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Todays fun-friday will be about my most super favourite geek song of all time. It’s basically just a part from Richard Stallman‘s speech from NY from 2001 with neat music added to it. I really like this speech as it is both powerful and easy to understand for licensing newbies. That said, here is the ogg file and some of the lyrics. Why ogg? Because it’s an free (as in Freedom) alternative to MP3s, and sometimes ofers even better quality than mp3s. :-)

Void Main feat. Richard Stallman – Follow the GNU .ogg

Now, some of you may not ever write computer programs, but perhaps you
cook. And if you cook, unless you’re really great, you probably use
recipes. And, if you use recipes, you’ve probably had the experience of
getting a copy of a recipe from a friend who’s sharing it. And you’ve
probably also had the experience — unless you’re a total neophyte — of
changing a recipe. You know, it says certain things, but you don’t have
to do exactly that. You can leave out some ingredients. Add some
mushrooms, ’cause you like mushrooms. Put in less salt because your
doctor said you should cut down on salt — whatever. You can even make
bigger changes according to your skill. And if you’ve made changes in a
recipe, and you cook it for your friends, and they like it, one of your
friends might say, “Hey, could I have the recipe?” And then, what do you
do? You could write down your modified version of the recipe and make a
copy for your friend. These are the natural things to do with
functionally useful recipes of any kind.

Now a recipe is a lot like a computer program. A computer program’s a lot
like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result
that you want. So it’s just as natural to do those same things with
computer programs — hand a copy to your friend. Make changes in it
because the job it was written to do isn’t exactly what you want. It did
a great job for somebody else, but your job is a different job. And
after you’ve changed it, that’s likely to be useful for other people.
Maybe they have a job to do that’s like the job you do. So they ask, “Hey,
can I have a copy?” Of course, if you’re a nice person, you’re going to
give a copy. That’s the way to be a decent person.

So imagine what it would be like if recipes were packaged inside black
boxes. You couldn’t see what ingredients they’re using, let alone change
them, and imagine if you made a copy for a friend, they would call you
a pirate and try to put you in prison for years. That world would create
tremendous outrage from all the people who are used to sharing recipes.
But that is exactly what the world of proprietary software is like. A
world in which common decency towards other people is prohibited or
prevented.

The above text was taken from: http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt Feel free to spread the love of free software + music… and of course, follow the GNU! :-)

If you got interested in Stallman’s views, and would like to know a little more about his view on the music industry etc, feel free to take a look at this video that I have recorded on 2009′s IT Giants at Cracow AGH University: