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2 | GNU'S NOT UNIX | |
3 | ||
4 | Conducted by David Betz and Jon Edwards | |
5 | ||
6 | Richard Stallman discusses his public-domain | |
7 | UNIX-compatible software system | |
8 | with BYTE editors | |
9 | (July 1986) | |
10 | ||
11 | Copyright (C) 1986 Richard Stallman. Permission is granted to make and | |
12 | distribute copies of this article as long as the copyright and this notice | |
13 | appear on all copies. | |
14 | ||
15 | Richard Stallman has undertaken probably the most ambitious free software | |
16 | development project to date, the GNU system. In his GNU Manifesto, | |
17 | published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal, Stallman described | |
18 | GNU as a "complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so | |
19 | that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it... Once GNU is | |
20 | written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just | |
21 | like air." (GNU is an acronym for GNU's Not UNIX; the "G" is pronounced.) | |
22 | ||
23 | Stallman is widely known as the author of EMACS, a powerful text editor | |
24 | that he developed at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It is no | |
25 | coincidence that the first piece of software produced as part of the GNU | |
26 | project was a new implementation of EMACS. GNU EMACS has already achieved a | |
27 | reputation as one of the best implementations of EMACS currently available | |
28 | at any price. | |
29 | ||
30 | BYTE: We read your GNU Manifesto in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's. | |
31 | What has happened since? Was that really the beginning, and how have you | |
32 | progressed since then? | |
33 | ||
34 | Stallman: The publication in Dr. Dobb's wasn't the beginning of the | |
35 | project. I wrote the GNU Manifesto when I was getting ready to start the | |
36 | project, as a proposal to ask computer manufacturers for funding. They | |
37 | didn't want to get involved, and I decided that rather than spend my time | |
38 | trying to pursue funds, I ought to spend it writing code. The manifesto was | |
39 | published about a year and a half after I had written it, when I had barely | |
40 | begun distributing the GNU EMACS. Since that time, in addition to making | |
41 | GNU EMACS more complete and making it run on many more computers, I have | |
42 | nearly finished the optimizing C compiler and all the other software that | |
43 | is needed for running C programs. This includes a source-level debugger | |
44 | that has many features that the other source-level debuggers on UNIX don't | |
45 | have. For example, it has convenience variables within the debugger so you | |
46 | can save values, and it also has a history of all the values that you have | |
47 | printed out, making it tremendously easier to chase around list structures. | |
48 | ||
49 | BYTE: You have finished an editor that is now widely distributed and you | |
50 | are about to finish the compiler. | |
51 | ||
52 | Stallman: I expect that it will be finished this October. | |
53 | ||
54 | BYTE: What about the kernel? | |
55 | ||
56 | Stallman: I'm currently planning to start with the kernel that was written | |
57 | at MIT and was released to the public recently with the idea that I would | |
58 | use it. This kernel is called TRIX; it's based on remote procedure call. I | |
59 | still need to add compatibility for a lot of the features of UNIX which it | |
60 | doesn't have currently. I haven't started to work on that yet. I'm | |
61 | finishing the compiler before I go to work on the kernel. I am also going | |
62 | to have to rewrite the file system. I intend to make it failsafe just by | |
63 | having it write blocks in the proper order so that the disk structure is | |
64 | always consistent. Then I want to add version numbers. I have a complicated | |
65 | scheme to reconcile version numbers with the way people usually use UNIX. | |
66 | You have to be able to specify filenames without version numbers, but you | |
67 | also have to be able to specify them with explicit version numbers, and | |
68 | these both need to work with ordinary UNIX programs that have not been | |
69 | modified in any way to deal with the existence of this feature. I think I | |
70 | have a scheme for doing this, and only trying it will show me whether it | |
71 | really does the job. | |
72 | ||
73 | BYTE: Do you have a brief description you can give us as to how GNU as a | |
74 | system will be superior to other systems? We know that one of your goals is | |
75 | to produce something that is compatible with UNIX. But at least in the area | |
76 | of file systems you have already said that you are going to go beyond UNIX | |
77 | and produce something that is better. | |
78 | ||
79 | Stallman: The C compiler will produce better code and run faster. The | |
80 | debugger is better. With each piece I may or may not find a way to improve | |
81 | it. But there is no one answer to this question. To some extent I am | |
82 | getting the benefit of reimplementation, which makes many systems much | |
83 | better. To some extent it's because I have been in the field a long time | |
84 | and worked on many other systems. I therefore have many ideas to bring to | |
85 | bear. One way in which it will be better is that practically everything in | |
86 | the system will work on files of any size, on lines of any size, with any | |
87 | characters appearing in them. The UNIX system is very bad in that regard. | |
88 | It's not anything new as a principle of software engineering that you | |
89 | shouldn't have arbitrary limits. But it just was the standard practice in | |
90 | writing UNIX to put those in all the time, possibly just because they were | |
91 | writing it for a very small computer. The only limit in the GNU system is | |
92 | when your program runs out of memory because it tried to work on too much | |
93 | data and there is no place to keep it all. | |
94 | ||
95 | BYTE: And that isn't likely to be hit if you've got virtual memory. You may | |
96 | just take forever to come up with the solution. | |
97 | ||
98 | Stallman: Actually these limits tend to hit in a time long before you take | |
99 | forever to come up with the solution. | |
100 | ||
101 | BYTE: Can you say something about what types of machines and environments | |
102 | GNU EMACS in particular has been made to run under? It's now running on | |
103 | VAXes; has it migrated in any form to personal computers? | |
104 | ||
105 | Stallman: I'm not sure what you mean by personal computers. For example, is | |
106 | a Sun a personal computer? GNU EMACS requires at least a megabyte of | |
107 | available memory and preferably more. It is normally used on machines that | |
108 | have virtual memory. Except for various technical problems in a few C | |
109 | compilers, almost any machine with virtual memory and running a fairly | |
110 | recent version of UNIX will run GNU EMACS, and most of them currently do. | |
111 | ||
112 | BYTE: Has anyone tried to port it to Ataris or Macintoshes? | |
113 | ||
114 | Stallman: The Atari 1040ST still doesn't have quite enough memory. The next | |
115 | Atari machine, I expect, will run it. I also think that future Ataris will | |
116 | have some forms of memory mapping. Of course, I am not designing the | |
117 | software to run on the kinds of computers that are prevalent today. I knew | |
118 | when I started this project it was going to take a few years. I therefore | |
119 | decided that I didn't want to make a worse system by taking on the | |
120 | additional challenge of making it run in the currently constrained | |
121 | environment. So instead I decided I'm going to write it in the way that | |
122 | seems the most natural and best. I am confident that in a couple of years | |
123 | machines of sufficient size will be prevalent. In fact, increases in memory | |
124 | size are happening so fast it surprises me how slow most of the people are | |
125 | to put in virtual memory; I think it is totally essential. | |
126 | ||
127 | BYTE: I think people don't really view it as being necessary for | |
128 | single-user machines. | |
129 | ||
130 | Stallman: They don't understand that single user doesn't mean single | |
131 | program. Certainly for any UNIX-like system it's important to be able to | |
132 | run lots of different processes at the same time even if there is only one | |
133 | of you. You could run GNU EMACS on a nonvirtual-memory machine with enough | |
134 | memory, but you couldn't run the rest of the GNU system very well or a UNIX | |
135 | system very well. | |
136 | ||
137 | BYTE: How much of LISP is present in GNU EMACS? It occurred to me that it | |
138 | may be useful to use that as a tool for learning LISP. | |
139 | ||
140 | Stallman: You can certainly do that. GNU EMACS contains a complete, | |
141 | although not very powerful, LISP system. It's powerful enough for writing | |
142 | editor commands. It's not comparable with, say, a Common LISP System, | |
143 | something you could really use for system programming, but it has all the | |
144 | things that LISP needs to have. | |
145 | ||
146 | BYTE: Do you have any predictions about when you would be likely to | |
147 | distribute a workable environment in which, if we put it on our machines or | |
148 | workstations, we could actually get reasonable work done without using | |
149 | anything other than code that you distribute? | |
150 | ||
151 | Stallman: It's really hard to say. That could happen in a year, but of | |
152 | course it could take longer. It could also conceivably take less, but | |
153 | that's not too likely anymore. I think I'll have the compiler finished in a | |
154 | month or two. The only other large piece of work I really have to do is in | |
155 | the kernel. I first predicted GNU would take something like two years, but | |
156 | it has now been two and a half years and I'm still not finished. Part of | |
157 | the reason for the delay is that I spent a lot of time working on one | |
158 | compiler that turned out to be a dead end. I had to rewrite it completely. | |
159 | Another reason is that I spent so much time on GNU EMACS. I originally | |
160 | thought I wouldn't have to do that at all. | |
161 | ||
162 | BYTE: Tell us about your distribution scheme. | |
163 | ||
164 | Stallman: I don't put software or manuals in the public domain, and the | |
165 | reason is that I want to make sure that all the users get the freedom to | |
166 | share. I don't want anyone making an improved version of a program I wrote | |
167 | and distributing it as proprietary. I don't want that to ever be able to | |
168 | happen. I want to encourage the free improvements to these programs, and | |
169 | the best way to do that is to take away any temptation for a person to make | |
170 | improvements nonfree. Yes, a few of them will refrain from making | |
171 | improvements, but a lot of others will make the same improvements and | |
172 | they'll make them free. | |
173 | ||
174 | BYTE: And how do you go about guaranteeing that? | |
175 | ||
176 | Stallman: I do this by copyrighting the programs and putting on a notice | |
177 | giving people explicit permission to copy the programs and change them but | |
178 | only on the condition that they distribute under the same terms that I | |
179 | used, if at all. You don't have to distribute the changes you make to any | |
180 | of my programs--you can just do it for yourself, and you don't have to give | |
181 | it to anyone or tell anyone. But if you do give it to someone else, you | |
182 | have to do it under the same terms that I use. | |
183 | ||
184 | BYTE: Do you obtain any rights over the executable code derived from the C | |
185 | compiler? | |
186 | ||
187 | Stallman: The copyright law doesn't give me copyright on output from the | |
188 | compiler, so it doesn't give me a way to say anything about that, and in | |
189 | fact I don't try to. I don't sympathize with people developing proprietary | |
190 | products with any compiler, but it doesn't seem especially useful to try to | |
191 | stop them from developing them with this compiler, so I am not going to. | |
192 | ||
193 | BYTE: Do your restrictions apply if people take pieces of your code to | |
194 | produce other things as well? | |
195 | ||
196 | Stallman: Yes, if they incorporate with changes any sizable piece. If it | |
197 | were two lines of code, that's nothing; copyright doesn't apply to that. | |
198 | Essentially, I have chosen these conditions so that first there is a | |
199 | copyright, which is what all the software hoarders use to stop everybody | |
200 | from doing anything, and then I add a notice giving up part of those | |
201 | rights. So the conditions talk only about the things that copyright applies | |
202 | to. I don't believe that the reason you should obey these conditions is | |
203 | because of the law. The reason you should obey is because an upright person | |
204 | when he distributes software encourages other people to share it further. | |
205 | ||
206 | BYTE: In a sense you are enticing people into this mode of thinking by | |
207 | providing all of these interesting tools that they can use but only if they | |
208 | buy into your philosophy. | |
209 | ||
210 | Stallman: Yes. You could also see it as using the legal system that | |
211 | software hoarders have set up against them. I'm using it to protect the | |
212 | public from them. | |
213 | ||
214 | BYTE: Given that manufacturers haven't wanted to fund the project, who do | |
215 | you think will use the GNU system when it is done? | |
216 | ||
217 | Stallman: I have no idea, but it is not an important question. My purpose | |
218 | is to make it possible for people to reject the chains that come with | |
219 | proprietary software. I know that there are people who want to do that. | |
220 | Now, there may be others who don't care, but they are not my concern. I | |
221 | feel a bit sad for them and for the people that they influence. Right now a | |
222 | person who perceives the unpleasantness of the terms of proprietary | |
223 | software feels that he is stuck and has no alternative except not to use a | |
224 | computer. Well, I am going to give him a comfortable alternative. | |
225 | Other people may use the GNU system simply because it is technically | |
226 | superior. For example, my C compiler is producing about as good a code as I | |
227 | have seen from any C compiler. And GNU EMACS is generally regarded as being | |
228 | far superior to the commercial competition. And GNU EMACS was not funded by | |
229 | anyone either, but everyone is using it. I therefore think that many people | |
230 | will use the rest of the GNU system because of its technical advantages. | |
231 | But I would be doing a GNU system even if I didn't know how to make it | |
232 | technically better because I want it to be socially better. The GNU project | |
233 | is really a social project. It uses technical means to make a change in | |
234 | society. | |
235 | ||
236 | BYTE: Then it is fairly important to you that people adopt GNU. It is not | |
237 | just an academic exercise to produce this software to give it away to | |
238 | people. You hope it will change the way the software industry operates. | |
239 | ||
240 | Stallman: Yes. Some people say no one will ever use it because it doesn't | |
241 | have some attractive corporate logo on it, and other people say that they | |
242 | think it is tremendously important and everyone's going to want to use it. | |
243 | I have no way of knowing what is really going to happen. I don't know any | |
244 | other way to try to change the ugliness of the field that I find myself in, | |
245 | so this is what I have to do. | |
246 | ||
247 | BYTE: Can you address the implications? You obviously feel that this is an | |
248 | important political and social statement. | |
249 | ||
250 | Stallman: It is a change. I'm trying to change the way people approach | |
251 | knowledge and information in general. I think that to try to own knowledge, | |
252 | to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop | |
253 | other people from sharing it, is sabotage. It is an activity that benefits | |
254 | the person that does it at the cost of impoverishing all of society. One | |
255 | person gains one dollar by destroying two dollars' worth of wealth. I think | |
256 | a person with a conscience wouldn't do that sort of thing except perhaps if | |
257 | he would otherwise die. And of course the people who do this are fairly | |
258 | rich; I can only conclude that they are unscrupulous. I would like to see | |
259 | people get rewards for writing free software and for encouraging other | |
260 | people to use it. I don't want to see people get rewards for writing | |
261 | proprietary software because that is not really a contribution to society. | |
262 | The principle of capitalism is the idea that people manage to make money by | |
263 | producing things and thereby are encouraged to do what is useful, | |
264 | automatically, so to speak. But that doesn't work when it comes to owning | |
265 | knowledge. They are encouraged to do not really what's useful, and what | |
266 | really is useful is not encouraged. I think it is important to say that | |
267 | information is different from material objects like cars and loaves of | |
268 | bread because people can copy it and share it on their own and, if nobody | |
269 | attempts to stop them, they can change it and make it better for | |
270 | themselves. That is a useful thing for people to do. This isn't true of | |
271 | loaves of bread. If you have one loaf of bread and you want another, you | |
272 | can't just put your loaf of bread into a bread copier. you can't make | |
273 | another one except by going through all the steps that were used to make | |
274 | the first one. It therefore is irrelevant whether people are permitted to | |
275 | copy it--it's impossible. | |
276 | Books were printed only on printing presses until recently. It was | |
277 | possible to make a copy yourself by hand, but it wasn't practical because | |
278 | it took so much more work than using a printing press. And it produced | |
279 | something so much less attractive that, for all intents and purposes, you | |
280 | could act as if it were impossible to make books except by mass producing | |
281 | them. And therefore copyright didn't really take any freedom away from the | |
282 | reading public. There wasn't anything that a book purchaser could do that | |
283 | was forbidden by copyright. | |
284 | But this isn't true for computer programs. It's also not true for tape | |
285 | cassettes. It's partly false now for books, but it is still true that for | |
286 | most books it is more expensive and certainly a lot more work to Xerox them | |
287 | than to buy a copy, and the result is still less attractive. Right now we | |
288 | are in a period where the situation that made copyright harmless and | |
289 | acceptable is changing to a situation where copyright will become | |
290 | destructive and intolerable. So the people who are slandered as "pirates" | |
291 | are in fact the people who are trying to do something useful that they have | |
292 | been forbidden to do. The copyright laws are entirely designed to help | |
293 | people take complete control over the use of some information for their own | |
294 | good. But they aren't designed to help people who want to make sure that | |
295 | the information is accessible to the public and stop others from depriving | |
296 | the public. I think that the law should recognize a class of works that are | |
297 | owned by the public, which is different from public domain in the same | |
298 | sense that a public park is different from something found in a garbage | |
299 | can. It's not there for anybody to take away, it's there for everyone to | |
300 | use but for no one to impede. Anybody in the public who finds himself being | |
301 | deprived of the derivative work of something owned by the public should be | |
302 | able to sue about it. | |
303 | ||
304 | BYTE: But aren't pirates interested in getting copies of programs because | |
305 | they want to use those programs, not because they want to use that | |
306 | knowledge to produce something better? | |
307 | ||
308 | Stallman: I don't see that that's the important distinction. More people | |
309 | using a program means that the program contributes more to society. You | |
310 | have a loaf of bread that could be eaten either once or a million times. | |
311 | ||
312 | BYTE: Some users buy commercial software to obtain support. How does your | |
313 | distribution scheme provide support? | |
314 | ||
315 | Stallman: I suspect that those users are misled and are not thinking | |
316 | clearly. It is certainly useful to have support, but when they start | |
317 | thinking about how that has something to do with selling software or with | |
318 | the software being proprietary, at that point they are confusing | |
319 | themselves. There is no guarantee that proprietary software will receive | |
320 | good support. Simply because sellers say that they provide support, that | |
321 | doesn't mean it will be any good. And they may go out of business. In fact, | |
322 | people think that GNU EMACS has better support than commercial EMACSes. One | |
323 | of the reasons is that I'm probably a better hacker than the people who | |
324 | wrote the other EMACSes, but the other reason is that everyone has sources | |
325 | and there are so many people interested in figuring out how to do things | |
326 | with it that you don't have to get your support from me. Even just the free | |
327 | support that consists of my fixing bugs people report to me and | |
328 | incorporating that in the next release has given people a good level of | |
329 | support. You can always hire somebody to solve a problem for you, and when | |
330 | the software is free you have a competitive market for the support. You can | |
331 | hire anybody. I distribute a service list with EMACS, a list of people's | |
332 | names and phone numbers and what they charge to provide support. | |
333 | ||
334 | BYTE: Do you collect their bug fixes? | |
335 | ||
336 | Stallman: Well, they send them to me. I asked all the people who wanted to | |
337 | be listed to promise that they would never ask any of their customers to | |
338 | keep secret whatever they were told or any changes they were given to the | |
339 | GNU software as part of that support. | |
340 | ||
341 | BYTE: So you can't have people competing to provide support based on their | |
342 | knowing the solution to some problem that somebody else doesn't know. | |
343 | ||
344 | Stallman: No. They can compete based on their being clever and more likely | |
345 | to find the solution to your problem, or their already understanding more | |
346 | of the common problems, or knowing better how to explain to you what you | |
347 | should do. These are all ways they can compete. They can try to do better, | |
348 | but they cannot actively impede their competitors. | |
349 | ||
350 | BYTE: I suppose it's like buying a car. You're not forced to go back to the | |
351 | original manufacturer for support or continued maintenance. | |
352 | ||
353 | Stallman: Or buying a house--what would it be like if the only person who | |
354 | could ever fix problems with your house was the contractor who built it | |
355 | originally? That is the kind of imposition that's involved in proprietary | |
356 | software. People tell me about a problem that happens in UNIX. Because | |
357 | manufacturers sell improved versions of UNIX, they tend to collect fixes | |
358 | and not give them out except in binaries. The result is that the bugs don't | |
359 | really get fixed. | |
360 | ||
361 | BYTE: They're all duplicating effort trying to solve bugs independently. | |
362 | ||
363 | Stallman: Yes. Here is another point that helps put the problem of | |
364 | proprietary information in a social perspective. Think about the liability | |
365 | insurance crisis. In order to get any compensation from society, an injured | |
366 | person has to hire a lawyer and split the money with that lawyer. This is a | |
367 | stupid and inefficient way of helping out people who are victims of | |
368 | accidents. And consider all the time that people put into hustling to take | |
369 | business away from their competition. Think of the pens that are packaged | |
370 | in large cardboard packages that cost more than the pen--just to make sure | |
371 | that the pen isn't stolen. Wouldn't it be better if we just put free pens | |
372 | on every street corner? And think of all the toll booths that impede the | |
373 | flow of traffic. It's a gigantic social phenomenon. People find ways of | |
374 | getting money by impeding society. Once they can impede society, they can | |
375 | be paid to leave people alone. The waste inherent in owning information | |
376 | will become more and more important and will ultimately make the difference | |
377 | between the utopia in which nobody really has to work for a living because | |
378 | it's all done by robots and a world just like ours where everyone spends | |
379 | much time replicating what the next fellow is doing. | |
380 | ||
381 | BYTE: Like typing in copyright notices on the software. | |
382 | ||
383 | Stallman: More like policing everyone to make sure that they don't have | |
384 | forbidden copies of anything and duplicating all the work people have | |
385 | already done because it is proprietary. | |
386 | ||
387 | BYTE: A cynic might wonder how you earn your living. | |
388 | ||
389 | Stallman: From consulting. When I do consulting, I always reserve the right | |
390 | to give away what I wrote for the consulting job. Also, I could be making | |
391 | my living by mailing copies of the free software that I wrote and some that | |
392 | other people wrote. Lots of people send in $150 for GNU EMACS, but now this | |
393 | money goes to the Free Software Foundation that I started. The foundation | |
394 | doesn't pay me a salary because it would be a conflict of interest. | |
395 | Instead, it hires other people to work on GNU. As long as I can go on | |
396 | making a living by consulting I think that's the best way. | |
397 | ||
398 | BYTE: What is currently included in the official GNU distribution tape? | |
399 | ||
400 | Stallman: Right now the tape contains GNU EMACS (one version fits all | |
401 | computers); Bison, a program that replaces YACC; MIT Scheme, which is | |
402 | Professor Sussman's super-simplified dialect of LISP; and Hack, a | |
403 | dungeon-exploring game similar to Rogue. | |
404 | ||
405 | BYTE: Does the printed manual come with the tape as well? | |
406 | ||
407 | Stallman: No. Printed manuals cost $15 each or copy them yourself. Copy | |
408 | this interview and share it, too. | |
409 | ||
410 | BYTE: How can you get a copy of that? | |
411 | ||
412 | Stallman: Write to the Free Software Foundation, 675 Massachusetts Ave., | |
413 | Cambridge, MA 02139. | |
414 | ||
415 | [In June 1995, this address changed to: | |
416 | Free Software Foundation | |
417 | 59 Temple Place - Suite 330 | |
418 | Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA | |
419 | Voice: +1-617-542-5942 | |
420 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652 | |
421 | -gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu | |
422 | ] | |
423 | ||
424 | BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? | |
425 | ||
426 | Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the | |
427 | same thing in other areas of software. | |
428 | ||
429 | BYTE: So this is just the first of a whole series of assaults on the | |
430 | software industry? | |
431 | ||
432 | Stallman: I hope so. But perhaps what I'll do is just live a life of ease | |
433 | working a little bit of the time just to live. I don't have to live | |
434 | expensively. The rest of the time I can find interesting people to hang | |
435 | around with or learn to do things that I don't know how to do. | |
436 | ||
437 | Editorial Note: BYTE holds the right to provide this interview on BIX but | |
438 | will not interfere with its distribution. | |
439 | ||
440 | Richard Stallman, 545 Technology Square, Room 703, Cambridge, MA 02139. | |
441 | Copyright (C) 1986 Richard Stallman. Permission is granted to make and | |
442 | distribute copies of this article as long as the copyright and this notice | |
443 | appear on all copies. |