Audio and Video Recordings about our Philosophy

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Table of Contents

Top speeches
Other speeches

Guide to Formats

Audio Format
We distribute our audio files in Ogg Vorbis format. We avoid MP3, because it is impeded by software patents in some countries. The Ogg Vorbis format is technologically superior to MP3, and is not encumbered by patents. The sound quality of speech recordings on this page is not indicative of the quality you could expect from Ogg Vorbis when applied to HiFi audio. Please avoid transcoding HiFi audio from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis. By doing so, you will create Ogg Vorbis files of a lower sound quality than the original MP3. Instead, please encode to Ogg Vorbis directly from the uncompressed source.

Vorbis.com provides a list of audio software and hardware (such as portable players) which support the ogg vorbis format. The Ogg Vorbis project is part of the Xiph.org project, where you will find the project development page and source code..

The ogg vorbis files available here have been made using an encoder released in March 2001. This encoder probably provides inferior sound quality to the latest codec, but does provide compatability both with very old and new decoders. If you have any trouble playing an ogg file, please ensure your player/ plugin/ library is a release of April 2001 or later.

Video Format
We distribute our video files encoded with the Theora video codec, encapsulated in an ogg transport layer. Both our video and audio files therefore share the .ogg file extension.

The Theora video codec has been designed as a free video codec unencumbered by patent licensing restrictions. The technical brilliance and superb compression rates of the Theora codec should not be allowed to overshadow it's most important asset: It is free! Many recent GNU/Linux distributions already provide support for playing theora video. Visit Theora for more information or to download players and codecs

Streaming Audio and video

By streaming, you can enjoy a recording without first waiting for the file to download.

Most of the ogg files have been encoded in a stream of 20Kbit. Most Internet users, including those with older modems, should be able to listen to the files streaming from our server.

You can 'stream' by either (1) playing the file while it is downloading (recommended) or (2) putting the file URL directly into your media player.
for example:

(1)
wget -q http://audio-video.gnu.org/audio/file.ogg&
ogg123 file.ogg

(2)
ogg123 http://audio-video.gnu.org/audio/file.ogg

Request for Recordings

If you are planning to attend a GNU event, please make a recording. It is polite to ask permission from the event organiser. If you wish to make the recording publicly available in a digital format, please choose one which is accessible to free software. Theora or Vorbis are the best choice as using one of these will add support to Free, open, unencumbered formats. Please choose the license we use for the speech recordings and remember to embed the license into the digital file so that anyone else who receives a copy of the file are aware of their freedoms.

If you have a good recording from a GNU event, and you would like to share it with us, please send an email to <audio-recordings@gnu.org>. The best recordings will be added to this page. We are interested in both audio and video recordings. We can accept the source in a wide range of formats (eg those supported by ffmpeg). We will transcode to a standardised codec for the site, and optimise the encoder settings.

When submitting recordings, please provide the following information:

We prefer to receive speech recordings as a single file rather than split into sections, but if the original is in many parts, we can join it if required. If the original file for the recording is compressed with a lossy compression format such as mpeg, divx or a proprietary format, please don't transcode the speech recording before sending it to us. Given that we transcode any file we receive to different bit rates and frame sizes, and insert copying information, inserting yet another transcoding stage will simply degrade quality.

Audio formats
We prefer original recordings in the original recorded sample rate up to 44100Hz. Monophonic is generally adequate for speech recordings and saves a lot of space over stereo. We will accept the recording in the original file type. If the original file is large, you may wish to transcode to 64Kbps mono ogg vorbis.
Video formats
The same is true for video as for audio. Send the recording in the original frame size. If already compressed with a lossy codec, please send the original. If your original is uncompressed or has a very low compression/ large file size, please compress using theora with video quality set to 5 or more.
Transcriptions
If you have a transcription of a speech by a GNU speaker, or would like to make a transcription, please contact audio-recordings@gnu.org.

Resuming Downloads

Files on this page are served via http through the Apache web server. Apache supports the range header. Clients can therefore resume transfers by specifying where, in a stream, the download must resume.

wget with the -c switch will continue a transfer if a smaller file of the same name exists in the download location.
eg
wget -c http://audio-video.gnu.org/audio/<filename>

Peer-to-Peer access

Many of the speeches are available via peer-to-peer sharing services such as Gnutella. SHA1 hashes are available for all the current audio files, to assist finding them on P2P networks and verifying once downloaded.
http://audio-video.gnu.org/audio/sha1hash.txt

Command to create SHA1 hash using GNU privacy guard:
gpg --print-md sha1 some_file.ogg

Richard M. Stallman's speech, History of Free software and Software patents. Introduced in Catalan. Speech delivered in Castellano (Spanish). Given on 30th April 2004 at the University of Girona.

This speech is 2 hours, 32 minutes long and is available as Ogg Vorbis Audio (encoded with a recent codec) or in Theora Video.
Two frame sizes available.

Small File: [Download the audio recording, 19Mb]
Medium file: [Download the video recording. Frame size 272x176 103Mb]
Large File: [Download the video recording. Frame size 544x352 366Mb]
Copyright: University of Girona.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Peer-to-Peer access

Many of the speeches are available via peer-to-peer sharing services such as Gnutella. SHA1 hashes are available for all the current audio files, to assist finding them on P2P networks and verifying once downloaded.
http://audio-video.gnu.org/audio/sha1hash.txt

Command to create SHA1 hash using GNU privacy guard:
gpg --print-md sha1 some_file.ogg

Richard M Stallman- Patents- Barriers to development Theora Video and Vorbis Audio. Given on 18th May 2005 at the University of Calgary, Canada

This speech is 120 minutes long and is available as Ogg Vorbis Audio (encoded with a recent codec) or in Theora Video.
Ogg/Vorbis Audio: [79Mb]
Ogg/Theora video: [202Mb]
Copyright: University of Calgary UNIX Users' Group and Richard Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M Stallman- Free Software Freedoms- Given in Spanish. Theora Video and Vorbis Audio. Given on 23rd May 2005 recorded for Arcis at NCHC, Taiwan.

This speech is 74 minutes long and is available as Ogg Vorbis Audio (encoded with a recent codec) or in Theora Video as two files.
Ogg/Vorbis Audio: [Complete: 12Mb]
High compression (smaller) video files: [Part1: 25Mb] [Part2: 21Mb]
Low compression (Bigger) video files: [Part1: 108Mb] [Part2: 105Mb]
Copyright: Richard Stallman.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, What is Free Software? given at given at the National Center for High Performance Computing, Taiwan. 27th May 2005.

This speech is 2 hours, 12 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format.
[ Download the Ogg Vorbis audio recording of this speech (19Mb)via HTTP. ]
[ Download the Ogg Theora Video recording of this speech (133Mb)via HTTP. ]

Copyright: Richard Stallman.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, Free Software Freedom and Community, given at Edinburgh - United Kingdom

This interview was given in english.

This speech is 22 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (8 MB) via HTTP. ]

Copyright: UK Indymedia

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, Free Software Freedom and Community, given at ESSI, France, April 2004

The introduction to this speech is in French. The body of the speech is given in English.

This speech is 1 hour, 40 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (22.5 MB) via HTTP. ]

Copyright: Ecole Supérieure en Sciences Informatique

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Thanks to Regis Desneulin and Jerome Alet, from Faculty of Medicine of Nice, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis for making this recording.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, The dangers of software patents , given at University of South Wales, Australia.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled The Dangers of Software Patents given at University of New South Wales, Australia on 14th October 2004

This speech is 1 hour, 49 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (16 MB) via HTTP. ] or [ Higher quality/ bit rate Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (66 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to John Jacobs for making this recording.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Recording in Spanish- Richard M Stallman-GNU and Linux interview with Indymedia, Bogota, Columbia

Richard Stallman gave an interview to Indymedia on his visit to Columbia in November 2004. This recording is 20 minutes 38 seconds long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (3 MB) via HTTP. ]

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, The dangers of software patents , given at Westminster University, London, England.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled Software Patents - Dangers to development given at Westminster University on 26th October 2003

This speech is 1 hour, 22 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (11.8 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Nicholas R Hill for making this recording.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Bradley M. Kuhn's speech, Software Freedom and the GNU Generation, given at The Siebel Center for Computer Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign, USA on 2004-04-24.

This speech is 2 hour, 4 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (17.8 MB) via HTTP. ]

note: BMK's speech starts with a few seconds of background noise. (Possibly the projection screen motor)
In this speech, Brad Kuhn, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, talks about his beginnings in the free software movement and gives concrete examples from his experience as being a proprietary software developer as to why free software is a far better way to make and sell software. It should be considered a excellent introduction to Free Software. In the question and answer segment, Mr. Kuhn discusses with the audience far ranging topics that effect the future of the industry such as the SCO vs. IBM Lawsuit, File Formats, and the DMCA. This speech was presented by the Free Software Society, a student organization at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign dedicated to the promotion of Free Software

Copyright Free Software Society, Urbana, Champaign.
Verbatim copying, distribution and public performance of this entire speech recording is permitted in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, Software Patents- Dangers to Development , given at the London School of Economics, London, England.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled Software Patents - Dangers to development given at the London School of Economics on 3rd December 2002

This speech is 1 hour, 36 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (14.6 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Nicholas R Hill for making this recording.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, Software Patents - Obstacles to software development, given at Cambridge University, England.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled Software Patents - Obstacles to software development given at the Computer science lab, Cambridge University, England on 25th March 2002.

This speech is 1 hour, 30 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (12.5 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Nicholas R Hill for making this recording. Thanks to FIPR for organizing the event.

This speech is available as a hypertext transcript. Transcribed by Nicholas Hill and hyperlinked by Markus Kuhn.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2002 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, Copyright vs Community in the age of computer Networks , given at QMUL.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled Copyright vs Community in the age of computer Networks at the Queen Mary University, London. 12th February 2002

This speech is 2 hours, 4 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (14.9 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Nicholas R. Hill for making this recording.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2002 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, What Should it Mean to Promote Free Software?.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled What Should it Mean to Promote Free Software? at a special recording session for an event in Curitiba, Brazil.

Richard Stallman;
"This is a speech that I recorded so it could be played at a free software event in Curitiba, Brazil (the state of Parana), in November, 2003. A few points in the speech will not be clear without some background.

The event was actually a corporate trade show, but its title gave the impression of being more of an activist event. The organizers recruited a free software activist to run the speeches track, and he convinced me to attend. Between the title and the fact that my friend was the one asking me, and the fact that the state government of Parana was sponsoring the event, I assumed it was bona-fide free software activism. I agreed to go.

A scandal broke in Brazil when it became known that the event had accepted Microsoft as a major sponsor. My friend tried to defend this as "spending the enemy's money"; he didn't realize that Microsoft knows what it is doing when it buys its way into such events. Then he told me, "Besides, the other major sponsor was Oracle."

Most of our community is not sufficiently politically aware to recognize that Oracle's sponsorship ought to be just as scandalous as Microsoft's. Regardless of who the owner is, non-free software tramples your freedom.

I was not sure whether to attend the conference or boycott it. Ultimately I was unable to go to Brazil because of my broken arm. I decided that any harm my participation might do was already done through the use of my name, and that it was better for me to give a speech about what had gone wrong than not to do so.

In this speech, I sought to educate rather than attack the free software activists who participated in the event, as well as the state government of Parana, which I hope will continue promoting free software in the future, but next time will get better guidance in how to do so."

This speech is 32 minutes long

and is available in both audio and video formats.

[ Download the ogg Theora video of this speech (34 MB) via HTTP. ]

[ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (4.6 MB) via HTTP. ]

This speech was recorded by Richard Stallman

This speech is Copyright (C) 2003 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Interview with Richard Stallman about ethics and principles of free software, recorded at Edinburgh Informatics Colloquium

This interview is 22 minutes long and is available either as audio encoded in ogg vorbis format or available as a text transcript.

The audio version of this speech is encoded in Ogg Vorbis format.
[ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (3.1 MB) via HTTP. ]

This speech was recorded by ab for Indymedia Scotland

This speech is Copyright (C) 2004 AB, IMC Scotland.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Bradley M Kuhn's Speech, Software Freedom and the GNU Generation , given at Gnubies.

This speech is 2 hours, 10 minutes long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (18.5 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Andrew Schaaf for making this recording.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2002, Bradley M. Kuhn

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, Free Software: Freedom and Cooperation, given at New York University.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled Free Software: Freedom and Cooperation at New York University in New York, New York on 29 May 2001.

This speech is approximately 2 hours, 17 minutes long and is available for download via HTTP: rms-speech-nyu2001.ogg 18.7Mb

These files (encoded a bit differently) are also available at punkcast.com, as the files rms-nyu1.ogg (51 MB) and rms-nyu2.ogg (62 MB). Incidentally, some still images are also available there. Finally, a transcription of this speech is also available.

Thanks to Joly of punkcast.com for making this recording.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2001, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Networks, given at MIT.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 19 April 2001.

This speech is 1 hour, 50 minutes, 27 seconds long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (14.9 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Mark H. Weaver and the MIT Communications Forum for making this recording.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2001 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given at ArsDigita University.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System at ArsDigita University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 2 January 2001.

This speech is 2 hours, 39 minutes, 34 seconds long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. The speech is distributed in one Ogg Vorbis file. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (22 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Mark H. Weaver for making this recording.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2001 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given at Auditorium Smelt, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This speech is 2 hours, 22 minutes, long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. The speech is distributed in one Ogg Vorbis file. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (20.4 MB) via HTTP. ]

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2001 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given at LinuxTag 2000 [sic].

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System at LinuxTag [sic] 2000 in Stuttgart, Germany on 1 July 2000.

This speech is 2 hours, 13 minutes, 58 seconds long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (18.3 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to Fabian Wauthier for making this recording.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2000 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Richard M. Stallman's speech, The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System, given at the University of Cincinnati.

Richard M. Stallman gave this speech entitled The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA on 24 January 2000. RMS' visit to Cincinnati was co-sponsored by the University of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati GNU/Linux Users Group.

This speech is 2 hours, 33 minutes, and 23 seconds long and encoded in Ogg Vorbis format. The speech is distributed in one Ogg Vorbis file. [ Download the Ogg Vorbis file of this speech (21.1 MB) via HTTP. ]

Thanks to James Carter for making this recording.

This speech is:
Copyright (C) 2000 Richard M. Stallman

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

[ English ]

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Please send comments on this web page to webmasters@gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

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Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2006/03/27 16:31:37 $ $Author: nickhill $