Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation) and Eben Moglen (Columbia Law School) Explained 25 Years Ago That Proprietary Software (and Proprietary Firmware) Would Lead to Back Doors
Published yesterday: Stallman Was Right About Back Doors | When it Comes to Firmware, the FSF and Its Founder RMS Won the Argument (But Not the Fight, Yet)
This gem was a fortnight after the 9/11 terror attacks in the US: (those attacks were leveraged for mass surveillance agenda; that's a documented fact)
Dr. Richard Stallman, founder and President of the Free Software Foundation, and Eben Moglen, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and General Counsel for the FSF, will speak at George Washington University's Cyberspace Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., October 10, 2001 at the CPI's Free Software Conference: “Free Software: the Free Market/Free Speech Solution to the Microsoft Antitrust Problem.”The Free Software Foundation promotes the development and use of Free Software—particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants—and Free Documentation for Free Software. GNU/Linux is the integrated combination of the GNU operating system with the kernel, Linux, written by Linus Torvalds in 1991. The various versions of GNU/Linux have an estimated 20 million users worldwide.
“If code is law, then the real question we must face is: who should control the code?” says Dr. Stallman. “Can it be left to a few companies to secretly do whatever they please with the code, regardless of the interests of the public at large?
“Software today can control the way the world lives, communicates and does business,” Dr. Stallman continues. “Proprietary software is typically secret—you can't change it, or even see what it really does. You can't tell if it has back doors, or sends your personal information to a server on the net. You cannot even prevent changes that are detrimental, such as a future version unable to access the files you are saving today.
“A choice of proprietary programs is just a choice of masters. Should the code you use be under the control of Microsoft, or any other private company? Or should you control the software you use?
Emphasis above is ours.
Earlier this winter we also published: European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing (published a week before the 9/11 attacks). █
Image source: Eben Moglen