The newly formed Manchester Free software Group hosted Richard Stallman in Manchester or the first of May.
Talking on the subject of Free Software in ethics and practice", RMS drew a crowd of more than 300 people to the event, run in association with the BCS and IET.

Yesterday I attended an inspirational talk from Richard Stallman that contained many familiar bits, a healthy dose of humour and an interesting questions session, which touched on the AGPL, GPLv3 and other currently-debated topics that are more about the present than about the past.

The visit of the Free Software Foundation leader Richard Stallman to Russia in March 2008 could be canceled because of the problems with too-late visa application. A part of the trouble appeared to be Stallman's rejection to get help from Victor Alksnis, the State Duma member and the only Russian politician who helps Free Software and Open Source movements in Russia.

Many of us know that governments can threaten the human rights of software users through censorship and surveillance of the Internet. Many do not realize that the software they run on their home or work computers can be an even worse threat. Thinking of software as "just a tool", they suppose that it obeys them, when in fact it often obeys others instead.

Before he could even take the stage, Mr. Stallman's way was blocked by a squad of ninjas (Picture 1, Picture 2) reenacting an XKCD webcomic.

Since I wasn't yet as clear as I'd like to be on what can we consider to be free (as in freedom) among works which are not software and not functional and wasn't yet sure what exactly was Richard Stallman's view on this issue I decided to ask him directly. Here is the resulting email conversation.

"Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community," explains GPLv3 co-author Richard M. Stallman.