Richard Stallman talks about the state of the free software movement and attacks Apple and Canonical

Some days ago Richard Stallman spoke about "the state of the free software movement" and in which he has not been kind to Apple and Canonical in these comments.

And it is that Richard Stallman mentions that Apple continues to turn Macs into a kind of "prison" by preventing users from doing whatever they want with their machines and installing their own programs or binaries obtained from other people, to which he "pointed out that this should be illegal", plus Stallman also discourages using Ubuntu, which he says which is not a free GNU/Linux distribution.

For those unfamiliar with Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS), you should know that he had a huge influence on the world of software (particularly free software), but is also known for his sometimes controversial comments and positions.

A fervent defender of free software, he does not miss the opportunity to criticize the companies at the origin of proprietary solutions and leads a special fight against Apple. RMS has repeatedly criticized the company and its co-founder Steve Jobs, accusing them of having created "a closed computing ecosystem in which users are imprisoned." For him, nobody has the right to prohibit people from doing what they want with the machines they have bought.

“Steve Jobs, the pioneer of genius prison computing designed to rob people of their freedom, is dead. I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone. Nobody deserves to die, not even Jobs, or Bill Gates, or even people guilty of greater misdeeds. But we all deserve an end to Jobs' malign influence on people's computing. People should stop praising Jobs for the elegant prison look he created with his signature. It's wrong to put users in jail,” the free software evangelist said shortly after the death of the late Steve Jobs.

in his presentation an hour and a half on "The State of the Free Software Movement" Stallman hasn't changed his rhetoric toward Apple. According to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), "Due to unforeseen technical difficulties, RMS made its presentation in the form of a podcast." The FSF has made the audio available for you to listen to, but in the meantime, here is the transcript of some excerpts from his speech.

RMS began by thanking everyone who contributed free software and encouraged those who want to help to visit the GNU Project website.

“The free software movement is universal and should not morally exclude anyone. Although there are crimes that should be punished, preventing someone from contributing to free software punishes the world. Not that person,” she said. Also pointed out some things that have improved in the free software movement, including big improvements to projects like GNU Emacs when viewing external packages.

RMS was particularly angry because "every tech company now wants to lock people up and subjugate them." According to him, "this diverts computing from its original purpose, which is to make life easier for people."

“Well, the free machines we have are getting old and in short supply. It's hard to find a way to support something new, because both Intel and AMD design their hardware to subjugate people. If they were fundamentally public critics, it would be difficult for them to do worse than they are doing,” he said.

Then he talked about Ubuntu, the distribution developed and marketed by Canonical:

“Ubuntu is, of course, a non-free distribution and I wouldn't recommend anyone to use it. Some important packages are now only distributed through their non-freedom-respecting package system, not as Debian packages. Therefore, it is even more difficult than before to get any freedom from an Ubuntu installation,” said RMS. 

After that, Stallman talked about material freedom and the Macintosh:

“The Macins are becoming prisons, like the iMonsters. It is getting more and more difficult for users to even install their own programs to make them work. And that, of course, should be illegal. It should be illegal to sell a computer that doesn't allow users to install their own software from source code. And your computer probably shouldn't be allowed to stop you from installing binaries you get from other people, although admittedly in such cases you do so at your own risk," RMS said.

RMS ended his presentation by announcing a new book you have written, a manual for the GNU C compiler.

Finally, If you are interested in knowing more about it, You can check the details in the podcast, which you can listen to from the following link.