Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
A Free Digital Society
The talk was at the Leslie Social Sciences building at University of Cape Town, but as we arrived Richard realised he had left behind a Gnu fluffy toy he wanted to auction, so I had to dash back to Muizenberg to pick it up.
Gnu Public Licence
The other organisers delayed the start of the talk by ten minutes so I could do the introductions, thank you. He talked for about two hours on a range of topics, dwelling on the GNU Public Licence, his 30 year old prescription for how developers should set about writing code that will become a living part of a commonly-owned set of tools and procedures that other people can build upon and improve.
Tracking
He outlined his suspicions regarding the trackability of cellphones, and the vast amounts of information that is stored by cellphone companies - mostly metadata (number called, duration, cellphone location) and the implications for privacy. He does not own one.
Education
He touched on software used in schools, exhorting educators to think about the larger consequences of software usage, and putting students on the right track - to empower them to realise they are in control of the software, and not just treat it as a purchased item that remains the property of the software company.
Voting Software
He highlighted the many dangers and pitfalls of computerising the counting of votes, from the closed nature of the software, the possibility of bugs or deliberate malware in the code, the difficulty of knowing if the software that was verified is indeed the software that is running on the machine for the duration of the vote, and the difficulty of a recount, or even what that means.
E-Tolling
Bringing a South African flavour to his talk, he discussed eTolling - which he objected to because of the potential for abuse for surveillance purposes. He also pointed out that if proper attention was paid to anonymising the data, he would no longer object.
Farewell
He let me keep a South African music CD in his collection, which was very nice of him, and I like it very much. In short, we had a capacity audience from diverse backgrounds, no glitches, and he very much enjoyed his trip, saying he would look forward to coming again. We are certainly blessed to live in such a beautiful part of the world, that people like Richard want to visit.