interview

Well, we didn't yet get to finalize our interview with Sun, but LinuxJournal.com has, and it's a very interesting and revealing read. Simon Phipps talks a bit about the history of Sun Microsystems and their way to where they are today, one of the friendliest companies to Free Software and one of the biggest contributors to it.

However, I've noticed some potentially dangerous vagueness in the way Simon described some of their past practices as "open source" when they really weren't that. Both Java and Solaris were before under licenses which were not accepted as neither "Open Source" nor "Free Software" so it doesn't seem fair to talk about these efforts as such. They may have been more open to collaboration than some others, but they weren't FOSS. They are FOSS today, but that's only since recently.

The OpenBSD founder talks, among other things, about firmware, binary blobs and non-disclosure agreements.

Here is the most recent audio interview with Richard Stallman. In it he introduces the basics of the Free Software philosophy, but in a further discussion also explains some other interesting things such as the fact that Free Software is actually more in accord with the free market capitalism than proprietary software, the reduction of freedom that is going on in the world (specifically mentioned US and UK) and also Stallmans motivations for advocating freedom.

It is an excellent easy to listen interview. Ogg is available here.