RT (Russia Today) yesterday conducted an interview with Richard M Stallman, the founder of Free Software Foundation and the writer of the world's most advance license GNU GPL. RT asked readers to ask questions and then they would pick questions for RMS.

http://www.muktware.com/news/3056

We asked two questions on RT's Facebook page and both those questions were presented to RMS.

Muktware: Do you think USA is becoming hostile to innovation and competition as the companies like Apple and Microsoft are gaming the system? RMS: I have to point out that innovation is not my highest value. Human rights are my highest values. So I don't to get into the dialogue that treats innovation as a primary goal.

With software patents the US has become a dangerous place for software development, including innovative software development, because when a program is innovative, that means it has some new ideas in it. But it also has lots of well-known ideas in it. A large program combines thousands of ideas. So if you have some new ideas and you want to use them, in order to use them you have to combine them with a lot of other ideas that are well-known. And if you are not allowed to do that because those other ideas are patented, you can't use your new idea.

Muktware: How much control should the USA have over the Internet? RMS: No more than anyone else. I don't think it will be safe to have any global control over the internet. because we could predict that that global control will work for the empire of the mega corporations and would attack human rights.

Read more here: http://www.muktware.com/news/3056