Last Friday, the Linux Tycoon (as well as the guy who’s been known to say “Linux sucks”), Bryan Lunduke, sat down for a free form interview with Richard Stallman. We figured that no dyed-in-the-wool FOSSer would want to miss that.
The Screening Room
Thanks to user friendly distros such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, PCLOS and Mageia, the use of GNU/Linux on personal desktops and laptops has been on an uptick for the last five years or so. It occurs to us that many of those who started using Linux during this time don’t know that not only is Linux and the GNU stack great technology, it’s also supported by an underlying philosophy about software freedom that is even more important.
That’s a problem, because using Linux without understanding the basic ideas that brought about the GNU Project and the GPL, which makes Linux free to use and distribute (and insures it will stay that way), is key to understanding why everybody should be using free and open source software.
That’s why we were pleased to discover that Bryan Lunduke sat down for an hour interview with Richard Stallman, the man behind GNU, the GPL, the Free Software Foundation and more. The unstructured interview was made available last Friday on the popular video podcast The Lunduke Hour.
We think this might be a great introduction, both to Stallman and the ideas behind Linux and free and open source software (Stallman prefers the term “free software”). Watching it might give newer Linux users an even deeper appreciation of Linux and all of the software it supports.
This doesn’t mean that those of us who’ve been working and playing with Linux for years — even decades — won’t benefit as well. If you haven’t seen the interview yet, we invite you to kick off your shoes, grab yourself a cup of Joe (or the beverage of your choice), and watch the video.
We guarantee you, it’ll be time well spent.
I’m disappointed you didn’t link to the DRM free version of this interview and instead chose to link to youtube. RMS would be sad.
https://archive.org/details/LundukeHourApril14RMS
@Anonymous There are several reasons for that. Mainly it’s because the DRM free versions requires users to login or create an account before viewing.
What software are you using for the interview?
indeed, that’s kind of ironic.
the video on youtube does not have DRM either (some videos have DRM, but surely only those that had DRM before uploading). there are other issues though such as non-free javascript and the difficulty to download. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/whats-wrong-with-youtube.html
however all of these seem minimal compared to requiring to give up your identity to log in on archive.org
greetings, eMBee.
@eMBee
Difficulty to download?
I had no such problem, that’s how I view Videos, by first Downloading them. My Broadband connection is way too slow to do it any other way.
Watching the video now. One hting that comes to mind, as I watch. Stallman makes one comment… a mistaken assumption, that really annoys me, as I see this assumption often in Free Software circles. He says “…even if you are not a great programmer, you can help…”, well, excuse me, not everyone who uses GNU is even a programmer, so for those people, I’m almost certain that comment would be more than a little off putting.
So I’d like to make a correction for him. “… even if you are NOT A PROGRAMMER, you can help…”
the download thing is referring to the fact that download tools keep breaking. intentional or not. i know they do break sometimes, and i use different tools to get around issues.
for me it’s the simple fact that download is not even included as an option by default. that is, youtube is not designed to let you download and any tool is just a workaround.
on vimeo some videos have a download options, and some even include the uploaded original, which is usually the one you should be interested in, because any re-encoding just reduced quality. it annoys me that on youtube i only ever get a re-encoded copy of any video i download.
greetings, eMBee.
btw, any internet connection that is to slow to stream video does not deserve to be called broadband…
@emBee
…slow to stream video does not deserve to be called broadband
Agreed, and yet that’s what they call it, and that’s what I pay for.
Lunduke’s constant uncomfortable-sounding giggling made this almost un-watchable.
Wow, for someone that boasts about the GNU OS and Free Software, his shoddy software glitches sure seem to prove that GNU < Linux. Maybe he should start saying Linux/GNU… or just drop the GNU and use Linux.
@Hunkah
Boasts? I don’t think I’ve heard Stallman boast about much of anything. He definitely touts Free Software as being in everybody’s best interest, but that’s just common sense.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Stallman say that the Linux project got a kernel working while GNU sort of stalled on that front. While the GNU kernel now works and is used in a handful of distros, it lacks the widespread hardware support and massive development effort of Linux.
As to your comment that “GNU < Linux", I assume you are talking about kernels because Linux isn't an operating system.
@Hunkah
Also, Stallman clearly says he is running Trisquel which uses a Linux Kernel, not GNU Hurd, so the rest of your strawman argument falls apart right about there.
which software glitches? my impression from the interview is that RMS is suffering from an old laptop that is under powered or has a defect (maybe a broken cooling fan, or something else that inhibits cooling).
i have that problem on one of my laptops too. it will be replaced soon.
he probably has already been offered a replacement but is to modest to throw away an otherwise good laptop.
greetings, eMBee.
A transcript, anywhere? One can read much faster than having to sit and listen for one hour.
The Free Software application “youtube-dl” allows you to download content from YouTube in WebM format, which is a Free format. I’m even told there’s a Microsoft Windows version, but the version I use is run on Kubuntu GNU/Linux.
https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
–SYG