Interview with Richard Stallman, Founder of Free Software Foundation | Hacker News Reader

Interview with Richard Stallman, Founder of Free Software Foundation

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59 pointselayabharath16 comments

Now we need another clever thing. A GPL-ish set of Rules for for-profit business.

Think about it, if for example Google had a 'We're Legally bound to never be evil' eithical rule.

Does such a thing already exist perhaps? Or is there some wierdness that prevent it from happening?

defining "evil" would be a good start, though we seem to have failed to do it for the last ten thousand years :)

More seriously: there are plenty of "ethical certification" thingies, and lots of finance entities who only work with "ethical" products.

This things just don't seem to have trickled down from (arguably) major evils businesses (child exploitation, war profits, environmental disruption etc) to lesser ones (predatory pricing, patent trolling, exclusive dealing etc).

Possibly a matter of time, but a long one IMVHO.

> defining "evil" would be a good start

I think the best way to tackle this would be defining specific tenets the way that the FSF does with freedoms 0-4. They don't just say "You have to be free!" ... there is the legally-binding license itself, containing some light legalese, as well as the 4 freedoms specifying the idea to the common man, despite clearly.

So, a license that comprises "We won't be evil. We promise!" wouldn't be good enough, but the some clear rules could be set. The non-evil most people would care about would probably be related to privacy.

I agree that specifying all of the business practices which many people believe are evil would be a non-trivial task dependent on the nature of the company.

http://californiabusinesslaw.blogspot.com/2012/01/california...

California Flexible Purpose and Benefit Corporations

Enacted in October 2011 and effective today, January 1, 2012, Corporations Code Section 2500 et seq. and Section 14600 et seq. create two new types of business entities, the flexible purpose corporation and the benefit corporation. Both allow the organization of corporations which are, while not non-profit, encompass both economic profit, as well as social welfare, objectives. In short, these are hybrids between traditional for-profit corporations, and traditional nonprofits. Or, if you prefer, socially conscious stock corporations.

[...]

He says there are malicious features on mobile phones which enable the state to listen to you at any time.

Is there any reality in this statement?

Even if there is, the vast majority of phone calls passes through government controlled telephone exchanges, so it wouldn't matter.

But he implies that you can be listened even when you are not talking on the phone.

Yes - and he is right. The phone is in permanent connection with the network anyway - it's some code away from opening the audio to listen to your room conversation.

My name begins with the letter A, so I get quite a few accidental calls when someone leaves their phone unlocked in their pocket.

Mostly you just hear an incomprehensible garbled rustling noise.

Spying on someone by remotely turning on the phone in their pocket isn't usually going to work.

Although you are correct about the pocket thing, the point is that you don't know when someone may be listening to you.

Sometimes it's not. But if you're determined enough to spy on somebody via the audio on their phone, you will likely be persistent and eventually overhear something the person would prefer you didn't. If I were concerned about being spied on I wouldn't dismiss it so easily.

Yes, it is. There is nothing that says that a phone can't show you the normal menu while being in a conversation with somebody. Get the picture? I know for a fact this can be done.

So, if you want to make sure the phone is off, remove the battery.

GNU Aerospace our GPL rules for a for-profit business.

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/367152-a-new-crowdfunding-based...

That idea is pretty awesome, but why limit employee compensation in such an unflexible way?

The idea is to empower worldwide collaborative software development.

People get too hung up on what other employees are being paid, which is used as the benchmark for the valuation of their contribution to the project.

This tension blows projects apart, and explains why there are no prior GPL based business models (either the code is contributed gratis by individual contributors, or a non GPL based corporation releases code in support of their primary revenue stream in the sale of services, consulting, ustome development, sale of hardware).

By focusing on reasonable expenses, this levels the global playing field, and disables the compensation friction.

In the end, it is the consumer which must feel satisfied, that they are getting value for money spent. And it should therefore be left to the consumer to decide which persons to award higher compensation in a bonus.

I don't think this will work. This is not how it works in any of the open source based companies I know, and I know a few.

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