Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software Part 6

Stallman took it upon himself to try it out. Instead of using a wire, Stallman draped out a long U-shaped loop of magnetic tape, fastening a loop of adhesive tape at the base of the U. Standing over the door jamb, he dangled the tape until it looped under the doork.n.o.b.

Lifting the tape until the adhesive fastened, he then pulled on the left end of the tape, twisting the doork.n.o.b counter-clockwise. Sure enough, the door opened. Stallman had added a new twist to the art of lock hacking.

"Sometimes you had to kick the door after you turned the door k.n.o.b," says Stallman, recalling the lingering bugginess of the new method. "It took a little bit of balance to pull it off."

Such activities reflected a growing willingness on Stallman's part to speak and act out in defense of political beliefs. The AI Lab's spirit of direct action had proved inspirational enough for Stallman to break out of the timid impotence of his teenage years.

Breaking into an office to free a terminal wasn't the same as taking part in a protest march, but it was effective in ways that most protests weren't. It solved the problem at hand.

By the time of his last years at Harvard, Stallman was beginning to apply the whimsical and irreverent lessons of the AI Lab back at school.

"Did he tell you about the snake?" his mother asks at one point during an interview. "He and his dorm mates put a snake up for student election. Apparently it got a considerable number of votes."

Stallman verifies the snake candidacy with a few caveats. The snake was a candidate for election within Currier House, Stallman's dorm, not the campus-wide student council. Stallman does remember the snake attracting a fairly significant number of votes, thanks in large part to the fact that both the snake and its owner both shared the same last name. "People may have voted for it, because they thought they were voting for the owner," Stallman says. "Campaign posters said that the snake was 'slithering for' the office. We also said it was an 'at large' candidate, since it had climbed into the wall through the ventilating unit a few weeks before and n.o.body knew where it was."

Running a snake for dorm council was just one of several election-related pranks. In a later election, Stallman and his dorm mates nominated the house master's son. "His platform was mandatory retirement at age seven," Stallman recalls. Such pranks paled in comparison to the fake-candidate pranks on the MIT campus, however. One of the most successful fake-candidate pranks was a cat named Woodstock, which actually managed to outdraw most of the human candidates in a campus-wide election. "They never announced how many votes Woodstock got, and they treated those votes as spoiled ballots," Stallman recalls. "But the large number of spoiled ballots in that election suggested that Woodstock had actually won. A couple of years later, Woodstock was suspiciously run over by a car. n.o.body knows if the driver was working for the MIT administration."

Stallman says he had nothing to do with Woodstock's candidacy, "but I admired it."In an email shortly after this book went into its final edit cycle, Stallman says he drew political inspiration from the Harvard campus as well. "In my first year of Harvard, in a Chinese History cla.s.s, I read the story of the first revolt against the Chin dynasty," he says.

"The story is not reliable history, but it was very moving."

At the AI Lab, Stallman's political activities had a sharper-edged tone. During the 1970s, hackers faced the constant challenge of faculty members and administrators pulling an end-run around ITS and its hacker-friendly design. One of the first attempts came in the mid-1970s, as more and more faculty members began calling for a file security system to protect research data. Most other computer labs had installed such systems during late 1960s, but the AI Lab, through the insistence of Stallman and other hackers, remained a security-free zone.

For Stallman, the opposition to security was both ethical and practical. On the ethical side, Stallman pointed out that the entire art of hacking relied on intellectual openness and trust. On the practical side, he pointed to the internal structure of ITS being built to foster this spirit of openness, and any attempt to reverse that design required a major overhaul.

"The hackers who wrote the Incompatible Timesharing System decided that file protection was usually used by a self-styled system manager to get power over everyone else," Stallman would later explain. "They didn't want anyone to be able to get power over them that way, so they didn't implement that kind of a feature. The result was, that whenever something in the system was broken, you could always fix it."See Richard Stallman (1986).

Through such vigilance, hackers managed to keep the AI Lab's machines security-free. Over at the nearby MIT Laboratory for Computer Sciences, however, security-minded faculty members won the day. The LCS installed its first pa.s.sword-based system in 1977. Once again, Stallman took it upon himself to correct what he saw as ethical laxity. Gaining access to the software code that controlled the pa.s.sword system, Stallman implanted a software command that sent out a message to any LCS user who attempted to choose a unique pa.s.sword.

If a user entered "starfish," for example, the message came back something like: I see you chose the pa.s.sword "starfish." I suggest that you switch to the pa.s.sword "carriage return." It's much easier to type, and also it stands up to the principle that there should be no pa.s.swords.See Steven Levy, Hackers (Penguin USA [paperback], 1984): 417. I have modified this quote, which Levy also uses as an excerpt, to ill.u.s.trate more directly how the program might reveal the false security of the system.

Levy uses the placeholder "[such and such]."

Users who did enter "carriage return"-that is, users who simply pressed the Enter or Return b.u.t.ton, entering a blank string instead of a unique pa.s.sword-left their accounts accessible to the world at large. As scary as that might have been for some users, it reinforced the hacker notion that Inst.i.tute computers, and even Inst.i.tute computer files, belonged to the public, not private individuals. Stallman, speaking in an interview for the 1984 book Hackers, proudly noted that one-fifth of the LCS staff accepted this argument and employed the blank-string pa.s.sword.See Steven Levy, Hackers (Penguin USA [paperback], 1984): 417.

Stallman's null-string crusade would prove ultimately futile. By the early 1980s, even the AI Lab's machines were sporting pa.s.sword-based security systems. Even so, it represents a major milestone in terms of Stallman's personal and political maturation. To the objective observer familiar with Stallman's later career, it offers a convenient inflection point between the timid teenager afraid to speak out even on issues of life-threatening importance and the adult activist who would soon turn needling and cajoling into a full-time occupation.

In voicing his opposition to computer security, Stallman drew on many of the forces that had shaped his early life: hunger for knowledge, distaste for authority, and frustration over hidden procedures and rules that rendered some people clueless outcasts. He would also draw on the ethical concepts that would shape his adult life: communal responsibility, trust, and the hacker spirit of direct action. Expressed in software-computing terms, the null string represents the 1.0 version of the Richard Stallman political worldview-incomplete in a few places but, for the most part, fully mature.

Looking back, Stallman hesitates to impart too much significance to an event so early in his hacking career. "In that early stage there were a lot of people who shared my feelings," he says. "The large number of people who adopted the null string as their pa.s.sword was a sign that many people agreed that it was the proper thing to do. I was simply inclined to be an activist about it."

Stallman does credit the AI Lab for awakening that activist spirit, however. As a teenager, Stallman had observed political events with little idea as to how a single individual could do or say anything of importance. As a young adult, Stallman was speaking out on matters in which he felt supremely confident, matters such as software design, communal responsibility, and individual freedom. "I joined this community which had a way of life which involved respecting each other's freedom," he says. "It didn't take me long to figure out that that was a good thing.

It took me longer to come to the conclusion that this was a moral issue."

Hacking at the AI Lab wasn't the only activity helping to boost Stallman's esteem. During the middle of his soph.o.m.ore year at Harvard, Stallman had joined up with a dance troupe that specialized in folk dances . What began as a simple attempt to meet women and expand his social horizons soon expanded into yet another pa.s.sion alongside hacking. Dancing in front of audiences dressed in the native garb of a Balkan peasant, Stallman no longer felt like the awkward, uncoordinated 10-year-old whose attempts to play football had ended in frustration. He felt confident, agile, and alive.

For a brief moment, he even felt a hint of emotional connection. He soon found being in front of an audience fun, and it wasn't long thereafter that he began craving the performance side of dancing almost as much as the social side.

Although the dancing and hacking did little to improve Stallman's social standing, they helped him overcome the feelings of weirdness that had clouded his pre-Harvard life. Instead of lamenting his weird nature, Stallman found ways to celebrate it. In 1977, while attending a science-fiction convention, he came across a woman selling custom-made b.u.t.tons. Excited, Stallman ordered a b.u.t.ton with the words "Impeach G.o.d"

emblazoned on it.

For Stallman, the "Impeach G.o.d" message worked on many levels. An atheist since early childhood, Stallman first saw it as an attempt to set a "second front" in the ongoing debate on religion. "Back then everybody was arguing about G.o.d being dead or alive," Stallman recalls. "'Impeach G.o.d' approached the subject of G.o.d from a completely different viewpoint. If G.o.d was so powerful as to create the world and yet do nothing to correct the problems in it, why would we ever want to wors.h.i.+p such a G.o.d? Wouldn't it be better to put him on trial?"

At the same time, "Impeach G.o.d" was a satirical take on America and the American political system. The Watergate scandal of the 1970s affected Stallman deeply. As a child, Stallman had grown up mistrusting authority. Now, as an adult, his mistrust had been solidified by the culture of the AI Lab hacker community. To the hackers, Watergate was merely a Shakespearean rendition of the daily power struggles that made life such a ha.s.sle for those without privilege. It was an outsized parable for what happened when people traded liberty and openness for security and convenience.

Buoyed by growing confidence, Stallman wore the b.u.t.ton proudly. People curious enough to ask him about it received the same well-prepared spiel. "My name is Jehovah," Stallman would say. "I have a special plan to save the universe, but because of heavenly security reasons I can't tell you what that plan is. You're just going to have to put your faith in me, because I see the picture and you don't. You know I'm good because I told you so. If you don't believe me, I'll throw you on my enemies list and throw you in a pit where Infernal Revenue Service will audit your taxes for eternity."

Those who interpreted the spiel as a word-for-word parody of the Watergate hearings only got half the message. For Stallman, the other half of the message was something only his fellow hackers seemed to be hearing. One hundred years after Lord Acton warned about absolute power corrupting absolutely, Americans seemed to have forgotten the first part of Acton's truism: power, itself, corrupts. Rather than point out the numerous examples of petty corruption, Stallman felt content voicing his outrage toward an entire system that trusted power in the first place.

"I figured why stop with the small fry," says Stallman, recalling the b.u.t.ton and its message. "If we went after Nixon, why not going after Mr. Big. The way I see it, any being that has power and abuses it deserves to have that power taken away."

Small Puddle of Freedom

Ask anyone who's spent more than a minute in Richard Stallman's presence, and you'll get the same recollection: forget the long hair. Forget the quirky demeanor. The first thing you notice is the gaze. One look into Stallman's green eyes, and you know you're in the presence of a true believer.

To call the Stallman gaze intense is an understatement.

Stallman's eyes don't just look at you; they look through you. Even when your own eyes momentarily s.h.i.+ft away out of simple primate politeness, Stallman's eyes remain locked-in, sizzling away at the side of your head like twin photon beams.

Maybe that's why most writers, when describing Stallman, tend to go for the religious angle. In a 1998 Salon.com article t.i.tled "The Saint of Free Software,"

Andrew Leonard describes Stallman's green eyes as "radiating the power of an Old Testament prophet."See Andrew Leonard, "The Saint of Free Software,"

Salon.com (August 1998).

http://www.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/08/cov_31feature.html A 1999 Wired magazine article describes the Stallman beard as "Rasputin-like,"See Leander Kahney, "Linux's Forgotten Man," Wired News (March 5, 1999).

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,18291,00.html while a London Guardian profile describes the Stallman smile as the smile of "a disciple seeing Jesus."See "Programmer on moral high ground; Free software is a moral issue for Richard Stallman believes in freedom and free software." London Guardian (November 6, 1999).

These are just a small sampling of the religious comparisons. To date, the most extreme comparison has to go to Linus Torvalds, who, in his autobiography-see Linus Torvalds and David Diamond, Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidentaly Revolutionary (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2001): 58-writes "Richard Stallman is the G.o.d of Free Software." Honorable mention goes to Larry Lessig, who, in a footnote description of Stallman in his book-see Larry Lessig, The Future of Ideas (Random House, 2001): 270-likens Stallman to Moses: . . . as with Moses, it was another leader, Linus Torvalds, who finally carried the movement into the promised land by facilitating the development of the final part of the OS puzzle. Like Moses, too, Stallman is both respected and reviled by allies within the movement. He is [an] unforgiving, and hence for many inspiring, leader of a critically important aspect of modern culture. I have deep respect for the principle and commitment of this extraordinary individual, though I also have great respect for those who are courageous enough to question his thinking and then sustain his wrath. In a final interview with Stallman, I asked him his thoughts about the religious comparisons. "Some people do compare me with an Old Testament prophent, and the reason is Old Testament prophets said certain social practices were wrong. They wouldn't compromise on moral issues. They couldn't be bought off, and they were usually treated with contempt."

Such a.n.a.logies serve a purpose, but they ultimately fall short. That's because they fail to take into account the vulnerable side of the Stallman persona.

Watch the Stallman gaze for an extended period of time, and you will begin to notice a subtle change. What appears at first to be an attempt to intimidate or hypnotize reveals itself upon second and third viewing as a frustrated attempt to build and maintain contact.

If, as Stallman himself has suspected from time to time, his personality is the product of autism or Asperger Syndrome, his eyes certainly confirm the diagnosis. Even at their most high-beam level of intensity, they have a tendency to grow cloudy and distant, like the eyes of a wounded animal preparing to give up the ghost.

My own first encounter with the legendary Stallman gaze dates back to the March, 1999, LinuxWorld Convention and Expo in San Jose, California. Billed as a "coming out party" for the Linux software community, the convention also stands out as the event that reintroduced Stallman to the technology media.

Determined to push for his proper share of credit, Stallman used the event to instruct spectators and reporters alike on the history of the GNU Project and the project's overt political objectives.

As a reporter sent to cover the event, I received my own Stallman tutorial during a press conference announcing the release of GNOME 1.0, a free software graphic user interface. Unwittingly, I push an entire bank of hot b.u.t.tons when I throw out my very first question to Stallman himself: do you think GNOME's maturity will affect the commercial popularity of the Linux operating system?

"I ask that you please stop calling the operating system Linux," Stallman responds, eyes immediately zeroing in on mine. "The Linux kernel is just a small part of the operating system. Many of the software programs that make up the operating system you call Linux were not developed by Linus Torvalds at all. They were created by GNU Project volunteers, putting in their own personal time so that users might have a free operating system like the one we have today. To not acknowledge the contribution of those programmers is both impolite and a misrepresentation of history.

That's why I ask that when you refer to the operating system, please call it by its proper name, GNU/Linux."

Taking the words down in my reporter's notebook, I notice an eerie silence in the crowded room. When I finally look up, I find Stallman's unblinking eyes waiting for me. Timidly, a second reporter throws out a question, making sure to use the term " GNU/Linux"

instead of Linux. Miguel de Icaza, leader of the GNOME project, fields the question. It isn't until halfway through de Icaza's answer, however, that Stallman's eyes finally unlock from mine. As soon as they do, a mild s.h.i.+ver rolls down my back. When Stallman starts lecturing another reporter over a perceived error in diction, I feel a guilty tinge of relief. At least he isn't looking at me, I tell myself.

For Stallman, such face-to-face moments would serve their purpose. By the end of the first LinuxWorld show, most reporters know better than to use the term "Linux"

in his presence, and wired.com is running a story comparing Stallman to a pre-Stalinist revolutionary erased from the history books by hackers and entrepreneurs eager to downplay the GNU Project's overly political objectives.2 Other articles follow, and while few reporters call the operating system GNU/Linux in print, most are quick to credit Stallman for launching the drive to build a free software operating system 15 years before.

I won't meet Stallman again for another 17 months.

During the interim, Stallman will revisit Silicon Valley once more for the August, 1999 LinuxWorld show.

Although not invited to speak, Stallman does managed to deliver the event's best line. Accepting the show's Linus Torvalds Award for Community Service-an award named after Linux creator Linus Torvalds-on behalf of the Free Software Foundation, Stallman wisecracks, "Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance."

This time around, however, the comments fail to make much of a media dent. Midway through the week, Red Hat, Inc., a prominent GNU/Linux vendor, goes public. The news merely confirms what many reporters such as myself already suspect: "Linux" has become a Wall Street buzzword, much like "e-commerce" and "dot-com" before it. With the stock market approaching the Y2K rollover like a hyperbola approaching its vertical asymptote, all talk of free software or open source as a political phenomenon falls by the wayside.

Maybe that's why, when LinuxWorld follows up its first two shows with a third LinuxWorld show in August, 2000, Stallman is conspicuously absent.

My second encounter with Stallman and his trademark gaze comes shortly after that third LinuxWorld show.

Hearing that Stallman is going to be in Silicon Valley, I set up a lunch interview in Palo Alto, California.

The meeting place seems ironic, not only because of the recent no-show but also because of the overall backdrop. Outside of Redmond, Was.h.i.+ngton, few cities offer a more direct testament to the economic value of proprietary software. Curious to see how Stallman, a man who has spent the better part of his life railing against our culture's predilection toward greed and selfishness, is coping in a city where even garage-sized bungalows run in the half-million-dollar price range, I make the drive down from Oakland.

I follow the directions Stallman has given me, until I reach the headquarters of Art.net, a nonprofit "virtual artists collective." Located in a hedge-shrouded house in the northern corner of the city, the Art.net headquarters are refres.h.i.+ngly run-down. Suddenly, the idea of Stallman lurking in the heart of Silicon Valley doesn't seem so strange after all.