Free as in Freedom | Page 2

book for future readers, I welcome your
input. Starting in June, 2002, I will be publishing a bare bones HTML version of the book
on the web site, http://www.faifzilla.org. My aim is to update it regularly and expand the
Free as in Freedom story as events warrant. If you choose to take the latter course, please
review Appendix C of this book. It provides a copy of your rights under the GNU Free
Documentation License.
For those who just plan to sit back and read, online or elsewhere, I consider your

attention an equally valuable form of payment. Don't be surprised, though, if you, too,
find yourself looking for other ways to reward the good will that made this work possible.
One final note: this is a work of journalism, but it is also a work of technical
documentation. In the process of writing and editing this book, the editors and I have
weighed the comments and factual input of various participants in the story, including
Richard Stallman himself. We realize there are many technical details in this story that
may benefit from additional or refined information. As this book is released under the
GFDL, we are accepting patches just like we would with any free software program.
Accepted changes will be posted electronically and will eventually be incorporated into
future printed versions of this work. If you would like to contribute to the further
improvement of this book, you can reach me at [email protected]. Comments and
Questions Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher:
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, CA 95472
(800) 998-9938 (in the United States or Canada) (707) 829-0515 (international/local)
(707) 829-0104 (fax) There is a web page for this book, which lists errata, examples, or
any additional information. The site also includes a link to a forum where you can discuss
the book with the author and other readers. You can access this site at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/freedom/ To comment or ask technical questions about
this book, send email to: [email protected] For more information about books,
conferences, Resource Centers, and the O'Reilly Network, see the O'Reilly web site at:
http://www.oreilly.com Acknowledgments Special thanks to Henning Gutmann for
sticking by this book. Special thanks to Aaron Oas for suggesting the idea to Tracy in the
first place. Thanks to Laurie Petrycki, Jeffrey Holcomb, and all the others at O'Reilly &
Associates. Thanks to Tim O'Reilly for backing this book. Thanks to all the first-draft
reviewers: Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Eric Allman, Jon Orwant, Julie and Gerald Jay
Sussman, Hal Abelson, and Guy Steele. I hope you enjoy this typo-free version. Thanks
to Alice Lippman for the interviews, cookies, and photographs. Thanks to my family,
Steve, Jane, Tish, and Dave. And finally, last but not least: thanks to Richard Stallman for
having the guts and endurance to "show us the code."
Sam Williams
For Want of a Printer
I fear the Greeks. Even when they bring gifts. ---Virgil The Aeneid
The new printer was jammed, again.
Richard M. Stallman, a staff software programmer at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab), discovered the malfunction the
hard way. An hour after sending off a 50-page file to the office laser printer, Stallman, 27,
broke off a productive work session to retrieve his documents. Upon arrival, he found
only four pages in the printer's tray. To make matters even more frustrating, the four
pages belonged to another user, meaning that Stallman's print job and the unfinished
portion of somebody else's print job were still trapped somewhere within the electrical
plumbing of the lab's computer network.
Waiting for machines is an occupational hazard when you're a software programmer, so
Stallman took his frustration with a grain of salt. Still, the difference between waiting for
a machine and waiting on a machine is a sizable one. It wasn't the first time he'd been
forced to stand over the printer, watching pages print out one by one. As a person who
spent the bulk of his days and nights improving the efficiency of machines and the

software programs that controlled them, Stallman felt a natural urge to open up the
machine, look at the guts, and seek out the root of the problem.
Unfortunately, Stallman's skills as a computer programmer did not extend to the
mechanical-engineering realm. As freshly printed documents poured out of the machine,
Stallman had a chance to reflect on other ways to circumvent the printing jam problem.
How long ago had it been that the staff members at the AI Lab had welcomed the new
printer with open arms? Stallman wondered. The machine had been a donation from the
Xerox Corporation. A cutting edge prototype, it was a modified version of the popular
Xerox photocopier. Only instead of making copies, it relied