O excêntrico
Richard Stallman, presidente da Free Software Foundation, é um ótimo entrevistado. Mesmo por e-mail. Mesmo ele tendo imposto umas regrinhas antes de topar dar entrevista.
Mas, em jornal diário, sabe como é...
Texto assassinado, o jeito é se conformar.
Ou blogar. Taí.
Os trechos abaixo, na minha opinião, são os melhores da entrevista. Foram os que me fizeram rir na frente do computador. Os que eu sabia que, de qualquer forma, não seriam publicados – por isso nem traduzi.
São os que melhor explicam por que o tal do Stallman não é apenas o cara que começou essa história de software livre lá nos 80, mas sim o seu grande filósofo (ah, ele não gosta muito que o identifiquem assim).
OK. Vamos ao que interessa. Tudo isso é pra dizer que acabo de descobrir o barato do blog: tu não precisas contar os centímetros.
E lá vai então umas respostas do Mr Stallman:
Debochando da repórter..."Working with free software is not dangerous. With over a million contributors, of course some have died over the years, but I never heard that anyone died as a direct result of working on free software."Sobre o futuro do software livre..."I can't foretell the future. We are in a struggle for freedom, and the outcome depends on you."Sobre os seus queridinhos Bill Gates, Steve Jobs e até Linus Torvalds (o cara que criou o Linux)"Gates and Jobs have built empires on proprietary software, on dominating and restricting the user. I think that is simply antisocial. Torvalds, by contrast, made an important contribution to the free software community. But he did not do this because of a desire to live in freedom. Indeed, he disagrees with the idea that users are morally entitled to the four freedoms. He seems to be more interested in having powerful, reliable software."As lembranças de Porto Alegre... "I was there twice before, and mainly I remember drinking mate and visiting a great seafood buffet restaurant." Os esforços brasileiros em direção ao software livre..."They are inconsistent, because there is no clear and firm government policy to move to free software. When Lula was elected, we all hoped that there would be one. It is not too late!"As diferenças entre a Free Software Foundation (FSF) e a Open Source Initiative (OSI)..."There is no dispute between the FSF's ideals and the OSI's ideals, because the whole point of "open source" is not to have ideals. They chose to cite only practical benefits as values because they did not want to cite ideals, as we do. They believed, perhaps rightly, that businesses would find ethical ideals uncomfortable, and decided to appeal to business by rejecting ethical ideals from their discourse. We, however, will not let business censor our consciences. Business has too much power, and its power threatens democracy in all areas of life, including the use of computers. Therefore, we reject the idea of silencing ourselves about freedom in order to win the support of business."Sobre patentes de softwares..."This stupid system originated in the US. When there is something wrong the US, the US government does not try to fix it; instead it tries to impose the problem on the rest of the world. Bush tried to impose software patents on Brazil through ALCA, but Lula rejected it. Thank you, Lula."
