Steve Ballmer went on stage, took out a laptop and began with his usual enthusiastic tone: "Today I will introduce you to our wonderful product - Skype, we bought it recently." He is not the first time, he has once again represents another product with burning eyes and waving his arms. “Let's start with the name. Skype is a short, memorable word that means nothing, so it cannot be confused with anything else. Marketers spent a whole year to find the right combination of letters that would be most pleasant to the ear. And the designers diligently painted the logo, selecting the color of each pixel, so that it pleased the eye. But the most important thing is, of course, the program itself. It is beautiful and comfortable, it does everything in a couple of clicks. ”



With these words, Steve begins to install Skype. The usual installation process. What language? English. Do you agree with the license agreement? Yes. Do you agree that all information transmitted via Skype, including the voice, belongs to Microsoft and can be used for any purpose, including transferred to the special services? Of course yes. Steve is visibly nervous. It seems that someone from the audience managed to read this line in the agreement. Okay, go ahead. And where to put? In C:\Program files\Skype , of course.



“Look at this wonderful interface! Ergonomists picked up the correct location of the buttons so that your fingers would like to press them. ”

')





Speech over. Richard Stallman came out. “And I want to show you a free analogue of Skype called free-speech! This is our high priority project. I'll start with the name too. This is a play on words. Actually, I really like word games. For example, GNU = GNU's Not UNIX. But most of all I like Hurd = Hird of UNIX-Replacing Daemons, Hird = Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth. And do not care that it is difficult to remember and understand. Well this is our hacker humor. So, something I digress. Actually, I'm a big fan of talking. Especially when it comes to free software. ” Then Richard smiled and scratched his beard.



“Free software does not mean free. It’s free as free speech, not free beer. ” Then he smiled again, he loves such phrases. “So, that's why our program is called free-speech, that is, freedom of speech. The name consists of small letters and contains a dash instead of a space, because it is so convenient when working from the command line. And don't care what marketers think about this. ” Then he glanced nervously at Balmer, who was sitting in the hall and listened aloofly.



“Free-speech has no logo. And why is it needed? This is also a fiction marketers. How do we show the logo in our program if it has a text interface? You can, of course, decorate the site of the program with the logo, but what if the user watches it through lynx? ”



“So, our program has a text interface. Why do we need this buggy, slowed down GUI? Text interface is flexible, you can even put our program on a toaster. Console programs are easier to develop. The console is a universal interface. Do you know why Windows is buggy and slow? ”Then Stallman looked at Steve again. "Because the GUI has penetrated too deeply into Windows, even into its core."



"Well, let's look at free-speech." He took out his Lemote Yeelong laptop with a 9 '' screen. His favorite gNewSense appeared on the screen. X's not there. Immediately after launch, Emacs was launched. In fact, Emacs was the main operating system on his computer, and gNewSense functioned as a kernel. Stallman scored (right in Emacs):

 free-spech 

Then Stallman took out another similar laptop and typed:

 free-spech 192.168.0.2 

"Check, one, two, three." His voice echoed from both laptops. Stallman nailed both programs using Ctrl-C. "See, it works!"



“Let's take a look at the source code now. In general, this is a free program, it has 4 freedoms: 0. Use, 1. Study and change, 2. Copy, 3. Copy modified versions. He smiled again. “Well, for this you need to see the source code. In general, the ability to see the source code ensures that the program does not have any backdoors, that no one stores your confidential information without asking. ” Then again he looked very closely at Ballmer. “Proprietary programs are absolute evil! They can do whatever they want with your data! They can transfer them to the special services! ”Then he could not stand it, sat down and began to eat some garbage from his feet, as if protesting against the dominance of proprietary programs. Everything is in shock, and in the meantime Stallman told further, at the same time continuing his strange meal: “So, we look at the code”.

 #!/bin/sh set -e if nc -h 2>&1 | grep -q OpenBSD; then OPTS="-l" # netcat-openbsd else OPTS="-l -p" # netcat-traditional fi if [ $# = 0 ]; then while :; do arecord | nc $OPTS 5555 | aplay || : done else arecord | nc "$1" 5555 | aplay fi 

“Look, what a wonderful code! Well this is just a gem of programming! And all thanks to the text-based interface and the powerful features of the command interpreter. Notice how compressed it was to write the code: only 17 lines! And what about Skype? Yes, it's a huge program! With thousands of lines, if not millions. This nobody needs a graphical interface, with buttons, whistles and perdelkami. "



Then Stallman finally finished eating something from his feet and left the stage.

Afterword

I did not set out to offend anyone. Just wrote a funny fairy tale, making fun of different views. And in general, even though I have scoffed at Stallman in full for most of the tale, I am very good at it.



Now a few facts touched upon in the text:



1. Balmer's speech is a reference to his advertisements of various Windows, for example, Windows 1.0 or Windows XP

2. Yes, Microsoft did buy Skype recently.

3. Skype name means “Sky Peer-to-Peer”. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype

4. The Skype license agreement says that they can send messages in the chat (it doesn’t say about calls) to special services: www.skype.com/intl/ru/legal/privacy/general

5. GNU Hurd is the kernel of the GNU operating system.

6. Stallman does use Lemote Yeelong, gNewSense and Emacs and usually uses a text interface. But, of course, Emacs is not an operating system. And X. Stallman has. Source: Stallman interview richard.stallman.usesthis.com

7. Stallman has nothing against the graphical interface. Those places where he compares the graphic and text interface are probably the weakest in my fairy tale, since they have nothing to do with Stallman. This is a generic image of a GNU / Linux fanatic.

8. “I sat down and started eating some rubbish from my feet” - a reference to this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ (1:50)

9. Writing a replacement for Skype is indeed a high priority project of FSF. And this project is called Free Call o_O (more precisely, as I understood it, it is called Telephony, and the software for building a decentralized network within the framework of this project is Free Call)



Well, now the most interesting thing: what code is given in a fairy tale? Well, there is no program called free-speech (although it is not enough, there may be a program with the same name somewhere and lies on the Internet among thousands of small free projects). This code was written by me, it really works, it is extremely simple and demonstrates the full power of the shell, although it is completely inconvenient to use and non-functional.