Larry Flynt(Hustler Founder) and Richard Stallman (GNU Founder)

By sinuxs *

What is the common trait of these two pioneers?

The former is the founder of Hustler magazines and the later the founder of free software ideology. The similarity lies in the word - FREEDOM. The former prophesizes the freedom of expression in terms of sex and nudity, while the other, the same freedom in terms of using software.

Larry Flynt is well depicted at the 1996 infamous movie," The People vs. Larry Flynt". In the movie there is a famous comparison - "which is more obscene - a naked lustrous women body and a WAR stricken ghastly bloody state?" This question is the foundation of his 'Hustler magazine' as depicted in the movie.

The movie depicts the conviction of Larry in different ways that we're living in a free society and everyone should have freedom of expression and that freedom should be properly exercised and it's the responsibility of the society to correctly inculcate the liability of that freedom.

Larry indirectly stated in the movie," If a teenager is caught drinking a beer, is it reasonable to ban all the vendors?" Let me put it different way - "If a teenager is caught using his father's cigarette, is it reasonable to ban the cigarette vendors?" I believe, it's the responsibility of the senior citizen to properly exercise the freedom of doing anything reasonable, be it the Hustler magazine (or Playboy) or the liberty to smoke.

Both have the same responsibility. Larry is not prophesying something which is bad for health or to the society. The ideology behind his magazine is the basic right and education for everyone. And it's up to the perspective of the individual to use it rightly or in abusive manner.

That decision should be left to the individual. This is the same thing as what Richard Stallman has prophesized. He has paved a way to use a stock of free software. But he never enforces anyone to use it. He left the decision to use it or try a commercial one.

Both have started a revolution and the world is changing since then. Whether these revolutions are good to mankind or not is left to one's way of perspective.

You cannot assume that everyone is equal and equivocal in respect of anything. Somebody might be crazy after hunting naked lustrous women body while other might be crankily enough over demolishing and annihilating thousands of souls through politics or religion or whatever you can say.

We always tend to feel that everyone is same as oneself and start anticipating gravely the same behavior and thinking from other. That, I believe, is the other definition of monopoly or Insanity - SAME BEHAVIOUR.

And the recurrence of doing again and again by expecting different result is the definition of INSANITY as propounded by Albert Einstein. Society and the world keep on changing. Changes imply more responsibilities. This will remain the same.

And I belief firmly that any changes can be taken responsibly and then only we will get the better society. And this is the best thing senior citizens of a society could ever perform. A parent is solely responsible for upbringing the behavior of children. A society or the environment is responsible for facilitating the civic sensibility.

And the nation is responsible for maintaining harmony among the states and to the world. And anything can be taken hazardous or obscene when any of them is not maintained. This is my perspective.

Coming to Richard Stallman, free software is the freedom to share any ideas openly without involving any kind of copyrighted ideology. A copyright implies the license to prevent anyone to copy the ideas of a creator.

Copyright applies on the expression of the idea - not the IDEA itself. I can copyright this article if I wish to. I'm expressing some idea. So I can copyright it. Anybody copying or make the derivative of this article would be liable against the copyright law. Patent is a very dangerous license - more dangerous than copyright law.

Patent can apply to the idea also. If you create an idea to write an efficient algorithm, anything that involves that idea partially or impartially is liable against the patent law.

In copyright, it's the expression of those algorithms that matters. Anybody can copyright it different way because one can expresses it on different way. In patent, it's the algorithm or anything involving it matters. Isn't this dangerous beast?

Richard Stallman uses the copyright law to do the opposite things - allows anyone to do anything which is otherwise never meant by the original copyright law. Copyright implies the exercise to protect one's creativity.

Richard exercises the law to extend the right to copy and distribute to anybody and most importantly the end user should have the same right so as the distributor have. He calls this modified copyright - copyLeft.

What did the copyright in terms of the commercial license implies? It says that -

• an individual has to installed the software only at his machine
• he should not distribute it to other machine
• he should not modify the software to get derivative

These are the definitions of commercial license software as protected by copyright law. Richard does the opposite. Copyleft says -

• you can copy and distribute as many as you want
• you can modify it
• But the modified or derivative should have the same aforementioned first and second rights.

This again is protected by copyright law.

History has proved again and again that Openness is the key to creativity and innovation. There's a famous Linus Torvalds Law - too many eyes shallow the bug. I heard from the grapevine that Microsoft has stated its gear towards open source technology.

Let me clear one thing here. I'm not evangelizing any kind of hypothesis to enforce anyone to propagate the open source or commercial ideology. I left this freedom to the individual.

This is the freedom which I want to convey in this article. The freedom to do anything sensible is our basic human right. And this freedom is the emanation of so many revolutions happening in this world. But one thing is clear - it's up to an individual to properly exercise this basic freedom.

Anything can go wrong if there's a chance to - the Murphy's Law. I believe in the open creativity of open source and free software world. Because they have proved again and again that sharing ideas is the key to innovation. And the idea should be dynamic in nature because everything changes in course of time.

We cannot stick our civilization to the then Byzantine era. We should let the changes happen. This is the law of physics. And changes could be in terms of anything. Open source and free software has been paving a way to sharing ideas for better creativeness and innovativeness.

I believe, we're lucky enough to be born in this era where we could experience the invisible transparency and openness of the free software and open source world where there're many more new innovations waiting to be born.

Website:
Richard Stallman - www.gnu.org
Larry Flynt - Find it yourself!

"Free software is like sex, which is better when it's FREE" - Linus Torvalds

---

* sinuxs ( a pseudonym) is a frequent contributor to e-pao.net. The writer can be contacted at sinuxs(at)yahoo(dot)com . This article was webcasted on March 25, 2008.

---