they don’t allow people to hack. These conspiracies have the goal of making it impossible for us to understand and control the machines that we use.”

Stallman said that ideally, no one would run proprietary software, because it is an “instrument of someone else’s power over you.” Freedom, on the other hand, is only “not being subjugated by others,” and free software is free because it pushes control over the software to where it belongs: the individual user.

“Free software makes the world a better place, and proprietary software makes the world a worse place,” Stallman said. “I’d rather have no software than proprietary software, because proprietary programs divide people and keep them helpless.”

“When people don’t value their freedom, they will lose it,” he said. “When people don’t value their freedom, they won’t defend it. And to value their freedom they have to know about it.”

So Stallman explained that freedom means only negative liberty, the freedom from being controlled, and the so-called freedom from want, or the “freedom to eat that piece of bread,” as one audience member asked, was “distorting the situation” and was not true freedom. Stallman easily saw through the “artificial moral dilemma” and castigated the questioner for confusing the issue of freedom: “Starvation is very bad, but it’s not an issue of freedom, it’s an issue of not having enough food. People could have not enough food by no particular person’s fault. Anytime somebody doesn’t have freedom it’s because somebody has subjugated him. So somebody has done wrong.”

Stallman actually went on at length to distance freedom and free software from the leftist conception of freedom as positive liberty (a misnomer):

“Free software does not have much resemblance to Communism. Communism as we saw it was a dictatorship where central planning would tell everybody what to do. This is not like the free software community where everybody just decides what to do and does it. You couldn’t get two things more opposite.

“You consistently see power hungry bastards call us communists. What would lead them to say something so absurd as that? They’re setting up a system that resembles Communism. It’s a dictatorship. Someone who uses Windows is under control of Microsoft, they impose their decisions from the top down. Users have no choice. That’s a lot like the Stalinist system, the command economy. They don’t respect private property at all. Microsoft and many other companies say that you can’t own a copy of their software. They believe in private property only as long as all of it belongs to them. That’s how they respect private property.”

And Stallman had choice words for George W. Bush and the current administration.

“When I launched the free software movement, I launched it in a context of more or less democracy and more or less respect for human rights. I didn’t realize how much those things could be destroyed globally, how vulnerable they were. Using computers is just one area of life, it’s not all of life, shocking as that statement might seem.

“And when democracy is made a joke by computers in voting machines, by expensive requirementss for people to vote, by lying to people, by fraudulently denying them right to vote, by throwing away ballots, by not letting them get ballots, what are we going to do? When human rights are trampled arrogantly by a government which then gives promotions to those responsible, what we going to do? I don’t know. I can’t see much hope for the U.S. I can’t imagine how the U.S. can recover freedom and democracy. I can’t see how the Democratic Party would do it. But I’m used to carrying on despite discouragement and that’s what I do.”

Well, since your principles are much closer to libertarian, that is, the classical principles on which this country is founded, than the principles of social control, central planning and Stalinism which animate the Democrats, not to mention the Republicans, perhaps you should be voting for libertarians.

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