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From the Horse's Mouth

ETS!,

I was happy to see your article about the free software movement, but I'd like to correct a few details.

* The full name of our usual form of copyleft is The GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. It isn't the "GNU Public License."

* Linux is not really an operating system--it is the kernel, one of the essential components of a whole operating system. The operating system in which Linux is used are variants--modified developments--of the GNU system. When Linux was written, the kernel was the last major component still missing from the GNU system; putting Linux together with the not-quite-complete GNU system made a whole system.

You can help avoid confusion, and also give the GNU project recognition for its drive to make a whole free system, by using the name "GNU/Linux" to refer to the whole system. The kernel is simply"Linux."

Please see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html for a full explanation of the history of this.

* Needless to say, RMS often is accused of being a communist (possibly true)

I'm used to occasional accusations of being a Communist, but usually this is done by people who would rather argue against Communism than against my actual views. But it's a new experience to see someone who means me well by it.

It isn't accurate, though. I work on free software to give software users freedom, which is nothing at all like Communism. I've been partly influenced by leftist Anarchism, by the idea of a world in which people voluntarily arrange to work together for the general good, but not at all by Communism.

The best way to understand and explain my views is to compare them with the environmental movement and the consumer movement. They too aim to stop certain specific business practices on the grounds that they hurt the public. When proprietary software prohibits people from working together and cooperating voluntarily, that pollutes the good will at the root of society. I want to stop this kind of pollution.

--Richard Stallman, via e-mail

In Praise of Pollution

ETS!,

The free software article is bull of the purest form.

First off, it fails to acknowledge any direct contributions of capitalist big business to the Linux project--which is essential.

The author TOTALLY misrepresents Netscape.

We should acknowledge the contributions not only of people, but the system that allows us to accomplish what we do.

Without the profit motive, there wouldn't even be computers, much less the software upon which Linus relied to produce his kernel, and while Linux and free software is seeing success and prospering, this may have more to do with government interference in the market (the courts disallowing AT&T to market Unix) than anything to do with "freeness" or Mr. rich kid Richard Stallman, who is as much an accident of history and time as Bill Gates.

Had any commercial vendors taken on marketing a real Unix at a commodity price--there would be no Linux. A mistake acknowledged by many, including Linus. A great problem of Unix is that it was a business environment, and none of its "vendors" understood marketing, or that there was even a market for it. Even SCO (Read Microsoft Unix) openly stated there was no mass market for Unix. They now acknowledge the mistake. In the end, so will Bill Gates, I'm sure.

Without the profits necessary to make it worthwhile, Redhat and others wouldn't have been able to respond to the demand for easy to install Linux which is really the driving force behind its wide use, if not its technical success or existence.

I love the point that originally "nearly all software was free." Yup, you bet. How many folks owned computers? None. And that primitive software and the computers it ran on were the result of huge expenses to companies that had no market other than their own use and were written to make those profit motivated companies more profitable.

These expenses of the evil profit monster fueled the development of ideas and experience that led us to where we are and allowed the whole free software thing. Many of the biggest free software contributers are one and the same people that learned their craft working for evil business. Many of the contributions to the free software community are done by profitable business that create their wares for use else ware and contribute them to the community. Ghostscript is a good example, but there are many. Most of the utilities and knowhow of Linux/Unix are in fact the direct result of "for profit" projects.

They should also give credit for the hated devil Bill Gates for wanting to put a computer on every desktop, and the accident(?) of his poor and inefficient software designs that have been the impetus for cheaper, bigger, more reliable, and faster hardware that we run our Linux on.

And what about the the old devil IBM who accidentally failed to capitalize on its own efforts and gave the world a standardized hardware architecture. Without it, no Linux. Without the evilness of the profit incentive, they wouldn't have tried. Computers would be the toy of the elite at best. Remember the old Apple? If you couldn't afford it, they didn't want you to own it. If Apples were ever affordable, it's because they had to compete with the IBM "cutthroat" standard. Anyone that can afford an electric outlet can now own a computer. I've seen old XT's for free in garage sales and people don't even want them.

And what about Intel and its competitors? Would this fool argue that anything but a mass market and its potential for huge profit could possibly produce the chip technology that allows us techno-vultures to buy for pennies the chips that execute the programs? It has taken the capital investment of thousands of people via the capitalist stock market to concentrate the resources necessary to achieve such a thing.

There are many interesting aspects of free software (I'm a fan and a long term dedicated Linux user) to discuss, and many failings and successes of the computer industry, and many interesting points to be made. Definitely, the computer is the most versatile, complex, most often misunderstood and misapplied tool in the history of man.

This article is intellectual masturbation at its worst. The author obviously being hung on his "leftist" nail, missed any valid or even interesting point. But if he's going to find a free wagon to promote his leftist ideals, he should chose something that is not technology related.

Tom Redfern, Quilcene WA

Capitalism - Anarchy = 0

ETS!,

I'm writing in regards to the June 24 article on "Free Software." (In quotes because I think "free" is a misleading term in discussions of Open Source stuff: free as in free speech, or free as in free beer?) I liked the article and agreed with almost all of it except for part of the last paragraph. Specifically, the part which said "So the next time some brain-washed idiot tells you that anarchy is utopian, egalitarianism impossible, people would rather bang each other over the head by nature, consensus decision-making is slow and disorganized, and capitalism will always produce better products than cooperative economic models..." is what I take issue with. I think some of the assumptions behind that statement are false and need to be examined more carefully.

Firstly, capitalism = cooperation. In some sense we're all "cooperating" with our employers in a capitalist system. I trade my skills and time for money, and both my employer and I feel benefitted by the transaction. Individuals cooperate with each other, by opening up businesses together. Businesses cooperate, either by trading with each other, or by forming consortia. Of course there's a competitive element-- that's what makes capitalism so dynamic--but that does not preclude cooperation.

Maybe more importantly, I think capitalism is inherently more anarchistic than you realize. There's a story told about an American trade official who visited China in the 1980s...he was asked by a group of Chinese officials, "We've been reading about America, but there's something we don't understand: who controls the distribution of materials in America?" He was left speechless by the question, not knowing how to answer, as the question revealed a view of society and economics resting on completely different assumptions. Nobody is holding the reins in a capitalist economy. Sure, there are some who give orders and some who take them, but that's part of the trading I mentioned earlier: no one's forced to take orders from any given person/group/company (as opposed to Communist systems).

Frankly, I've always had the suspicion that a truly anarchic system would look surprisingly like what we've got now. (Which is not to say I don't think it would be a better way of getting there.)

--Jeremiah D. Weiner, via e-mail

Hackers Aweigh

Dear ETS!,

Nice free software article by bi8fra.

I'm glad that the social-change community is finally noticing it's fellow-community, the free software (AKA "open software") movement. While the political objectives of the two communities may not necessarily align 100% (not all hackers are lefties or even anti-capitalist, for example--I think that they tend to be libertarian individualists), they share a lot of countercultural similarities. The same forces that want to commoditize everything also want to turn common ideas into intellectual property (IP); hackers are at the forefront of the struggle against IP hegemony.

--Kurt Cockrum, White Center WA

Former City Council Members

Dear ETS!,

What the hell are those things hanging off of the Nordstrom building? Can we start bulldozing now?

--Jason R., via e-mail

Y'All Come Back, Y'Hear?

ETS!,

I want to apologize to the homeless campers and the members of SHARE/WHEEL of Tent City 2 on Beacon Hill. I'm sorry that we Beacon Hillers weren't more welcoming and friendly--I'm sorry we took this opportunity to look at a problem that we have been discussing for years in the North Beacon Hill Council and basically had a knee-jerk NIMBY reaction to send you as quickly as possible back to The Jungle. I hope you realize that this is a friendly place, but that we with homes often get confused and scared easily.

I'm sorry that I couldn't spend more time playing guitar and scrabble with you and making you feel welcome. You picked a beautiful place to camp in and one that would have made a perfect site for a summer-long encampment where residents, city officials, and the homeless could have met and tried to find answers to the problems you face everyday.

Thank you for sharing your humanity, your organizing and outreach talent and your stories with me and others who came out to visit you. I hope your new encampment is a comfortable, quiet, and convenient place for you to spend the summer.

Sincerely,

Albert Kaufman, Beacon Hill

Letter to Clinton from India

[Ed. note: Through the miracle of the capitalist/anarchist Internet, this was e-mailed to us in mid-June, before Bill's visit to China, but did not actually arrive until last week.]

ETS!,

Could you find a way to print this? Sending my love to Gavin and Geov!

An Open Letter to President Clinton Regarding His Upcoming Beijing Summit:

I would like to share a few stories and personal experiences for you to think about while you are sitting across from Jiang Zemin, watching your reflection in his spectacles. I have been in India for the past four months transcribing interviews with Tibetan monks and nuns who have escaped into India after being imprisoned by the Chinese government for displaying their religious beliefs. Some of the displays are so minute and seemingly harmless that you may not believe it, but truly it did and is occurring to this day under the current Chinese stance on Tibet, known officially as the "strike hard campaign."

For the mere display of a photograph of Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, monks, nuns and laymen are persecuted. The Dalai Lama is considered a "splittist" in Chinese communist terminology. Since the West has embraced him, the West is "but a tool he uses to upset the harmonious reunion of Tibet with China." The Chinese government withholds trial and sentencing procedures for long periods after the accused is arrested, counter to their own laws. This serves to give the People's Armed Police enough time to exact confessions by torture.

The confessions that they are most interested in are those that reveal the "American imperialists" who put the Tibetans up to protesting for their right to display and say the name of their exiled spiritual and temporal leader. The prisoner's are commonly held without sentencing and without the notification of their kin for illegally long periods. This is to induce the "foreign instigators" to come forward and retrieve their agents of insurrection, when in reality they are just Tibetan monks and nuns who simply want to practice their religion.

I would like to list for you a few of the reported incidents that occur under interrogation of monks and nuns who committed the simple act of shouting "Long live His Holiness the Dalai Lama," or "Free Tibet":

They are exposed to electric cattle prods to the mouth and genitals.
They are beaten all over their bodies and repeatedly struck in the head and kidneys with iron rods and wooden clubs.
They are subjected to cigarette burns, and forced to drink scalding water.
Severe electic shocks which leave no evidence but often result in blindness.

The Chinese government is committing these violations of human rights every day in Tibet and China, it is documented and surely you are aware of it. The most shocking act comes with the release of those prisoners who have been so horribly tortured that their death is imminent. Like a common criminal works to clean up the scene of his crime, the People's Armed Police notify the families of those who are near to death of their relative's incarceration and of their duty to come fetch them. Soon after they are taken to their family's home, the prisoner dies and there is not an addition to the Prison's death statistics.

I hope this reminder of the current situation of oppression in China impresses you with a dedication to accept more than token gestures. Until 1972 and the lure of economic investment in China, the USA supported Tibet, if not openly, financing rebels in the Mustang area of Nepal, and before that, with various offers of aid before and after the invasion. I hope you will not disregard this tragedy in the interest of politics and money. It was largely with the help of my young generation that you were first elected, and the people who are being tortured are people I know, my friends, not just numbers and figures in a book.

This is your opportunity to reject the myopic platform of economic gain, a position which will only endorse the trade nemesis that China is fast becoming. Do you recognize that this is your chance to protect something far more valuable, human rights? This is the time for you to take a stand on the right side of history, on the side of justice. Anything less is destructive engagement and a betrayal of the values that all Americans hold sacred; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

--Lisa Chavez, northern India, via e-mail