[dundee] Stallman videos at Gran Canaria Desktop Summit 2009

[Iain Barnett]

2009/7/17 gordon dunlop <astrozubenel at googlemail.com>

> This is a video on RSM's views about DRM and patents from the combined
> KDE/Gnome Gran Canaria Desktop Summit 2009:
>
>
> http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Video-Stallman-on-DRM-Patents-and-C
>
> His controversial keynote speech from the same conference:
>
>
> http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Video-Keynote-Conference-at-the-Desktop-Summit
>
> Which prompted many arguments on blogs such as this one:
>
> http://mjg59.livejournal.com/113408.html
>
> Which was linked to a speech he previously made about the church of EMACS:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ejlP0uWeI
>
> Here are the video archives of the Linux magazine on some of the
> conferences it has covered:
>
> http://streaming.linux-magazin.de/en/
>
> Gordon


And an orator said, “Speak to us of Freedom.”

And he answered:

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and
worship your own freedom,

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he
slays them.

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen
the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire
of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of
freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your
nights without a want and a grief,

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them
naked and unbound.

And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the
chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your
noon hour?

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains,
though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.

And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may
become free?

If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own
hand upon your own forehead.

You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads
of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.

And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected
within you is destroyed.

For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their
own freedom and a shame in their won pride?

And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you
rather than imposed upon you.

And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart
and not in the hand of the feared.

Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the
desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and
that which you would escape.

These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.

And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a
shadow to another light.

And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of
a greater freedom.

from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

Iain
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