The Free Software Song     

Welcome to "week" five of 52tochangetheworld! This week's song was originally written by free software activist Richard Stallman. There's links to information about the original in the Diigo list The song is itself derived from a folk melody "Sadie Moma". Here is a bulgarian style version more akin to the tune the song was based on. It's in OGG format (think WMA but open source) so windows media player users may struggle... No video this week. I'm rubbish at them, have a rubbish camera and am better off spending the time doing a proper recording (for now:-). Meanwhile here is a video about my studio for the more technically minded among you.

As you may know I'm a die hard linux user. I'll spend weeks fiddling with something complicated to avoid using a windows machine. Basically windows machines are no fun. Everything works... ...or doesn't... and it's totally out of your control. All you can do is phone up the company who provided the software/hardware and get put on hold listening to Carpenters songs in lo-fi GSM... I could go on all day about how different things are with linux but for me (with software and music too) licensing comes down to a philosophical question: Are you just trying to make vast amounts of money for yourself or are you trying to build something amazing for all of us (and of course make lots of money and have lots of fun along the way:-). I think you can guess which camp I'm in.

If there is a founding father of the free software movement it's Richard Stallman. So using Ardour and Ecasound on Gentoo Linux to record a cover based on a folk song felt like something of a homage. From a musical point of view it was a joy to dust off the trumpet and the bongos:-). Pitch bend wheels rock!

Big thankyou to Tom Fotherby for the idea to cover this:-).

Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
x2

Hoarders may get piles of money,
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.

When we have enough free software
At our call, hackers, at our call,
We'll throw out those dirty licenses
Ever more, hackers, ever more.

You'll be free hackers, you'll be free.