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Williams, Sam

"Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software"

Whether you agree with him or not, you really
have to respect that."
A Brief Journey Through Hacker Hell
Richard Stallman stares, unblinking, through the
windshield of a rental car, waiting for the light to
change as we make our way through downtown Kihei.
The two of us are headed to the nearby town of Pa'ia,
where we are scheduled to meet up with some software
programmers and their wives for dinner in about an hour
or so.
It's about two hours after Stallman's speech at the
Maui High Performance Center, and Kihei, a town that
seemed so inviting before the speech, now seems
profoundly uncooperative. Like most beach cities, Kihei
is a one-dimensional exercise in suburban sprawl.
Driving down its main drag, with its endless succession
of burger stands, realty agencies, and bikini shops,
it's hard not to feel like a steel-coated morsel
passing through the alimentary canal of a giant
commercial tapeworm. The feeling is exacerbated by the
lack of side roads. With nowhere to go but forward,
traffic moves in spring-like lurches.


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