Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), spoke to students and IT enthusiasts at the University of the Philippines – Cebu City on March 28, 2015 about copyright issues on software.
Stallman is the original author of GCC, the most popular compiler for the C programming language. GCC is the used to compile software that runs email servers, web servers, routers and many other systems on the Internet.
Aside from his technical contributions, Stallman is also known for his advocacy “to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users”. The FSF provides critical infrastructure and funding for the GNU project, the foundation of the popular GNU/Linux family of free operating systems and the keystone of the Internet.
Richard Stallman, Founder of the Free Software Foundation, speaks to students and IT enthusiasts at UP Cebu.
In his talk, Stallman raised issue on the creeping loss of freedom to use software and other digital and non-digital works like art and literature. He also talked about the history of copyright and its original purpose which is for the good of the general public.
At present, influential companies try to change the original purpose of copyright and subvert it to benefit the companies instead of the general public. One such example he gave as music. In the past, it was easy to share music: you just lend your CD to your friend. Now, with streaming music service, you cannot just lend the service to you friend because the service provider restricts it.
Stallman warns that if nothing is done, we will eventually lose all our freedom to use software the way we want to use it.
