Stallmans Story About The Formation Of Symbolics and LMI
Richard Stallman gave a speech at the International Lisp Conference 2002, and in July a transcript of the speech was published on the GNU website.
Dan Weinreb recently posted a “rebuttal” that I thought was quite interesting (thanks to Gerry for pointing it out :-)
I’m very interested in the fine details of the history of the free software movement - I find historical insights incredibly valuable :-) When I was in North America earlier this year I sought out lunches with other “who were there” types, although I focused on the late 80s rather than the early 80s AI lab stuff. So I think its great that more details about the deep history of popular computing are coming out like this.
However, I think its a bit harsh of Dan to lay into Richard over “lies†in a speech; Richard always ad-libs his speeches and so they are certain to be full of errors. In his speeches about the history of copyright he talks briefly about the history of book printing in Italy, and he is just painting a picture.
Plus, Richard is very up front that his memory of his life isn’t very good - “My childhood was filled with emotional pain, so I don’t have many memories of it” - and off the top of his head he’s forgotten most of the details of what has happened, especially for things 10, 20 years ago, as in this case.
The book “Hackers†by Steven Levy is the authoritative book about the AI Lab, and Richard’s written article about the AI Lab recommends it.
I think Dan is mistaking incompetence for malice, basically. By that, I don’t mean to cuss Richard for being incompetent in general, obviously - I just mean he’s human and none of our memories are perfect. Although the mythology around Richard makes him out to be have superhuman hacker powers, “single-handedly matched the work of over a dozen world-class hackersâ€, “wrote GCC 1.0 on his own,†blah blah, he isn’t really superhuman and its not surprising he forgets the fine details of things that happened over 20 years ago.
Similarly, its been about a decade since I read Levy’s book (and I’m 24), and I’d love to read it again. I bet Levy does retell the story Richard told him, the way Richard told it, without questioning much. But what I mean is, in general, when we want to know who did what and when, we’re better off referring to authored and formally published texts, not informal transcriptions of semi-formal speeches. Some texts are more fact-checked than others, and a text on a webpage is almost always worthless.
Really my point is that its too harsh to accuse Richard of lying in his speeches when his facts are wrong. If Richard is talking about the history of copyright and mentions the printing culture of Venice hundreds of years ago, I think it would be silly to claim that when he gets the details wrong he’s “lying.†What he says isn’t totally accurate, but its a speech, not an authored and fact-checked text, and he’s telling a mythological ripping yarn with goodies and baddies. Isn’t that kind of storytelling run-of-the-mill practice for starting a social movement?
That Richard has clarified what he meant by “hiring away†and even apologised for a factual error in the footnotes recently added to the end of transcript says a lot about him, I think: Not a liar, not superhuman, just human.
I wonder what other books about these events are more authoritative than Levy’s :-)
Dan also writes, in the comments:
I totally reject Stallman’s contention that restrictive software licensing is “evil in itselfâ€
I think its more factual to say Richard’s contention is that it is wrong for software developers to have power over software users. Evil is something of a strange concept, and I shy away from using it in general… I think its inappropriate for merely restrictive software licensing, because it overeggs the cake in these days of software idea patents and anti-circumvention law. Its similar to the difference between racism and apartheid; one is to be criticized and curbed but ultimately tolerated in a free society, and the other is unjust law that needs to be abolished in a free society.
(Dan and I discussed this in the comments section of his post page)
The Stallmans Story About The Formation Of Symbolics and LMI by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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