Essay Shop: Free Software, Free Society
This is the latest edition of Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman.
Free Software Foundation
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Copyright © 2002, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire book are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this book from the original English into another language provided the translation has been approved by the Free Software Foundation and the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
ISBN 978-0-9831592-0-9
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Chapters
The Problems with older versions of the Apple Public Source License (APSL)
The current version of the Apple Public Source License (APSL) does not have any of these problems. You can read our current position on the APSL elsewhere . This document is kept here for historical purposes only.
Pay to read more...Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It's a Seductive Mirage
It has become fashionable to toss copyright, patents, and trademarks—three separate and different entities involving three separate and different sets of laws—plus a dozen other laws into one pot and call it “intellectual property.” The distorting and confusing term did not become common by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it. The clearest way out of the confusion is to reject the term entirely.
Pay to read more...Freedom of Speech, Press, and Association on the Internet
The Free Software Foundation supports the freedoms of speech, press, and association on the Internet. Please check out:
Pay to read more...Should Rockets Have Only Free Software? Free Software and Appliances
Could there be a rocket that is totally free software? Should we demand that SpaceX liberate the software in its satellite launching rockets? I don't think the person who asked me this was serious, but answering that question may illuminate similar issues about the sorts of products people really buy today.
Pay to read more...Why We Must Fight UCITA
UCITA is a proposed law, designed by the proprietary software developers, who are now asking all 50 states of the US to adopt it. If UCITA is adopted, it will threaten the free software community (1) with disaster. To understand why, please read on.
Pay to read more...The advantages of free software
People outside the free software movement frequently ask about the practical advantages of free software. It is a curious question.
Pay to read more...Interview with Richard Stallman, KernelTrap.org, 2005
Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project in 1984, and the Free Software Foundation in 1985. He also originally authored a number of well known and highly used development tools, including the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB) and GNU Emacs.
Pay to read more...Introduction to Free Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman
Every generation has its philosopher—a writer or an artist who captures the imagination of a time. Sometimes these philosophers are recognized as such; often it takes generations before the connection is made real. But recognized or not, a time gets marked by the people who speak its ideals, whether in the whisper of a poem, or the blast of a political movement.
Pay to read more...Can You Trust Your Computer?
Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call “trusted computing,” large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. (Microsoft's version of this scheme is called Palladium.) Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.
Pay to read more...The Danger of E-Books
In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws, every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead.
Pay to read more...BYTE Interview with Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman discusses his public-domain Unix-compatible software system with BYTE editors (July 1986).
Pay to read more...Free World Notes
This page contains supplemental notes to the manifesto “ Only the Free World Can Stand Up to Microsoft .”
Pay to read more...Giving the Software Field Protection from Patents
Patents threaten every software developer, and the patent wars we have long feared have broken out. Software developers and software users—which, in our society, is most people—need software to be free of patents.
Pay to read more...Overview of the GNU System
The GNU operating system is a complete free software system, upward-compatible with Unix. GNU stands for “GNU's Not Unix.” It is pronounced as one syllable with a hard g . Richard Stallman made the Initial Announcement of the GNU Project in September 1983. A longer version called the GNU Manifesto was published in March 1985. It has been translated into several other languages .
Pay to read more...Opposing Digital Rights Mismanagement (Or Digital Restrictions Management, as we now call it)
In 1989, in a very different world, I wrote the first version of the GNU General Public License, a license that gives computer users freedom. The GNU GPL, of all the free software licenses, is the one that most fully embodies the values and aims of the free software movement, by ensuring the four fundamental freedoms for every user. These are freedoms to 0) run the program as you wish; 1) study the source code and change it to do what you wish; 2) make and distribute copies, when you wish; 3) and distribute modified versions, when you wish.
Pay to read more...Is It Ever a Good Thing to Use a Nonfree Program?
The question here is, is it ever a good thing to use a nonfree program? Our conclusion is that it is usually a bad thing, harmful to yourself and in some cases to others.
Pay to read more...Interview with Richard Stallman (2001)
Richard M. Stallman is the most forceful and famous practitioner/theorist of free software , a term he coined. “Free” here means free as in “free speech,” not free as in “free beer.” Stallman's most famous intervention in the “free software” movement has surely been the GNU General Public License ( GPL ), which Stallman created around 1985 as a general license that could be applied to any program. The license codifies the concept of “ copyleft ,” the “central idea” of which Stallman has described as giving “everyone permission to run the program, copy the program, modify the program, and distribute modified versions, but not permission to add restrictions of their own. Thus, the crucial freedoms that define ‘free software’ are guaranteed to everyone who has a copy; they become inalienable rights” (Stallman, “The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement,” in DiBona, Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution )
Pay to read more...Speech at WSIS, 16 July 2003
The benefit of computers is that it's easier to copy and manipulate information. Corporations are using two kinds of imposed monopolies to deny you this benefit.
Pay to read more...Why Copyleft?
When it comes to defending everyone's freedom, to lie down and do nothing is an act of weakness, not humility.
Pay to read more...Europe's “Unitary Patent” Could Mean Unlimited Software Patents
Just as the US software industry is experiencing the long anticipated all-out software patent wars that we have anticipated, the European Union has a plan to follow the same course. When the Hargreaves report urged the UK to avoid software patents, the UK had already approved plan that is likely to impose them on UK.
Pay to read more...People, Places, Things and Ideas
Software is ideas. Information. It's different from people, places, and things; it's infinitely reduplicable like fire, at almost no cost. This is a truism, even a cliche. But it seems that there are particular consequences that aren't well-explored.
Pay to read more...Applying the Free Software Criteria
The four essential freedoms provide the criteria for whether a particular piece of code is free/libre (i.e., respects its users' freedom). How should we apply them to judge whether a software package, an operating system, a computer, or a web page is fit to recommend?
Pay to read more...FSF's Brief Amicus Curiae, Eldred v. Ashcroft
[This document is also available in PostScript and PDF formats.]
Pay to read more...Linux and the GNU System
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project .
Pay to read more...Saying No to unjust computing even once is help
A misunderstanding is circulating that the GNU Project demands you run 100% free software , all the time. Anything less (90%?), and we will tell you to get lost—they say. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Pay to read more...Avoiding Ruinous Compromises
Twenty-five years ago on September 27, 1983, I announced a plan to create a completely free operating system called GNU—for “GNU's Not Unix.” As part of the 25th anniversary of the GNU system, I have written this article on how our community can avoid ruinous compromises. In addition to avoiding such compromises, there are many ways you can help GNU and free software. One way is to say no to the use of a nonfree program or an online disservice as often as you can or even once .
Pay to read more...Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Networks
The following is an edited transcript from a speech given at MIT in the Communications Forum on Thursday, April 19, 2001.
Pay to read more...What Does It Mean for Your Computer to Be Loyal?
We say that running free software on your computer means that its operation is under your control . Implicitly this presupposes that your computer will do what your programs tell it to do, and no more. In other words, that your computer will be loyal to you.
Pay to read more...The Microsoft Antitrust Trial and Free Software
With the Microsoft antitrust trial moving toward a conclusion, the question of what to demand of Microsoft if it loses is coming to the fore. Ralph Nader is even [when this was written, in March 1999] organizing a conference about the question (see appraising-microsoft.org ).
Pay to read more...Philosophy of the GNU Project
Free software means that the software's users have freedom. (The issue is not about price.) We developed the GNU operating system so that users can have freedom in their computing.
Pay to read more...Yes, Give It Away
Editor's note: This text was found in a file dated May 1983, though it is not clear whether it was written then or earlier. In May 1983 Richard Stallman was privately considering plans to develop a free operating system, but he may not yet have decided to make it a Unix-like system rather than something like the MIT Lisp Machine.
Pay to read more...Stallman's Law
Now that corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance or change in technology is an opening for them to further restrict or mistreat its users.
Pay to read more...Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software
The terms “free software” and “open source” stand for almost the same range of programs. However, they say deeply different things about those programs, based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles. This is why we do not agree with open source, and do not use that term.
Pay to read more...Interview with Richard Stallman, Edinburgh, 2004
Transcript of an interview that took place at the School of Informatics, Edinburgh University, on 27 May 2004; originally published at Indymedia ( audio recording ).
Pay to read more...Pavia Doctoral Address: Innovation Is Secondary When Freedom Is at Stake
On September 24th, 2007, Richard Stallman received an honoris causa doctorate in Computer Engineering from the University of Pavia , Italy. Stallman began by criticizing the overvaluing of innovation as a response to previous speakers at the same event.
Pay to read more...On the Netscape Public License (Original Version)
This article was written March 10-12 1998, about the draft of the NPL which was available at that time.
Pay to read more...Why the Devil's Advocate Doesn't Help Reach the Truth
Playing the devil's advocate means challenging a position by saying what a hypothetical adversary would say. I encounter this frequently in interviews and Q&A sessions, and many people believe that this is a good way to put a controversial position to the test. What it really does is put the controversial position at a disadvantage.
Pay to read more...Richard Stallman Interviewed The Day After SOPA/PIPA Global Protests
Transcript of an interview conducted on January 19, 2012, the day after the global web blackout protests took place against the controversial SOPA and PIPA copyright bills. The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation joined the protest .
Pay to read more...Public Awareness of Copyright, WIPO, June 2002
Geofrey Yu, Assistant Director General in charge of Copyright at WIPO, said this in a paper “Public Awareness of Copyright”, in June 2002. It is interesting that WIPO is starting to find that the hypocrisy of describing a system of restricting the public as a matter of “rights” is starting to backfire on them.
Pay to read more...GNU Kind Communications Guidelines
The GNU Project encourages contributions from anyone who wishes to advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of gender, race, ethnic group, physical appearance, religion, cultural background, and any other demographic characteristics, as well as personal political views.
Pay to read more...The Wassenaar Arrangement
Our first information about the new Wassenaar Arrangement came in the form of a newspaper article, which said that export of encryption software would be prohibited—and this seemed to include free software. So we posted an announcement seeking people in non-Wassenaar countries to participate in distribution and development of free software for encryption.
Pay to read more...Why programs must not limit the freedom to run them
Free software means software controlled by its users, rather than the reverse. Specifically, it means the software comes with four essential freedoms that software users deserve . At the head of the list is freedom 0, the freedom to run the program as you wish, in order to do what you wish.
Pay to read more...Beware of Contradictory “Support”
There are organizations that proclaim support for free software or the GNU Project, and teach classes in use of nonfree software.
Pay to read more...The Free Software Community After 20 Years:
It was 5 Jan 1984, twenty years ago today, that I quit my job at MIT to begin developing a free software operating system, GNU . While we have never released a complete GNU system suitable for production use, a variant of the GNU system is now used by tens of millions of people who mostly are not aware it is such. Free software does not mean “gratis”; it means that users are free to run the program, study the source code, change it, and redistribute it either with or without changes, either gratis or for a fee.
Pay to read more...A Response to Word Attachments
This letter recommends OpenOffice; LibreOffice did not exist then. LibreOffice is what we recommend.
Pay to read more...Releasing Free Software If You Work at a University
In the free software movement, we believe computer users should have the freedom to change and redistribute the software that they use. The “free” in “free software” refers to freedom: it means users have the freedom to run, modify and redistribute the software. Free software contributes to human knowledge, while nonfree software does not. Universities should therefore encourage free software for the sake of advancing human knowledge, just as they should encourage scientists and other scholars to publish their work.
Pay to read more...Software patents — Obstacles to software development
This is the transcription of a talk presented by Richard M. Stallman on March 25, 2002, at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory , organized by the Foundation for Information Policy Research .
Pay to read more...Speeches and Interviews
See the video recording (and slides ) of Richard Stallman's TEDx talk in Geneva, Switzerland on April 7, 2014.
Pay to read more...Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?
A well known company, Valve, that distributes nonfree computer games with Digital Restrictions Management, recently announced it would distribute these games for GNU/Linux. What good and bad effects can this have?
Pay to read more...When Free Software Isn't (Practically) Superior
The Open Source Initiative's mission statement reads, “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”
Pay to read more...Why Software Should Not Have Owners
Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it easier to copy and modify information. Computers promise to make this easier for all of us.
Pay to read more...You can learn more about GNU Taler on our main website.
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