Byte.com: Free Is Free Isn’t Free – Talking With Richard Stallman

“Historically, Stallman gained fame as a coder and re-wrote
loads of code, turning vacuously licensed Unix components into
freeware. The idea was free Unix, the result was free <your
favorite ‘free OS’ here>. Stallman would prefer that you place
the letters GNU/ before the name of the free OS. This is well
known.”

“Metaphorically, Stallman then dug a shaft 400 miles deep into
the earth, filled it with concrete, and stepped merrily into the
middle of it. To say Stallman isn’t staunch in his defense of the
GNU Public License (GPL) and free-as-a-concept is to not understand
the word. Were he a politician, and it’s doubtful that he could
ever be one, there’d be mayhem. The reason mayhem would ensue is
that the world is stuck to the concept of not-free. It decries
accessibility to source code, even stretching the definition of
what is source code, as opposed to decryption and reverse
engineering. In a strange way, closed source code, and code that’s
not free when coupled to Stallman (and a myriad of other GPL coders
work) is theft. Can you steal what is free? Is this also an Abbie
Hoffman moment?”

Complete
Story