The GNU Operating System

Speeches and Interviews (in reverse chronological order)

• The Danger of Software Patents, transcript of a talk by Richard Stallman.
• Transcript of an interview with Richard Stallman conducted by Federico Biancuzzi for O'Reilly Media. As well as a wide-ranging discussion of developments in Free Software licencing the interview covers issues including the history and current activities of the FSF, the spread of DMCA-like laws around the world, software patents and the need for free device drivers.
• Transcript of an interview with Richard Stallman for Radio New Zealand, conducted by Kim Hill on August 9, 2008. It covers various topics — free software, the dawn of the free software movement, the fallacy of the term “intellectual property”, Google's services and New Zealand's Copyright laws.
• Free Software Movement: From Genesis to the GNU GPL version 2, an interview with Richard Stallman conducted by Bill Xu (Chinese version also available).
• Video recording of Copyright vs. Community speech with brief text description, given by Richard Stallman on July 5, 2007 in Missassauga, Ontario, Canada.
• Transcript of a speech given by Richard Stallman about free software and the West Bengal government, in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) on August, 2006.
• Jonathan Roberts interviews Richard Stallman and others on free software.
• Bill Xu interviews Richard Stallman on DRM. You can also read it in Chinese.
• Eben Moglen, “Free Software and Free Media”, at the Jefferson Market Library in New York, New York, May 3, 2006 for the Metropolitan NY Chapter of the Internet Society
• Richard Stallman interviewed by Justin Podur on “Free Software as a Social Movement”, 01 December 2005
• Richard Stallman interviewed by Federico Biancuzzi about the importance of the GPL, for ONLamp.com, 22 September 2005
• Presentation of the goals and philosophy of the GNU operating system by Richard Stallman in University of Pittsburgh, April 7th 2005
• Richard Stallman's interview with Timothy R. Butler on “The state of GNU/Linux”, 31 March 2005.
• Transcript of a speech on free software given by Richard M. Stallman at National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, 17 February 2004.
• Richard Stallman's interview with NetEconomie.com (In French) 10 December 2004
• Transcript of a panel presentation, “New developments in patent practice: assessing the risks and cost of portfolio licensing and hold-ups”, given by Daniel B. Ravicher as the executive director of the Public Patent Foundation on Wednesday, November 10, 2004, at a conference organized by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) in Brussels, Belgium
• Synopsis of a speech given by Richard M. Stallman about software patents on 14 October 2004.
• Interview with Richard Stallman that took place at the School of Informatics, Edinburgh University, on 27^th May 2004. Originally published at Indymedia, most of the questions are about the the relationship between the free software movement and other social movements, and the different values of the “open source” campaign.
• Web page with interviews/audio/video from speeches in Madrid (May 2004) given by Richard M. Stallman (site is in Spanish)
• Transcript of a speech about copyright law and SCO given by Prof. Eben Moglen at Harvard on 23 February, 2004.
• Transcript of a speech about free software and sustainable development given by Richard M. Stallman at WSIS, 16 July 2003.
• Transcript of a speech about the future of free software given by Richard M. Stallman, 21 April 2003.
• Audio recording of a speech, Software Freedom and the GNU Generation, given by Bradley M. Kuhn 22 April 2003.
• Transcript of a speech given in French by Richard Stallman at “LinuxExpo”, Paris, 2002.
• Audio recording of a speech, Software Patents:Obstacles to software development, given by Richard M. Stallman at the University of Cambridge, England 25th March 2002. A transcript of the speech is also available.
• Richard Stallman interview in 2002, talking about the hacker community and ethics , this interview is also available in Finnish.
• Richard Stallman's interview, Perché l'open source non è tutto, in italian, to the Mytech website, 22 April 2003. (The title reads, Because Open Source is not all.)
• Audio recording of a speech, Copyright vs Community in the age of computer Networks, given by Richard M. Stallman at Queen Mary University of London, England 12th Feb 2002.
• Audio recording in French of a speech, l'éthique du système GNU/Linux et de la communauté des logiciels libres, les tâches à accomplir et les risques à envisager, given by Richard M. Stallman at CNIT à la Défense, Paris, France. 27th Jan 2002. (A number of other speeches in several languages are also available on audio-video.gnu.org.
• Audio recordings and a partial transcript of the conference given by Richard M. Stallman to the French National Assembly on 20th November 2001.
• Transcript of the speech, The Danger of Software Patents by Richard M. Stallman given at Government Model Engineering College, India on 24th July 2001. Also, the MEC has posted an audio recording and transcript at their website.
• Richard Stallman's interview about free software and business with Louis Suarez-Potts in May of 2001.
• Audio recording of a speech, Free Software: Freedom and Cooperation, given by Richard M. Stallman at New York University. A transcript of the speech is also available.
• Transcript of a speech, Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Networks, given by Richard M. Stallman at MIT.
• Audio recording of a speech, Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Networks, given by Richard M. Stallman at MIT.
• Audio recording of a speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given by Richard M. Stallman at ArsDigita University.
• Audio recording of a speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given by Richard M. Stallman at Auditorium Smelt, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
• Audio recording of a speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given by Richard M. Stallman at LinuxTag 2000.
• Audio recording of a speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given by Richard M. Stallman at the University of Cincinnati.
• Transcription (in French) of a speech that Richard Stallman gave in 1998 at the University of Paris.
• English translation of a speech about the history and philosophy of the GNU Project that Georg Greve gave in 1998 at the GNU/Linux Cluster “CLOWN” in Germany (German original).
• BYTE Interview in July 1986 with Richard Stallman about the development of the GNU system.
• A speech that Richard Stallman gave in 1986 at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden about the hacker community and the early days of the free software movement.
• An index of French recordings at audio-video.gnu.org is also available.

Links to more philosophy articles

• Essays and Articles
• Third party ideas
• The main philosophy page

back to top

Check out other Free Software Foundation campaigns

• Defective by Design, a campaign against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)
• Windows 7 Sins, the case against Microsoft and proprietary software
• PlayOgg — support free media formats