VCs anathema to free software votaries

Vinson Kurian

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, July 25

VENTURE capitalists and angel investors impose severe restrictions on the freedom of enterprises. That is why the Freedom Software Foundation (FSF) has always shunned ``the tribe'' in its 16 years of existence -- something which it would not compromise in future, said Mr Richard M. Stallman, President, FSF, in an interview with Business Line.

Asked if he has ever felt the need to raise funds to promote the `freedom' concept which has found increasing acceptance, forcing even Microsoft to sit up and take notice, Mr Stallman, better known among the estimated 20 million ``free software'' user community by the initials RMS, said: ``We raise donations, but not funds.''

Elaborating, he said the term ``free software'' was sometimes misunderstood. It had nothing to do with price and was all about freedom.

A programme is free software for a particular user if he has the freedom to (i) run the programme for ANY purpose (ii) modify the same to suit his needs (to make this freedom effective in practice, he must have access to the source code -- a platform which FSF shares with the open source movement -- since making changes in a programme without having the source code is exceedingly difficult) (iii) redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee and (iv) distribute modified versions of the programme so that the community can benefit from his improvements.

``Ours is not a business enterprise. The problem with venture capitalists is that you are basically giving the investor the power to decide the purpose of your activity. If what you are trying to do is give people freedom and if at some point of time the investor decides that is not a profitable venture, he can ditch you. The whole idea becomes pointless.

``I started an NGO, not a company, and there is a specific reason for that. I don't want profit motivation to determine the nature of my work. Yes, we do need funds and we raise it from donors, not from investors. If somebody starts a company and believes that the company is in some way going to be more ethical than usual and then look for outside investments, well, he is fooling himself,'' Mr Stallman said.

What if an offer came from out of the free software community itself? ``Sure, if somebody wants to `invest' money, it is well and good. We will accept it as a donation, no problem with that. But he is not an investor. We accept donations large and small. Donors must not get the feeling that they own a part of our work. They simply don't. Donations do not give them any control over what will be done with our past work either. Because, if you accept a company with investors and go on to produce something that is going to be used in an ethical way, there is nothing that can stop them from removing you and start using what you have already done disregarding your ethical ideas.''

Mr Stallman is the founder of the project to launch the free operating system GNU (a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix), a Unix-compatible portable system which, in combination with the Linux kernel, is now used by 17 to 20 million users worldwide.

The GNU/Linux variant is often mistakenly called just `Linux', an issue which Mr Stallman says he has personally taken up with Mr Linus Torvalds, the Finnish founder of Linux, but without much success.

``Coming to the GNU system, the only reason for doing it was to make an ethical difference. And I made absolutely certain that nobody is able to overrule this objective. The purpose was to give people freedom and encourage cooperation. GNU does that perfectly well,'' Mr Stallman said.

Asked if the interest in ``free software'' was not growing faster than the philosophy which it was based on, Mr Stallman replied that ``there is reason to believe so'' and said FSF was trying to come to grips with the problem.

``Why individual programmers, even companies and executives admit they have been trying to `customise' our software by seeking to dilute the freedom that comes with it. Now, I would say they are making a mockery of our effort,'' Mr Stallman said.

Being a no-profit, charity organisation, mounting an ad campaign for selling our product is a tall order. ``But, we run into many people who are interested in our work and write about it. We believe that's an intelligent way of reaching out to new customers,'' Mr Stallman said.