Richard Stallman is one of the founders of the Free Software Movement and lead
developer of the GNU Operating System. (1)

JP: Can you first of all explain the "Free Software Movement'.

RMS: The basic idea of the Free Software Movement is that the user of software
deserves certain freedoms. There are four essential freedoms, which we label
freedoms 0 through 3.
Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the software as you wish. Freedom 1 is the
freedom to study and change the source code as you wish. Freedom 2 is the
freedom to copy and distribute the software as you wish. And freedom 3 is the
freedom to create and distribute modified versions as you wish. With these four
freedoms, users have full control of their own computers, and can use their
computers to cooperate in a community. Freedoms 0 and 2 directly benefit all
users, since all users can exercise them. Freedoms 1 and 3, only programmers
can directly exercise, but everyone benefits from them, because everyone can
adopt (or not) the changes that programmers make. Thus, free software develops
under the control of its users.
Non-free software, by contrast, keeps users divided and helpless. It is distributed
in a social scheme designed to divide and subjugate. The developers of non-free
software have power over their users, and they use this power to the detriment
of users in various ways. It is common for non-free software to contain malicious
features, features that exist not because the users want them, but because the
developers want to force them on the users. The aim of the free software
movement is to escape from non-free software.

JP: What was your history with the free software movement?

RMS: I launched the movement in 1983 with a deliberate decision to develop a
complete world of free software. The idea is not just to produce a scattering of
free programs that were nice to use. Rather, the idea is to systematically build
free software so that one can escape completely from non-free software. Nonfree
software is basically antisocial, it subjugates it users, and it should not exist.
So what I wanted was to create a community in which it does not exist. A
community where we would escape from non-free software into freedom.
The first collection of programs you need in order to escape non-free software is
an operating system. With an operating system, you can do a lot of things with
your computer. Without an operating system, even if you have a lot of
applications, you cannot do anything -- you cannot run them without an
operating system. In 1983 all operating systems were proprietary. That meant
that the first step you had to take in using a computer was to give up your
freedom: they required users to sign a contract, a promise not to share, just to
get an executable version that you couldn't look at or understand. In order to use
your computer you had to sign something saying you would betray your
community.
Thus, I needed to create a free operating system. It happened that operating
system development was my field, so I was technically suited for the task. It was
also the first job that had to be done.
The operating system we created was compatible with Unix, and was called GNU.
GNU stands for "GNU is Not Unix", and the most important thing about GNU is
that it is not Unix. Unix is a non-free operating system, and you are not allowed
to make a free version of Unix. We developed a free system that is like Unix, but
not Unix. We wrote all the parts of it from scratch.
In 1983, there were hundreds of components to the Unix operating system. We
began the long process of replacing them one by one. Some of the components
took a few days, others took a year or several.
By 1992, we had all of the essential components except one: the kernel. The
kernel is one of the major essential components of the system. In GNU, we began
developing a kernel in 1990. I chose the initial design based on a belief that it
would be a quick design to implement. My choice backfired and it took much
longer than I'd hoped. In 1992, the Linux kernel was liberated. It had been
released in 1991, but on a non-free license. In 1992 the developer changed the
license for the kernel, making it free. That meant we had a free operating
system, which I call "GNU/Linux' or "GNU plus Linux'.
However, when this combination was made, the users got confused, and began to
call the whole thing "Linux'. That is not very nice.
First of all, it isn't nice because there are thousands of people involved in the GNU
project who deserve a share of the credit. We started the project, and did the
biggest part of the work, so we deserve to get equal mention. (Some people
believe that the kernel alone is more important than the rest of the operating
system. This belief appears to result from an attempt to construct a justification
for the "Linux" misnomer.)
But there is more at stake than just credit: the GNU Project was a campaign for
freedom, and Linux was not. The developer of Linux had other motives, motives
that were more personal. That does not diminish the value of his contribution. His
motives were not bad. He developed the system in order to amuse himself and
learn. Amusing oneself is good -- programming is great fun. Wanting to learn is
also good. But Linux was not designed with the goal of liberating cyberspace, and
the motives for Linux would not have given us the whole GNU/Linux system.
Today tens of millions of users are using an operating system that was developed
so they could have freedom -- but they don't know this, because they think the
system is Linux and that it was developed by a student "just for fun'.

JP: So the GNU+Linux system is not an accident.

RMS: You cannot rely on accidents to defend freedom. Accidents can sometimes
help, but you need people who are aware and determined to do this. Because it
was not designed specifically for freedom, it is no coincidence that the first license
to Linux was non-free. In fact I don't know why he changed it.

JP: Does the difference between the GNU project and Linux relate to the
difference between "free software' and "open source'?

RMS: As GNU+Linux came to be used by thousands, and then hundreds of
thousands, and then millions, they started to talk to each other: Look at how
powerful, reliable, convenient, cheap, and fun this system is. Most people talking
about it, though, never mentioned that it was about freedom. They never thought
about it that way. And so our work spread to more people than our ideas did.
Linus Torvalds, the developer of Linux, never agreed with our ideas. He was not a
proponent of the ethical aspects of our ideas or a critic of the antisocial nature of
non-free software. He just claimed that our software was technically superior to
particular competitors.
That claim happened to be true: in the 1990s, someone did a controlled
experiment to measure the reliability of software, feeding random input
sequences into different programs (Unix systems and GNU systems), and found
GNU to be the most reliable. He repeated the tests years later, and GNU was still
the most reliable.
The ideas of Torvalds led by 1996 to a division in the community on goals. One
group was for freedom, the other for powerful and reliable software. There were
regular public arguments. In 1998 the other camp chose the term "open source'
to describe their position. "Open source' is not a movement, in my view. It is,
perhaps, a collection of ideas, or a campaign.

JP: Since we will be talking about this more, perhaps now is a good time to define
"movement'.

RMS: I don't have a definition ready, I'll have to think of one. Let us define it as a
collection of people working to promote an ideal. Or maybe, an ideal, together
with an activity to promote it.

JP: So, "open source' is missing the ideal part?

RMS: They recommend a development methodology and claim that the model will
produce superior software. If so, to us, it's a bonus. Freedom often allows one to
achieve convenience. I appreciate having more powerful software, and if freedom
helps that, good. But for us in the free software movement that is secondary.

JP: And in fact one should be willing to sacrifice some power and convenience of
the software for freedom.

RMS: Absolutely.