handyfloss

GNU/Linux command-line users, programmers and hackers worldwide have probably come to know and love the wonderful tail shell command, together with cat, head, grep, awk and sed, easily one of the single most usefull commands.

A killer feature of tail is the -f (--follow) argument, which outputs the last lines of a file and then keeps waiting for new lines that might keep appearing in the file, and show them on the screen when they do. This is invaluable to keep track of, e.g., logfiles where new entries are being added all the time, and one does not want to be doing a tail by hand.

Since I am a great fan of Perl, and use its scripts for anything short of cooking dinner (but wait…), I have found myself in situations where I had to tail the last lines of a file. This can be done in several ways:

system "tail $file";

or

my $str = `tail $file`;
print $str;

or with a open() statement, then reading the whole file (or a part), and printing it. The first example with system is the most “direct” one, but reading the file (or a part) into a variable is very handy for doing with it all the nifty things Perl does so well to text strings (substituting, deleting, including, reordering, comparing…).

However, when tail -f was needed (i.e., keep on tracking the file and operate on the output as it appears), I kept using system calls, and all the formatting had to be done in the shell spawned by the system call, not by Perl. This was sad.

So, I was so happy when I discovered a simple trick to make open() read dynamically. There are better ways of doing it, more efficiently and correctly, but this one works, and is quite simple. If efficience is vital for you, this is not probably the place to learn about it. Actually, if you look for efficiency, you shouldn’t be using Perl at all :^)

Example of Perl code that reads dynamically a file “$in“:

open(INFILE,"tail -0f $in |") || die "Failed!\n";
while(my $line = <INFILE>)
{ 
  do whatever to $line;
};
close(INFILE)

Update: Explanation to the code above:

The open() call pipes the output of the tail command (notice the -f flag. Do a man tail to know more) to the file tag “INFILE”. The “||” sign is an [[logical disjunction|OR]], and means “do the thing on my right side if the thing on my left didn’t end successfully (but ONLY in that case!)”.

Next, we perform a while loop over the lines in the pipe. The “<INLINE>” construct extracts elements in INLINE, treating it as an array. As you can see, these elements are assigned to a new variable $line, and the loop continues while $line has some non-false value, i.e. while there are lines in INFILE.

The paragraph inside the curled keys is [[pseudocode]], obviously; you put there your code. And, for tidiness, once we exit the loop, and INFILE is exhausted of lines, we close it.

Probably just a reminder to myself (things to test that a DE or WM I consider using has).

In no particular order:

Panel

I want the posibility to have a panel that looks like Engage, or the modubar desklet of adesklets.

All of them are, yes, clons of the Mac “Dock”.

Volume control

Yes sounds stupid, but I want something like the convenient applet in the Xfce panel, which turns volume up and down when scrolling the mouse wheel over it.

There are workarounds, like having a mixer (e.g. kmix) icon in the system tray, which fulfill the same task (you can hover and scroll), or configuring a keybinding for it.

Maybe both, specially the latter, are even better than what I originally wanted, so… nevermind.

Alt+Tab cycling for ALL windows

I have tried Enlightenment DR16, and the default is to cycle only raised windows (that is, the minimized ones don’t appear in the cycle). How stupid is that? And I am sad to say that I haven’t been able to change this default behavior. I have given Enlightenment DR17 a try, and it does cycle through all windows…

Iconbox with all windows

I absolutely love the Xfce iconbox, which is a replacement for a “normal” taskbar, i.e., a place where iconified windows “go”. The only thing I think is less than perfect is its looks. The Enlightenment iconbox looks better, specially since you can make it 100% invisible, so that only the icons are visible.

Problem with Enlightenment iconbox: only minimized windows appear there. Again (second time with a window issue in E.), how silly is that? In Xfce you can configure the iconbox to show all windows, or just minimized ones. Having all windows appear in the iconbox is very handy. When you minimize a window, it goes to the iconbox. You can then maximize it clicking in its iconbox icon. Now, without moving the mouse, you can change your mind and minimize it back, clicking the icon again. But in E. you can’t, because the icon is no more there!

Themeability

I like some Enlightenment themes but I prefer the Xfce way of having a theme for the window manager, and another one for the “general look and feel”. The latter includes font types and sizes, scrollbar styles, button styles and so on. In E., it’s all-in-one, so one theme might have a very nice window decoration, but awful scrollbar or button style…

Easy and powerful keybindings

Most WMs have customizable keyboard shortcuts. The ones of Xfce are not espectacular, but can be accepted.

Shading with mouse

This is a very small detail, but very usefull. 99% of WMs shade the window (“roll it up”, showing only the topbar) when scrolling up with the mouse over its topbar. No need to say, scrolling down unshades the window back. In some WMs (e.g., KDE), you can even configure what you want to have done when scrolling with the mouse over the topbar of a window.

Well, there are WMs where you can not do that trick! Sad.

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Zorionak, NUN, eta animo!

Albumaren portada

Este post está disponible en castellano aquí

Yeah, right, the president and founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, gave a speech at the Koldo Mitxelena culture center in Donostia, last monday 19th.

Stallman, introduced by Iratxe Esnaola

My friend Julen and I (Txema didn’t come along), therefore, went to the Koldo Mitxelena to attend his talk. I must admit we liked what we heard.

The first thing one notices hearing Stallman talk is that he’s a showman. The guy whas seated at a table, but stood up to give the talk, adducing that he was a little sleepy, and so standing up would help him not fall asleep. Subsequently, and owing to the fact that the microphone was a tabletop one, he proceeded to disassemble it and use it as hand microphone, dismissing the inalambric microphone he was promptly offered. Mind you, he did catch our attention.

Stallman, with the tabletop mic

The second thing one can realize is that he has a very clear vision of stuff, and that it is catchy, because he speaks in such a reasonable and gentle way. I should mention that he gave the whole talk in Spanish, and quite fluently, albeit with a heavy American accent.

He commenced his speech enumerating the four basic liberties the FSF proposes for a software piece to be free:

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

He then explained why these freedoms are vital, and I will next repeat some of his arguments.

Moral dilemma

He said, for example, that Freedom 2 is necessary to avoid some kind of dilemmas towards which software with non-free licenses lead us. Let’s assume we have a legal copy of a certain program, and therefore, he have accepted its license. Let’s also assume that a friend asks us for a copy of it. In these circumstances we face a dilemma, because we have to chose the lesser bad from two bads. If we decide to give a copy to our friend, we’ll be breaching our license, and it is never good to break an agreement we previously accepted. On the other hand, if we don’t give her a copy, we will be depriving a friend of us of a potential benefit, which is not good, either.

Someone told me, after commenting her this issue, that there is not such a dilemma, because: “What if your friend asks you for 1000 euros?”. OK, I would probably consider it negatively, sure. But refusing to lend 1000 euros or our car to a friend is not like doing so with a piece of software. With the former, we lose a material good to share it, but with the latter we lose nothing. The software is like knowledge in general: if we share it it doesn’t get divided, but multiplied. We negate our friend a copy of the software piece just because an abusive license forces us to do so. We do not get any benefit from it.

According to Stallman, the lesser bat is to share with our friend, because we just break an abusive license. Anyway, breaking an agreement, however abusive, is not good. The correct thing is not to sign the agreement in first place. Then only way to avoid the dilemma, he said, would be either not having friends, or not aqquiring proprietary software. He supported the latter.

Problems of the Proprietary Software

He continued the talk speaking about some problems that the proprietary software has, and how the aforementioned freedoms can help alleviate them.

Bad functionalities

The programmers may have implemented into the program some functions that the user doesn’t want, namely:

1) A proprietary program may have occult functions, that the user doesn’t know of, let alone control.

An example of this are the spyware, which, without her knowing, send the user’s personal data to its manufacturer. Such programs include Windows XP, Windows Media Player and TiVo systems. The latter sends the manufacturing company information fo what TV shows the user records, and when she watches them. In the same manner, Windows Media Player sends Microsoft info about what the user plays in it.

2) A program may, directly, not work under some circunstances. Such a functionality the user won’t desire, for sure, but in many cases, this functionality is not only present, but publicly declared. This is the clase of the DRM systems, or “Digital Restriction Management”, as Stallman calls it. Basically, a DRM-ed media (say, a DVD or a CD) tells its owner when and how access its content, and some OSs, like Windows and Mac OS, have the technicall characteristic that they do abide by this DRM rules. The iPod, for example, is “equiped” with the abusive DRM FairPlay. You can read further opinions on DRM by Stallman here. You can also read about a Sony DRM called XCP in my blog.

3) A proprietary program may have a backdoor, introduced by the programer to, potentially, gain access to any machine in which her program is installed. There’s people saying that, for example, the recent WMF vulnerability in Windows is actually a backdoor, intentionally put by Microsoft. I have also found news like this one (2002), speaking about backdoors installed in Windows for allowing NSA control.

It is apparent that governments all around the world (China being the most prominent case) are increasingly having second thoughts on Windows use in their computers, the reason being the danger of it having backdoors to give Microsoft or the government of the USA access to them. As long back as in 2000, the CNN published some reasons why China was changing its mind over proprietary OSs:

Those concerns have risen up recently in the form of stated policies favoring the use of the Linux operating system in government agencies, as well as a recent flurry of government commentaries warning of a U.S. “back door” to Windows operating systems. Officials have said China must develop its own OS to prevent an electronic military attack.

Stallman cited a 2001 case in India. It looks like a couple of Al-Qaeda members infiltrated de Indian division of Microsoft, and tried to introduce a backdoor into de Windows code. I have found some info at noticias.com[es], merit.edu, or Security Awareness Incorporated.

It was originally NewsBytes who aired the news, but the original news is no more accessible, and its address redirects one to the home page of the online Washington Post. Some Microsoft-friendly media tried to understate the case, without many arguments. They didn’t deny these people worked for MS, only that “they didn’t find any backdoor trace”. With their stupidity record, it doesn’t look like much of a guaranty to me…

This foul attempt was (we believe) stopped, but… what if there have been another successful ones? The quid of the matter is that we can not know. Only MS programmers can verify the presence of backdoors introduced by rogue employees. Do you really trust them to do it? Hadn’t you better have right to verify it yourself, or any other user?

The tree harmful functionalities Stallman mentions are a direct consequence of the fact that proprietary software does not have any of the four aforementioned freedoms. Free software will never be subject to these “functionalities”.

Errors

Any software piece, free or not, can have bugs. The difference is that the free software, by means of the Freedom 1, permits the users fix the bugs they find, and, by means of Freedom 3, share with others their corrections. In fact, Freedom 1 is not enough to handle the programing errors. Not all the users are programmers, and even if they were, there are too many programs to keep track of. That’s why Freedom 3 is fundamental. With this liberty, even the users who can’t program benefit. The Freedoms 1 and 2 are aimed at the users, and the 1 and 3 at programmers, but in the end everyone gets the benefit.

Various subjects

Among other things, Stallman commented that the development of the free software is democratic, because it develops following the user criteria, even if anyone can pay someone to program what she needs (but no one develops, because it’s not popular). He compared this to the autocratic development of the proprietary software, where the user ends up accepting whatever the programmer wants, instead of the other way around.

He also wondered about the hability to choose and the liberty. He said that being able to choose between different proprietary softwares (e.g. Windows and Macintosh) equals being able to choose our master, because once the election is made, we will fall in a dependency routine. The actual freedom is not having any master. Being able to choose is not necessarily freedom.

He talked on about freedom, and said that we have to fight for freedom when it is possible to win (no one asks to fight if it is useless), not when it is sure that we’ll win. If we all wait until the victory is assured, no one will take the first step, until it’s too late. We have to fight, and we have to expect the fight to be hard, even facing the eventuality of losing.

Near the end of the talk, he made a summary of the history fo the GNU software, and free software.

He also spoke about Trusted Computing, a system backed by some lobbies to make sure the computer does what the maker, and not the user, wants. In short, what it makes is pass some of the power the user has over her computer into the hands of the maker, so that the computer obeys the latter, not the former. That’s why Stallman proposes the term Treacherous Computing, because it makes the computer betray its user. According to him, using the term “trusted” or “treacherous” is a matter of what side of the fence we are. Stallman said this is a “conspiracy against the users, but not even secret nor ilegal!”.

Free Software and Education

He ended the talk saying that public education should use free software exclusively, for 3 reasons:

1) Economic savings. This is the most frivolous reason, but no less valid. There are no license fees, so you save money. This would be most advantageous in a public resource (education) that is deficitary in most countries. However, this advantage can be eliminated by the proprietary software companies giving away the licenses to schools and universities. In fact, that they do.

This, obviously, is not done out of generosity. The companies that give away their licenses do it to lock-in future users. They take advantage of the education system to train kids in the use of their products, and do it for free. When the student leaves the academic resources, he will have no more free licenses, and the company she works for won’t, either. But she will do have the need to use that software, because it is what she knows how to use. I consider that public education should not fall for it, and play their game so sheepishly.

2) When a student is puzzled by something, she asks the teacher. If the teacher can not answer, the student can try to find the answer by herself. Both options are impossible with the proprietary software. If a student wants to know the innards of her Windows computer, not only the teacher will not be able to dispel her doubts, but she will be forced to tell her that it is forbidden to even look for the answers. This is not what an educative system should encourage.

3) Moral education. The school must give a moral education, making the students see what is right and what is wrong. Sharing with others is right.Producing something for the common good is right. Looking for errors in one’s and others’ work, and working to fix them is right. Asking and answering freely is right.

Final details

Being the showman he is, and after a round of questions, Stallman delighted us with his Saint IGNUtius impersonation, given that many say he’s a Saint, and he doesn’t want to negate it.

Stallman, preaching

However, he made it clear that in the free software religion there is no god nor master, that anyone can be a saint, and that priesthood doesn’t imply celibacy.

It must be said that the sanctity aura he displays is NOT an old hard disk. In the past, it might have been, yes, but it transformed into his aura, for a major good :^)

At the end of the talk he signed some autographs, and took some pictures with his fans. He also gave away pro-GNU stickers, and sold (yes, sold!) some GNU keychains and pins, to raise funds for the FSF.

Stallman, signing for me a GPLv2 preamble I took there

This post is available in English here.

Pues sí, el presidente y fundador de la Free Software Foundation (Fundación para el Software Libre), Richard Stallman dió una charla en la sala de actos del centro cultural Koldo Mitxelena, de Donostia, este lunes 19.

Stallman, presentado por Iratxe Esnaola

Mi amigo Julen y yo (nos falló Txema…) acudimos, por tanto, al Koldo Mitxelena a ver a tan insigne personaje. Vaya por delante que su charla no nos defraudó.

Lo primero de lo que uno se da cuenta en una charla de Stallman es que es un showman. El tío estaba sentado detrás de una mesa, pero se levantó para dar la charla, aduciendo que tenía algo de sueño, y que dar la charla de pié lo mantendría más despierto. Acto seguido, y dado que el micrófono que tenía era de sobremesa, procedió a extraerlo de su soporte y usarlo como micrófono de mano, excusando usar el inalámbrico que se apresuraron a traerle. Desde luego, empezó llamando la atención.

Stallman, con el micro de sobremesa

Lo segundo que uno ve es que tiene una visión muy clara de las cosas, y que es contagiosa, porque habla pausada y razonadamente. Cabe mencionar que el tío dió la charla en castellano, con un acento estadounidense brutal, pero muy correctamente.

Comenzó la charla enumerando las cuatro libertades que promulga la FSF para el software, a saber:

Libertad 0: La libertad de usar el programa, con cualquier propósito.

Libertad 1: La libertad de estudiar cómo funciona el programa, y adaptarlo a tus necesidades. El acceso al código fuente es una condición previa para esto.

Libertad 2: La libertad de distribuir copias, con lo que puedes ayudar a tu vecino.

Libertad 3: La libertad de mejorar el programa y hacer públicas las mejoras a los demás, de modo que toda la comunidad se beneficie. El acceso al código fuente es un requisito previo para esto.

Prosiguió explicando por qué son fundamentales estas libertades, y yo voy a intentar repetir aquí algunos de sus argumentos.

Dilema moral

Dijo, por ejemplo, que la Libertad 2 es necesaria para evitar ciertos dilemas a los que nos llevan licencias de software que no la incorporan. Supongamos que tenemos una copia legal de cierto programa, y que por tanto hemos aceptado su licencia. Supongamos ahora que un amigo nos pide una copia del mismo. En estas circunstancias tenemos un dilema, porque tenemos que elegir la menos mala entre dos opciones malas. Si decidimos proporcionar a nuestro amigo una copia, estaremos rompiendo la licencia, y nunca es bueno romper un acuerdo que uno ha suscrito previamente. Si, por el contrario, le negamos la copia, estaremos negando un presunto beneficio a nuestro amigo, lo cual no es tampoco bueno.

Alguien me ha dicho, al comentarle esto, que no es tal dilema, porque: “¿qué hacemos si un amigo nos pide mil euros?”. Yo al menos, probablemente no se los dejo, claro. Pero negarle a un amigo 1000 euros, o que use nuestro coche, no es lo mismo que negarle una copia de un programa. En el primer caso, perdemos un bien para compartirlo o dárselo, pero en el segundo no perdemos nada. El software es como el conocimiento en general: si lo compartes no se divide, se multiplica. Si negamos a un amigo una copia de una pieza de software, solo lo hacemos en base al cumplimiento de una licencia abusiva, nada más. Perjudicamos a nuestro amigo, pero no nos beneficiamos nosotros (como sí nos beneficiamos de no darle los 1000 euros).

Según Stallman el mal menor es compartir con el amigo, porque así solo rompemos una licencia, que era abusiva en primer lugar. De todos modos, decía que romper un acuerdo, por abusivo que sea, no es bueno. Lo correcto es no firmar ese acuerdo en primer lugar. La única manera de zafarse de ese dilema es, dijo, o bien no teniendo amigos, o bien negándonos a adquirir software con licencia. Él abogaba por lo segundo.

Problemas del Software Privativo

Siguió su charla hablando de problemas que tiene el software privativo, y cómo la aplicación de las libertades antemencionadas puede ayudar a paliarlos.

Funcionalidades malas

Las programadoras pueden haber implementado funciones en un programa que la usuaria no desea, a saber:

1) Un programa privativo puede tener funcionalidades ocultas, implementadas en él por la programadora, que la usuaria no tiene posibilidad de conocer, y mucho menos de controlar.

Un ejemplo de esto son los programas espía, que, sin saberlo ella, envían datos confidenciales de la usuaria. Estos programas incluyen Windows XP, Windows Media Player y TiVo. Este último envía la empresa fabricante información sobre qué programas de TV graba la usuaria, y cuándo los ve. Igualmente el Windows Media Player envía a Microsoft información sobre qué ve la usuaria.

2) Un programa puede, directamente, no funcionar bajo ciertas circunstancias. Esta funcionalidad seguro que la usuaria no la desea, pero en muchos casos está, no solo presente, sino públicamente declarada. Es el caso del DRM, o sistema de gestión de derechos digitales… que Stallman prefiere llamar gestión de restricciones digitales. Básicamente un medio con DRM (digamos, un DVD o un CD) le dice a la dueña cuándo y cómo puede acceder a su contenido, y sistemas operativos propietarios, como Windows y Mac, tienen como característica técnica el estar diseñados para plegarse a esas condiciones. El iPod, por ejemplo, está “equipado” con el sistema de DRM FairPlay. Puedes leer más sobre lo que piensa Stallman del DRM aquí. También puedes leer un artículo en este mismo blog, sobre un DRM de Sony llamado XCP.

3) Un programa privativo puede tener una puerta trasera, introducida por el programador para, potencialmente, ganar acceso a cualquier máquina en la que se instale ese programa. Hay gente que dice, por ejemplo, que la reciente vulnerabilidad de ficheros WMF de Windows es en realidad un caso de backdoor puesto intencionalmente por Microsoft. También he encontrado, navegando por internet, noticias como esta del 2002, hablando de puertas traseras instaladas en Windows para uso de la NSA estadounidense.

Es patente que gobiernos en todo el mundo, siendo China el caso más prominente, están replanteándose el uso de Windows, por “peligro de que contenga puertas traseras que den acceso a Microsoft o al gobierno estadounidense a sus ordenadores”. Tan atrás como el 2000, la CNN se hacía eco de por qué tiene China reservas respecto a sistemas operativos propietarios:

Those concerns have risen up recently in the form of stated policies favoring the use of the Linux operating system in government agencies, as well as a recent flurry of government commentaries warning of a U.S. “back door” to Windows operating systems. Officials have said China must develop its own OS to prevent an electronic military attack.

Stallman citó un caso ocurrido en el 2001 en la India. Parece ser que uno o varios miembros de Al-Qaeda se infiltraron en la división india de Microsoft, e intentaron introducir una puerta trasera en el código de Windows. He encontrado informació sobre el tema en noticias.com, merit.edu o Security Awareness Incorporated. Originalmente fue NewsBytes quien dió la noticia, aunque la noticia original ya no está disponible, y su dirección redirige a la visitante a la página inicial del Washington Post online. Algunos medios afines a Microsoft trataron de restarle importancia, sin muchos argumentos. No negaron que esas personas trabajaran para Microsoft, solo “que no encontraron indicios de backdoors”. Tampoco es que esto sea una gran garantía, con el historial de pifias de Microsoft.

Este intento malicioso fue, creemos, detenido, pero… ¿y si ha habido otros, que tuvieron éxito? El quid de la cuestión es que no podemos saberlo. Solo los programadores de Microsoft pueden verificar la existencia de puertas traseras introducidas por trabajadores maliciosos. ¿Realmente confías en ellos para que lo hagan? ¿No preferirías tener derecho a verificarlo tú, o cualquier otro usuario?

Las tres funcionalidades perjudiciales para el usuario que mencionó Stallman son consequencia directa de que el software privativo no goza de las cuatro libertades mencionadas al principio. El software libre nunca podrá verse afectado por esas “funcionalidades”.

Errores

Toda pieza de software, libre o no, puede contener errores. La diferencia es que el software libre, mediante la Libertad 1, permite a las usuarias corregir los errores que encuentren, y mediante la Libertad 3 permite compartir con otras nuestras correcciones. De hecho, la Libertad 1 no es suficiente para hacer frente a los errores de programación. No todas las usuarias son programadoras, y aunque lo fueran, hay demasiados programas como para hacerse cargo de ellos. Por eso la Libertad 3 es fundamental. Con esta libertad hasta las que no saben programar se benefician. Las Libertades 0 y 2 están dirigidas a todas las usuarias, y la 1 y 3 a las programadoras, pero en el fondo benefician a todas.

Varios temas

Entre otras cosas, Stallman comentó que el desarrollo de software libre es democrático, porque se desarrolla lo que la base de usuarias quiere, aunque quien quiera sigue pudiendo pagar a alguien para que le haga un programa que necesita, pero nadie desarrolla, porque no es popular. Contrapuso esto al desarrollo autocrático del software propietario, porque la usuaria acaba aceptando lo que la programadora desea, en vez de al revés.

También reflexionó sobre la posibilidad de elegir y la libertad. Dijo que elegir entre diferentes softwares propietarios (p.e. Windows y Macintosh), equivale a elegir a nuestra dueña, porque una vez hecha la elección caeremos a una rutina de dependencia. La verdadera libertad es no tener dueña, no poder elegirla. La posibilidad de elección no es sinónimo de libertad.

Siguió hablando de libertad, y dijo que hay que luchar por la libertad cuando sea posible ganar (nadie pide que se luche cuando sea imposible), no cuando sea seguro ganar. Si todas esperamos a que sea seguro ganar para subirnos al carro, nadie hará nada hasta que sea demasiado tarde. Por ello, es de esperar que la lucha por la libertad cueste esfuerzo, y que incluso podamos perder frente a los lobbies.

Hacia el final de la charla hizo un repaso a la historia de GNU y el software libre. Quien quiera informase, el link de la Wikipedia es un buen comienzo.

También habló sobre el Trusted Computing, un sistema impulsado por ciertos sectores para asegurar que el ordenador hace lo que la fabricante quiere, no lo que quiere la usuaria. Efectivamente lo que hace es ceder poder de la usuaria a la fabricante, para que el ordenador obedezca a esta, no a aquella. Por ello, Stallman aboga por llamarlo Treacherous Computing, o “computación traicionera”, porque hace que el ordenador traicione a su dueño. Según dijo, solo puede calificarlo de “confiable” la productora que lo impone a las usuarias, con lo cual el uso del calificativo “confiable” o “traicionera” define el bando en el que nos posicionamos. Stallman calificó esta iniciativa de “conspiración contra los usuarios, pero encima, ¡ni es secreta ni es ilegal!”

Software Libre y educación

Para finalizar la charla, comentó que en la educación pública debería hacerse uso exclusivo de software libre, y ello por 3 motivos:

1) Ahorro económico. Es la razón más frívola, pero no menos válida. No hay licencias que pagar, por lo tanto es más económico, algo importante en un sistema educativo que es deficitario en todos los paises. Esta ventaja la pueden eliminar las compañías de software privativo, regalando licencias a centros educativos. De hecho, lo hacen.

Esto, obviamente, no lo hacen por motivos altruistas. Las compañías que regalan licencias lo hacen para fidelizar futuros usuarios. Se aprovechan del sistema educativo para que entrene en el uso de sus productos a los futuros usuarios, y que lo haga gratis. Cuando ese alumno salga del instituto, ya no tendrá licencias gratuitas, ni las tendrá la empresa en la que trabaje. Pero lo que sí tendrá es la necesidad de usar ese software, porque es lo que sabe usar. Considero que la educación pública no puede seguirles el juego de manera tan ruín a las empresas de software privativo.

2) Cuando un alumno se intriga por algo, pregunta al profesor. Si el profesor no puede responder, el alumno puede intentar encontrar la respuesta por su cuenta. Ambas opciones son imposibles con el software privativo. Si un alumno quiere saber cómo funciona “por dentro” su ordenador Windows, no solo el profesor no puede disipar sus dudas, sino que se ve obligado a decirle que está prohibido incluso intentar descubrirlo. Esto no es lo que el sistema educativo debe potenciar.

3) Educación moral. La escuela debe dar una educación moral, haciendo ver a la alumna lo que está bien y lo que está mal. Compartir con los demás está bien. Producir algo para bien de todas las compañeras está bien. Buscar errores en el trabajo propio y el de otras, y trabajar para corregirlos está bien. Preguntar y responder con libertad está bien.

Detalles finales

Haciendo gala de su condición de showman, y después de una ronda de preguntas, Stallman nos deleitó con una personificación de San IGNUtius, dado que muchos dicen que es santo, y el no lo quiere desmentir.

Stallman, evangelizando

Pero también quiso puntualizar que en la religión del software libre no hay dioses ni amos, y que todos podemos ser santos, y que el sacerdocio en esa religión no implica celibato alguno, así que por ese lado es un chollo.

Vaya como aclaración que el aura de santidad que porta NO es un disco duro viejo. En el pasado fue un disco duro, cierto, pero se transmutó en su aureola, para un bien superior :^)

Al finalizar la charla se puso a firmar autógrafos y sacarse fotos con fans, además de repartir pegatinas pro-GNU, y vender (¡sí, vender!) llaveros y pins de GNU, para recoger fondos para la FSF.

Stallman, firmándome una copia del preámbulo de la GPLv2 que llevé para la ocasión

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