Free as in Freedom. Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software

Another element of the Stallman legacy not to be overlooked, Gilmore writes, is the collaborative software-development model pioneered by the GNU Project. Although flawed at times, the model has nevertheless evolved into a standard within the software-development industry. All told, Gilmore says, this collaborative software-development model may end up being even more influential than the GNU Project, the GPL License, or any particular software program developed by Stallman:

Before the Internet, it was quite hard to collaborate over distance on software, even among teams that know and trust each other. Richard pioneered collaborative development of software, particularly by disorganized volunteers who seldom meet each other. Richard didn’t build any of the basic tools for doing this (the TCP protocol, email lists, diff and patch, tar files, RCS or CVS or remote-CVS), but he used the ones that were available to form social groups of programmers who could effectively collaborate.

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and author of the 2001 book, The Future of Ideas, is similarly bullish. Like many legal scholars, Lessig sees the GPL as a major bulwark of the current so-called “digital commons”, the vast agglomeration of community-owned software programs, network and telecommunication standards that have triggered the Internet’s exponential growth over the last three decades. Rather than connect Stallman with other Internet pioneers, men such as Vannevar Bush, Vinton Cerf, and J. C. R. Licklider who convinced others to see computer technology on a wider scale, Lessig sees Stallman’s impact as more personal, introspective, and, ultimately, unique:

[Stallman] changed the debate from is to ought. He made people see how much was at stake, and he built a device to carry these ideals forward . . . That said, I don’t quite know how to place him in the context of Cerf or Licklider. The innovation is different. It is not just about a certain kind of code, or enabling the Internet. [It’s] much more about getting people to see the value in a certain kind of Internet. I don’t think there is anyone else in that class, before or after.

Not everybody sees the Stallman legacy as set in stone, of course. Eric Raymond, the open source proponent who feels that Stallman’s leadership role has diminished significantly since 1996, sees mixed signals when looking into the 2102 crystal ball:

I think Stallman’s artifacts (GPL, Emacs, GCC) will be seen as revolutionary works, as foundation-stones of the information world. I think history will be less kind to some of the theories from which RMS operated, and not kind at all to his personal tendency towards territorial, cult-leader behavior.

As for Stallman himself, he, too, sees mixed signals:

What history says about the GNU Project, twenty years from now, will depend on who wins the battle of freedom to use public knowledge. If we lose, we will be just a footnote. If we win, it is uncertain whether people will know the role of the GNU operating system-if they think the system is “Linux”, they will build a false picture of what happened and why.

But even if we win, what history people learn a hundred years from now is likely to depend on who dominates politically.