Bonum Certa Men Certa

Panorama of Richard Stallman: The P Series (2013)

Richard Stallman
Photo from Stallman.org



Summary: Upcoming series of discussions with the founding father of Free (as in freedom) software and the GNU project

The 'P' series, as one might call it, explores the opinions of Dr. Stallman and documents a concise version of them in TechBytes Video. It is subdivided into short segments so as to make it easier to follow a long interview. It is split into distinguishable parts that are quick to download (or stream), link to by topic, and generally share without over-encumbering the recipient (a downside of public talks on the Web, sometimes with informal Q&A sessions appended). Not many people have the patience and the time to watch over an hour of video, let alone listen to hours of audio alone (at least not consecutively).



Each part in this series is summarised by a word starting with the letter P, based on an outline I wrote on the train to Oxford (where I met Stallman). All parts were filmed in Wolfson College at Oxford University and they were never edited to embellish, remove or alter the context (maybe just to crop out completely irrelevant chat). This is not a staged interview (some groups do stage their interviews) and Stallman was not shown these topics in advance. This is being stated upfront because all individuals have some weaknesses when they cannot prepare for questions and cannot rely on editing to remove sneezing, pauses, interruptions, etc.

Videos were filmed using Android 4.0, which is Free software. These videos are made available in free formats (codecs) as Stallman wishes for people to get Free software and not be required to install proprietary software in order to watch him.

Over the next few months we will release segments touching on the following topics, all starting with the letter P. Those topics are:

Privacy - NSA surveillance, ECHELON, storage/network backbones

Progress - On transparency/accountability in government, petitions and popular action, independence from political parties

'Piracy' - Copyrights as censorship, war on sharing using copyright as pretext, inadequacy for digital age economics

Press - Corporate ownership, involvement with secret services (confirmed in the UK)

Proprietary software - Firmware, compilation from source and assurance, freedom aspects (for developers and users)

Plutocrats - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or plutocrats in general

Price hikes - Inflation, LIBOR, banking institutions, trade agreements

Poverty - High child poverty levels (among Western nations), minimum wage policy, part-time/temporary worker loopholes

Protectionism - Lobbying, subsidies from taxpayers, bailout assurances, government contracts (no tender)

Public health service - Number one cause of bankruptcies in the United States, where around 1.5 million families file for bankruptcy every year

Prisons/penal system - Privatisation as root cause for high incarceration rates. Swartz, Hammond, 'Weev' and the fight against (non-government-employed) hackers.

Protest - Sit-ins, boycotts, whistleblowers

Politics - drone warfare, torture, indefinite detention

Power versus those who speak truth to power - Obama's journalists-targetting crackdown, Hastings' death while working on a massive NSA/CIA story (then having people whom he knew harassed by the FBI, Wikileaks' lawyer contacted a few hours before a suspicious accident), no-fly lists or flagged passengers (GAP manager says meeting Assange leads to that and a microphone was recently found planted in the Ecuadorian embassy in London)

Police - Strategy of group infiltration (especially notorious in the United Kingdom), secret courts/laws/interpretations

Patents - UPC (unitary patent in the EU), scope of patents, expansionism (e.g. export of laws to New Zealand)

Parenting/Censorship - Racism, child abuse, political dissent, state secrets, passwords leak, threatening messages (e.g. threats of violence)

Potentially also (at a later point):

Peace - Motivations of the arms industry, divide-and-rule strategy, class warfare (or race and sexuality as sources of friction), multiculturalism

Prose - Poems and other writings

Pets - Cats and dogs, parrots, appreciation of nature, including flora

Public relations - Reputation damage to the Free Software Foundation, the GPL, and people who are associated with these

Peer to Peer - Infrastructure of networks, centralisation, so-called 'cloud' computing

Profiling - Facebook tagging by automated face recognition, geographic tagging, graphing of connections, data-mining browsing habits and content composition, automatic uploading of device-stored data, and the long-term impact of these developments

Polarisation - Status as 'controversial', why it is essential to think outside the box and persist even if it may inadvertently offend someone

Personal - Influences (television, radio, books, intellectuals) when growing up

Partner - Personal ad targeting a suitable lady, dedication to the GNU project which is akin to a child

Predictions - Something along the lines of Orwell about the boot crushing us, what we can expect to see happening to our freedom in the future

Stallman has been reading Techrights for quite some time, so we hope he and his work will become a regular feature in this Web site. My full-time job, my family, and dedication to sports generally leave with with minimal time to dedicate to Techrights, so it sure helps when others contribute. I've been corresponding a lot with Stallman recently and I understand how he feels rarely to receive credit for his sacrifices and achievements.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
 
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
Links for the day
Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
This is What Google News Has Become
Moments ago
The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
Links for the day
Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
Bing is measured as down this month
Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
Links for the day
How Not to Build Software
code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
GAFAM and "MATA"
The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
I could not help but think of Free software analogies
The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
That issue is now resolved
Flying in 2025
worse than ever before
Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
The clock is ticking
Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
Government Sites Should Run Free Software
Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025