Ladies and gentlemen
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
We appreciate the presence of everyone at this event.
The cycle of conferences UFMG 90 - Contemporary Challenges
integrates the anniversary's special program of UFMG,
which celebrates its 90 years in 2017,
and features intellectuals, scientists,
and writers nationally and internationally renowned.
We invite to compose the honor table
the dean of Federal University of Minas Gerais
professor Jaime Arturo Ramírez.
With the word, the dean of the Federal University of Minas Gerais
professor Jaime Arturo Ramírez
for opening this solemnity.
Good afternoon to everyone...
Good afternoon, people. (Crowd) Good afternoon.
Much better, much better...
What a satisfaction
to start one more of the lectures that
integrates the cycle of conferences of UFMG 90 years
Contemporary Challenges
like the previous ones... in this afternoon
I compliment our faculty here present,
our technical administrative colleagues, our students,
and the people that visit us
- you're all welcome as well.
It is a big satisfaction to the university
celebrate 90 years...
These activities... They...
are scheduled throughout the year
of 2017,
and, just like
in the previous conferences,
The UFMG has had the care
of trying to cover the knowledge areas
always...
consulting our colleagues
that work on in particular areas
so it was built a program
that...
in a certain way represents some challenges
not only to our institution
as university, as undergruate/postgraduate educational institute
but, above all, to our society.
Therefore, I'd like to
initially
thank all the comission that is in charge of this program of the 90 years,
in the person of the professor Sandra, the vice dean, here present.
and also the colleagues of the Computer Science Department,
which provided the identification of
Richard Stallman who will
share with us a lecture in this afternoon
Without further delay
I once again thank everyone here
and before calling our speaker
I'd like to invite
the professor Loïc to do,
with me, the honors at the table;
he will do the technical presentation
of the professor Richard Stallman.
Professor Löic, please.
Good afternoon. (Crowd) Good afternoon.
So, everyone is excited to listen to Stallman, right?
(Person in crowd) woohoo!
So, I'll make a short introduction
Ladies and gentlemen, the father of the Free Software
Richard Stallman
Before we start,
as usual in here,
I will say a few words in English to our guest,
in respect of his spoken language
- It is a warm way to welcome our visitors -,
and then also thank him, in his own language,
in advance for accepting our invitation
to share with us his presence.
Professor Stallman
As I said before, it is a great privilege for us
to have you with us in this afternoon,
and we thank you, I thank you on behalf of our institution
for having accepted this invitation
to share your critical view
in this particular subject
I'm sure that we'll have a delighted afternoon
and will leave this conference
differently from we entered and we started this afternoon.
Thank you again. Please, now is with you.
So, I have some slides to show.
Are they visible?
Should we bring down the screen?
Meanwhile, I have some requests for you
First, a suggestion to the interpreter.
I tried to listen to the translation
of the president's words, but his voice
was louder than the interpreter's voice.
I think it's just the way the volume are set
but the result was I couldn't hear the interpreter.
Maybe the same thing is happening now,
but it could be fix.
Second, if you want to take photos of me
please do not put them in
Facebook or Instagram or Whatsapp.
Those are three tentacles of the same surveillance monster.
Facebook does not have users; it have used's.
It uses people to get their personal data
and to get other people's personal data.
It can recognize people in photos by their faces
or the back of their heads.
So if you put a photo in which a person appears
into Facebook, you're helping Facebook track that person.
Please don't do that to me.
And I hope you won't ever do that to your friends either.
In fact, the best is: don't be a "used" of Facebook
Second, if you want to
If want to take a photo with a photo device,
please make sure that the funcionality
of putting the geolocation into photos
is deactivated.
I'm told is not enough to turn off location
or going into airplane mode,
you have to go to the camera app
and look at its parameters
and turn off the param-- deactivate geolocation in photos.
Please do this before you
approach me to take a photograph.
I'm very busy. I'm very behind on my mail.
Please help me get my other work done too.
And thats-- the other request about photos
is you can take a photo with me
provided that you do not ask.
I can't afford to listen to you ask,
just do it.
And don't count, don't say
"Oh...1, 2, 3". No! Save my time!
Fast! Efficient!
And if there are many people, we'll have to do it by groups
so that doesn't take half an hour.
If you make a recording audio or video
and you want to distribute copies,
please distribute them only in the formats
that are favorable to free software.
Those are the OGG formats and the WEBM formats.
Please also make sure that down--
that the distribution web permits
downloading a copy without the users having to run
any nonfree software, and that includes
JavaScript software in the page itself.
For instance many, many videos sites
have JavaScript codes that are nonfree
in the pages, and if you turn that off
you can't access the recording.
So, make sure you pick a site that doesn't have that problem
And finally on the recording please
put the Creative Commons NoDerivatives License
because this is a presentation of my point of view.
So, this is a talk about
a free digital society.
There are many projects that aim for
"digital inclusion"
or "close the digital divide"
And what they assume is that participation
in a digital society is a good thing.
Well, not necessarily.
Being in a digital society can be good or bad
according to whether that digital society
is just or unjust.
For unjust digital society the proper gold
is digital extraction,
extracting us so that we don't have to be part of it anymore.
So what makes the society just or unjust?
Of course, all the usual issues of justice
apply to digital activities,
just as to all the rest of life,
but there are certain issues
that I'm going to talk about.
The root of most injustice
about digital systems
comes from software that
doesn't not respect the user's freedom.
In other words, it is not "software livre"
free software, or "software livre",
means software that respects user's freedom in community
Otherwise, it does wrong to the users.
but let me first ask:
what is a program, and what is a computer?
Well, a computer is a universal computing engine.
But it's really very simple.
Conceptually, it is very simple
because it only does one thing:
get the next instruction, and do what that says;
millions of time a second
It will get the next instruction, and do what that says;
The instructions come from a program
depending on what instructions the program has
they can make same computer do anything at all
Except for the impossible things,
some things no computer can do.
But within the things that are possible
dependening on the program, the same computer would do anything.
So the question is: who gives the instructions to your computer?
You might think it is you,
when really it's someone else.
You might think that your computer obeys you,
when really it obeys its real master.
And it does what you ask for if the real master gives permission.
The real master is always really in control
Within any program there are two possibilities:
either the users control the program
or the program controls the users.
It's always on or the other, because there is no other way it can be
When the users control the program, that's Free Software.
Freedom means to have control of your own life.
Control of activities you do in your life.
If you use a program to do the activity,
control of the activity requires that you have control of the program
that does the activity.
Thus, when the users control the program,
that program respects their freedom and their community
- I'll explain in a few minutes how community fits in -,
and so it's Free Software.
In concrete terms,
a program is free software,
and the users control the program,
when the program comes with the four essential freedoms.
Freedom 0 is to run the program
as you wish, for any purpose.
Freedom 1 is to study the program's source code,
and change it, so that it does your computing activity the way you wish.
Why is source code crucial?
On the left you will see source code.
It looks like a combination of English and Math.
If you've learned the programming language you can read that source code
and understand what the program does,
and then you can change it to do something else.
But in order to run it we convert it into executable code.
Hm.
So, to run it we have to convert it into executable code.
You can see it on the right: it's enigmatics 1's and 0's
For a short program like this, it's not a big job of a programmer
to figure out what those 1's and 0's mean.
But for a real program, that might be a hundred thousand
lines of source code.
You can imagine: that would be millions of 1's and 0's, and
to figure out what they do is an enormous job
that we only do as a last resort when we are desperate.
It's one for of reverse engineer.
So if you tell users "you are free to change these 1's and 0's,
if you can figure out what they mean".
That's not really freedom 1.
That's not really the freedom to change the program,
that's a mockery of the user.
So freedom 1 includes that the users have the source code,
and can study it and change the program in source code form,
and they can run the result.
These two freedoms together give us separate control over the program.
That means I'm free to change my copies,
and you're free to change your copies,
and you're free to change your copies.
Here we see separated controls.
At the bottom right that is one user
changing per copy of the program.
You will note that I used
the third person singular gender neutral pronoums "person", "per" and "pers".
They work like "she", "her" and "hers",
but they say nothing about the gender of person.
I absolutely reject the use of "they" in the singular,
It: a) does violence to the grammar of English,
and b) causes constant confusion.
You can't tell which party or parties a certain pronoun refers to,
because it's not limited at all.
So,
the user at bottom right is changing per copies,
and the other three users are using the program
the way they've got it without changing anything.
Well, separated control is absolutely essential
but it's not enough, because most users don't know how to program.
There's a lot of other interesting and important things to do in life.
But, even though they are not programmers,
they still deserve control over their computing.
How can they participate in control
over what this program does
if they don't know how to read and change source code.
They do it through collective control.
Collective control means that each user is free
to collaborate with other users
in deciding what changes to make
in their version of the program.
At the top we see a group three users
that are working together in this way.
Two of them, the ones on the right,
are directly touching the code.
They must be programmers.
The other one on the left is not touching the code.
Maybe that user doesn't know how to program
But that person does participate in the collective control
through the discussions that the three of them have
about what changes to make.
Those who collaborate are those who chooses to collaborate.
At the bottom there are two more users
who are not working in that group.
They are using the program separately,
they have their own versions, which maybe they changed or probably they don't.
Why aren't they working together? It could be any reason.
Maybe those two don't know about those three.
Or maybe they know about them, but they don't like them.