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www/philosophy gif.ko.html hague.nl.html should...


From: GNUN
Subject: www/philosophy gif.ko.html hague.nl.html should...
Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 21:28:53 +0000

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     GNUN <gnun>     13/05/22 21:28:53

Modified files:
        philosophy     : gif.ko.html hague.nl.html shouldbefree.nl.html 
        philosophy/po  : hague.translist 
Added files:
        philosophy/po  : gif.ko-diff.html hague.nl-diff.html 
                         shouldbefree.nl-diff.html 

Log message:
        Automatic update by GNUnited Nations.

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/gif.ko.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.24&r2=1.25
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/hague.nl.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.8&r2=1.9
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/shouldbefree.nl.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.9&r2=1.10
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/po/hague.translist?cvsroot=www&r1=1.8&r2=1.9
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/po/gif.ko-diff.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/po/hague.nl-diff.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.nl-diff.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1

Patches:
Index: gif.ko.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/gif.ko.html,v
retrieving revision 1.24
retrieving revision 1.25
diff -u -b -r1.24 -r1.25
--- gif.ko.html 28 Feb 2013 19:11:28 -0000      1.24
+++ gif.ko.html 22 May 2013 21:28:51 -0000      1.25
@@ -8,6 +8,13 @@
 
 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/gif.translist" -->
 <!--#include virtual="/server/banner.ko.html" -->
+<!--#set var="PO_FILE"
+ value='<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/po/gif.ko.po";>
+ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/po/gif.ko.po</a>' -->
+ <!--#set var="ORIGINAL_FILE" value="/philosophy/gif.html" -->
+ <!--#set var="DIFF_FILE" value="/philosophy/po/gif.ko-diff.html" -->
+ <!--#set var="OUTDATED_SINCE" value="2013-03-23" -->
+ <!--#include virtual="/server/outdated.ko.html" -->
 <h2>GNU 웹 페이지에 GIF 파일을 사용하지 않는 이유</h2>
 
 <p>
@@ -219,7 +226,7 @@
  <p><!-- timestamp start -->
 최종 수정일:
 
-$Date: 2013/02/28 19:11:28 $
+$Date: 2013/05/22 21:28:51 $
 
 <!-- timestamp end -->
 </p>

Index: hague.nl.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/hague.nl.html,v
retrieving revision 1.8
retrieving revision 1.9
diff -u -b -r1.8 -r1.9
--- hague.nl.html       28 Feb 2013 19:11:31 -0000      1.8
+++ hague.nl.html       22 May 2013 21:28:51 -0000      1.9
@@ -8,6 +8,13 @@
 
 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/hague.translist" -->
 <!--#include virtual="/server/banner.nl.html" -->
+<!--#set var="PO_FILE"
+ value='<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/po/hague.nl.po";>
+ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/po/hague.nl.po</a>' -->
+ <!--#set var="ORIGINAL_FILE" value="/philosophy/hague.html" -->
+ <!--#set var="DIFF_FILE" value="/philosophy/po/hague.nl-diff.html" -->
+ <!--#set var="OUTDATED_SINCE" value="2013-03-23" -->
+ <!--#include virtual="/server/outdated.nl.html" -->
 <h2>Hommeles in Den Haag</h2>
 
 <p>
@@ -284,7 +291,7 @@
  <p><!-- timestamp start -->
 Bijgewerkt:
 
-$Date: 2013/02/28 19:11:31 $
+$Date: 2013/05/22 21:28:51 $
 
 <!-- timestamp end -->
 </p>

Index: shouldbefree.nl.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/shouldbefree.nl.html,v
retrieving revision 1.9
retrieving revision 1.10
diff -u -b -r1.9 -r1.10
--- shouldbefree.nl.html        28 Feb 2013 19:12:02 -0000      1.9
+++ shouldbefree.nl.html        22 May 2013 21:28:51 -0000      1.10
@@ -9,6 +9,13 @@
 
 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.translist" -->
 <!--#include virtual="/server/banner.nl.html" -->
+<!--#set var="PO_FILE"
+ value='<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.nl.po";>
+ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.nl.po</a>' -->
+ <!--#set var="ORIGINAL_FILE" value="/philosophy/shouldbefree.html" -->
+ <!--#set var="DIFF_FILE" value="/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.nl-diff.html" -->
+ <!--#set var="OUTDATED_SINCE" value="2013-03-23" -->
+ <!--#include virtual="/server/outdated.nl.html" -->
 <h2>Waarom Software Vrij Zou Moeten Zijn</h2>
 
 <!-- This document uses XHTML 1.0 Strict, but may be served as -->
@@ -941,7 +948,7 @@
  <p><!-- timestamp start -->
 Bijgewerkt:
 
-$Date: 2013/02/28 19:12:02 $
+$Date: 2013/05/22 21:28:51 $
 
 <!-- timestamp end -->
 </p>

Index: po/hague.translist
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/po/hague.translist,v
retrieving revision 1.8
retrieving revision 1.9
diff -u -b -r1.8 -r1.9
--- po/hague.translist  23 Mar 2013 22:27:34 -0000      1.8
+++ po/hague.translist  22 May 2013 21:28:52 -0000      1.9
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
 <span dir="ltr"><a lang="it" hreflang="it" 
href="/philosophy/hague.it.html">italiano</a>&nbsp;[it]</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;
 <span dir="ltr"><a lang="nl" hreflang="nl" 
href="/philosophy/hague.nl.html">Nederlands</a>&nbsp;[nl]</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;
 <span dir="ltr"><a lang="pl" hreflang="pl" 
href="/philosophy/hague.pl.html">polski</a>&nbsp;[pl]</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;
-<span dir="ltr"><a lang="pt-br" hreflang="pt-br" 
href="/philosophy/hague.pt-br.html">português do 
Brasil</a>&nbsp;[pt-br]</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;
+<span dir="ltr"><a lang="pt-br" hreflang="pt-br" 
href="/philosophy/hague.pt-br.html">português&nbsp;do&nbsp;Brasil</a>&nbsp;[pt-br]</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;
 </p>
 </div>' -->
 <!--#if expr="$HTML_BODY = yes" -->

Index: po/gif.ko-diff.html
===================================================================
RCS file: po/gif.ko-diff.html
diff -N po/gif.ko-diff.html
--- /dev/null   1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ po/gif.ko-diff.html 22 May 2013 21:28:52 -0000      1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,326 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd";>
+<!-- Generated by GNUN -->
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"; xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
+<title>/philosophy/gif.html-diff</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+span.removed { background-color: #f22; color: #000; }
+span.inserted { background-color: #2f2; color: #000; }
+</style></head>
+<body><pre>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" --&gt;
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em>&lt;!-- Parent-Version: 1.75 
--&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;title&gt;Why There Are No GIF Files on GNU Web Pages 
+- GNU Project - Free Software <span class="removed"><del><strong>Foundation 
(FSF)&lt;/title&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Foundation&lt;/title&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/gif.translist" --&gt;
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" --&gt;
+&lt;h2&gt;Why There Are No GIF Files on GNU Web Pages&lt;/h2&gt;
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;p&gt;
+&lt;strong&gt;While this story</strong></del></span>
+
+
+<span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;There</em></ins></span> is 
<span class="removed"><del><strong>a historical
+illustration of the danger of software patents, these
+particular patents are now</strong></del></span> no <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>longer a concern (see</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>special patent threat to GIF format nowadays
+as far as we know;</em></ins></span> &lt;a <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>href="#venuenote"&gt;footnote&lt;/a&gt; below).  
For details</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>href="#venuenote"&gt;the patents that were used to
+attack GIF have expired&lt;/a&gt;.  Nonetheless, this article will remain
+pertinent as long as programs can be forbidden by patents, since the
+same sorts of things could happen in any area</em></ins></span> of <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>computing.  See
+&lt;a 
href="/server/fsf-html-style-sheet.html#UseofGraphics"&gt;</em></ins></span> 
our web
+site
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;a 
href="/server/fsf-html-style-sheet.html#UseofGraphics"&gt;policies</strong></del></span>
 <span class="inserted"><ins><em>policies</em></ins></span> regarding 
GIFs&lt;/a&gt;, <span class="removed"><del><strong>see</strong></del></span> 
<span class="inserted"><ins><em>and</em></ins></span>
+our &lt;a href="/server/standards/"&gt;web
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>guidelines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;
+&lt;/p&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>guidelines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;</em></ins></span>
+
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+There are no GIFs on the GNU web site because of the
+patents (Unisys and IBM) covering
+the LZW compression algorithm
+which is used in making GIF files.  These patents make it
+impossible to have free software to generate proper GIFs.
+They also apply to the &lt;strong&gt;compress&lt;/strong&gt; program, which is 
why
+GNU does not use it or its format.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Unisys and IBM both applied for patents in 1983.  Unisys (and perhaps
+IBM) applied for these patents in a number of countries.  Of the
+places whose patent databases we were able to search, the latest
+expiration date seems to be 1 October 2006.
+&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a id="returnnote" href="#venuenote"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; 
Until then,
+anyone who releases a free program for making GIF files
+is likely to be sued.  We don't know any reason to think that the
+patent owners would lose these lawsuits.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+If we released such a program, Unisys and IBM might think it wiser
+(for public relations reasons) not to sue a charity like the FSF.
+They could instead sue the users of the program, including the
+companies who redistribute GNU software.  We feel it would not be
+responsible behavior for us to set up this situation.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Many people think that Unisys has given permission for distributing
+free software to make GIF format.  Unfortunately that is
+not what Unisys has actually done.  Here is what Unisys actually said
+about the matter in 1995:
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unisys does not require licensing, or fees to be 
paid, for
+non-commercial, non-profit GIF-based applications,
+including those for use on the on-line services.  Concerning
+developers of software for the Internet network, the same principle
+applies.  Unisys will not pursue previous inadvertent infringement by
+developers producing versions of software products for the Internet
+prior to 1995. The company does not require licensing, or fees to be
+paid for non-commercial, non-profit offerings on the Internet,
+including &ldquo;Freeware&rdquo;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Unfortunately, this doesn't permit
+&lt;a href="/philosophy/free-sw.html"&gt;free software&lt;/a&gt; which can be 
used
+in a free operating system such as GNU.  It also does not
+permit &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; the use of LZW for other purposes
+such as compression of files.  This is why we think it is still best
+to reject LZW, and switch to alternatives such
+as &lt;a href="/software/gzip/gzip.html"&gt;GNU Gzip&lt;/a&gt;
+and PNG.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+&lt;a href="/philosophy/selling.html"&gt;Commercial redistribution of free
+software&lt;/a&gt; is very important, and we want the GNU system as a whole
+to be redistributed commercially.  This means we can't add
+a GIF-generating program to GNU, not under the Unisys
+terms.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+The &lt;a href="http://www.fsf.org"&gt;Free Software Foundation&lt;/a&gt; is a
+non-commercial, non-profit organization, so strictly speaking the
+income from our sales of &lt;a href="http://shop.fsf.org/"&gt;CD-ROMs&lt;/a&gt;
+is not &ldquo;profit&rdquo;.  Perhaps this means we could include
+a GIF program on our CD-ROM and claim to be acting within
+the scope of the Unisys permission&mdash;or perhaps not.  But since we
+know that other redistributors of GNU would be unable to include it,
+doing this would not be very useful.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Shortly after Unisys made its announcement, when the net in general
+was reassured thinking that Unisys had given permission for
+free GIF-generating software, we wrote to the Unisys
+legal department asking for clarification of these issues.  We did not
+receive a response.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Even if Unisys really did give permission for free software to
+generate GIFs, we would still have to deal with the IBM
+patent.  Both the IBM and the Unisys patents cover the same
+&ldquo;invention&rdquo;&mdash;the LZW compression
+algorithm.  (This could reflect an error on the part of the US Patent
+and Trademark Office, which is famous for incompetence and poor
+judgment.)
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Decoding GIFs is a different issue.  The Unisys and IBM
+patents are both written in such a way that they do not apply to a
+program which can only uncompress LZW format and cannot
+compress.  Therefore we can and will include support for
+displaying GIF files in GNU software.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Given this situation, we could still include GIF files in
+our web pages if we wanted to.  Many other people would be happy to
+generate them for us, and we would not be sued for
+having GIF files on our server.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+But we feel that if we can't distribute the software to enable people
+to generate GIF files properly, then we should not have
+other people run such software for us.  Besides, if we can't provide
+software in GNU to generate GIF files, we have to
+recommend an alternative.  We ourselves should use the alternative
+that we recommend.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+In 1999, Unisys had the following to say about the issue of their
+patent:
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unisys has frequently been asked whether a Unisys
+license is required in order to use LZW software obtained
+by downloading from the Internet or from other sources. The answer is
+simple. In all cases, a written license agreement or statement signed
+by an authorized Unisys representative is required from Unisys for all
+use, sale or distribution of any software (including so-called
+&ldquo;freeware&rdquo;) and/or hardware providing LZW
+conversion capability (for example, downloaded
+software).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+With this statement, Unisys is trying to take back what they said in
+1995 when they gave parts of the patent to the public. The legality of
+such a move is questionable.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+A further issue is that the LZW patents&mdash;and
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>software</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>computational idea</em></ins></span>
+patents in general&mdash;are an offense against the freedom of
+programmers generally, and all programmers need to work together
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>against</strong></del></span>
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em>to &lt;a 
href="/philosophy/limit-patent-effect.html"&gt;protect</em></ins></span>
+software <span class="removed"><del><strong>patents.</strong></del></span> 
<span class="inserted"><ins><em>from patents.&lt;/a&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+So even if we could find a solution to enable the free software
+community to generate GIFs, that isn't really a solution,
+not for the problem as a whole.  The solution is switching to another
+format and not using GIF any more.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Therefore, we don't use GIF, and we hope you won't use it
+either.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+It is possible to make non-compressed images that act
+like GIFs, in that they work with programs that
+decode GIF format.  This can be done without infringing
+patents.  These pseudo-GIFs are useful for some purposes.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+It is also possible to create GIFs using a patent-free
+run length encoding but this doesn't achieve the compression that one
+normally expects in a GIF.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+We decided not to use these pseudo-GIFs on our web site
+because they are not a satisfactory solution to the community's
+problem.  They work, but they are very large.  What the web needs is a
+patent-free compressed format, not large pseudo-GIFs.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt; 
+The &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics"&gt;PNG
+format&lt;/a&gt; is a patent-free compressed format.  We hope it will become
+widely supported; then we will use it.  We do provide PNG versions of
+most of the &lt;a href="/graphics/graphics.html"&gt;images on this 
server&lt;/a&gt;.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+For more information about the GIF patent problems,
+see &lt;a href="http://www.progfree.org/Patents/Gif/Gif.html"&gt;the League for
+Programming Freedom GIF page&lt;/a&gt;.  Through that page you
+can find more information about the &lt;a
+href="http://endsoftpatents.org/"&gt;problem of software patents in
+general.&lt;/a&gt;
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+There is a library called libungif that reads gif files and writes
+uncompressed gifs to circumvent the Unisys patent.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+&lt;a href="http://burnallgifs.org"&gt;http://burnallgifs.org&lt;/a&gt; is a
+web site devoted to discouraging the use of GIF files on
+the web.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3&gt;Footnote:&lt;/h3&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="#returnnote" id="venuenote"&gt;1.&lt;/a&gt; We were able 
to search
+the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European
+Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe
+it expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan the patent expired on 20 June
+2004 and in Canada it expired on 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM patent
+expired 11 August 2006. The Software Freedom Law Center says that
+after 1 October 2006, there will be no significant patent claims
+interfering with <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>employment</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>the use of static GIFs.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;Animated GIFs are a different story.  We do not know what patents
+might cover them.  However, we have not heard reports</em></ins></span> of 
<span class="inserted"><ins><em>threats
+against use of animated GIFs.  Any software can be threatened by
+patents, but we have no reason to consider animated GIFs to be in
+particular danger &mdash; no particular reason to shun them.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- for id="content", starts in</em></ins></span> the <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>GIF format.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;/div&gt;</strong></del></span> <span class="inserted"><ins><em>include 
above --&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" --&gt;
+&lt;div id="footer"&gt;
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;p&gt;
+Please</strong></del></span>
+
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em>&lt;p&gt;Please</em></ins></span> send <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>general</em></ins></span> FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to 
&lt;a
+href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;&lt;address@hidden&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  There are 
also &lt;a
+href="/contact/"&gt;other ways to contact&lt;/a&gt; the FSF.
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;br /&gt;
+Please send broken</strong></del></span>  <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Broken</em></ins></span> links and other
+corrections or suggestions <span class="inserted"><ins><em>can be 
sent</em></ins></span> to &lt;a <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;&lt;address@hidden&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;</strong></del></span>
+<span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;&lt;address@hidden&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+        replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+        We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+        translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+        Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+        to &lt;a href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;
+        &lt;address@hidden&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+        &lt;p&gt;For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+        our web pages, see &lt;a
+        href="/server/standards/README.translations.html"&gt;Translations
+        README&lt;/a&gt;. --&gt;</em></ins></span>
+Please see the &lt;a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html"&gt;Translations 
README&lt;/a&gt; for
+information on coordinating and submitting translations of this <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>article.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Copyright</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>article.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;Copyright</em></ins></span> &copy; 1997, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2006, 
2007, 2008, 2010 Free
+Software Foundation, <span class="removed"><del><strong>Inc.,&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;address&gt;51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, 
USA&lt;/address&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Inc.&lt;/p&gt;</em></ins></span>
+
+&lt;p&gt;This page is licensed under a &lt;a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/"&gt;Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>License&lt;/a&gt;.
+&lt;/p&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</em></ins></span>
+
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" --&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;Updated:
+&lt;!-- timestamp start --&gt;
+$Date: 2013/05/22 21:28:52 $
+&lt;!-- timestamp end --&gt;
+&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;/div&gt;
+&lt;/div&gt;
+&lt;/body&gt;
+&lt;/html&gt;
+</pre></body></html>

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@@ -0,0 +1,311 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd";>
+<!-- Generated by GNUN -->
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"; xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
+<title>/philosophy/hague.html-diff</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+span.removed { background-color: #f22; color: #000; }
+span.inserted { background-color: #2f2; color: #000; }
+</style></head>
+<body><pre>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" --&gt;
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em>&lt;!-- Parent-Version: 1.75 
--&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;title&gt;Harm from the Hague
+- GNU Project - Free Software <span class="removed"><del><strong>Foundation 
(FSF)&lt;/title&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Foundation&lt;/title&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/hague.translist" --&gt;
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" --&gt;
+&lt;h2&gt;Harm from the Hague&lt;/h2&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+By &lt;a href="http://www.stallman.org"&gt;Richard Stallman&lt;/a&gt;, June 
2001&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Europeans have energetically opposed and thwarted the attempt to
+introduce software patents in Europe.  A proposed treaty, now being
+negotiated, threatens to subject software developers in Europe and
+other countries to U.S. software patents &mdash; and other harmful
+laws from around the world.  The problem is not just for programmers;
+authors of all kinds will face new dangers.  Even the censorship laws
+of various countries could have globalized effect.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+The Hague treaty is not actually about patents, or about copyrights, or
+about censorship, but it affects all of them.  It is a treaty about
+jurisdiction, and how one country should treat the court decisions of
+another country.  The basic idea is reasonable enough: if someone hits
+your car in France or breaks a contract with your French company, you
+can sue him in France, then bring the judgment to a court in whichever
+country he lives in (or has assets in) for enforcement.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+The treaty becomes a problem when it is extended to distribution of
+information &mdash; because information now travels normally and
+predictably to all countries.  (The Internet is one way, but not the
+only way.)  The consequence is that you could be sued about the
+information you distributed under the laws of &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt;
+Hague country, and the judgment would probably be enforced by your
+country.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+For instance, if you release a software package (either free or not)
+in Germany, and people use it in the U.S., you could be sued for
+infringing an absurd U.S. software patent.  That part does not depend
+on Hague &mdash; it could happen now.  But right now you could ignore
+the U.S. judgment, safe in Germany, and the patent holder knows this.
+Under the Hague treaty, any German court would be required to enforce
+the U.S. judgment against you.  In effect, the software patents of any
+signatory country would apply to all signatory countries.  It isn't
+enough to keep software patents out of Europe, if U.S. or Japanese or
+Egyptian software patents can reach you there.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+But patent law is not the only area of law that could wreak havoc if
+globalized by the Hague treaty.  Suppose you publish a statement
+criticizing a public figure.  If copies are read in England, that public
+figure could sue you under the strict U.K. libel law.  The laws of your
+country may support the right to criticize a public figure, but with the
+Hague treaty, they won't necessarily protect you any more.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Or suppose you publish a statement comparing your prices with your
+competitors' prices.  If this is read in Germany, where comparative
+advertising is illegal, you could be sued in Germany and the judgment
+brought back to you wherever you are.  (Subsequent note: I've received
+word that this law may have been changed in Germany.  The point is the
+same, though&mdash;any country could have such a law, and some other
+European countries may still have one.)&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Or suppose you publish a parody.  If it is read in Korea, you could be
+sued there, since Korea does not recognize a right to parody.  (Since
+the publication of this article, the Korean Supreme Court affirmed the
+right to parody, but the general point remains.)&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Or suppose you have political views that a certain government prohibits.
+You could be sued in that country, and the judgment against you there
+would be enforced wherever you live.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Not long ago, Yahoo was sued in France for having links to U.S. sites
+that auctioned Nazi memorabilia, which is lawful in the U.S.  After a
+French court required Yahoo France to block such links, Yahoo went to
+court in the U.S., asking for a ruling that the French judgment cannot
+be applied to the parent company in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+It may come as a surprise to learn that exiled Chinese dissidents
+joined the case in support of Yahoo.  But they knew what they were
+doing &mdash; their democracy movement depends on the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+You see, Nazism is not the only political view whose expression is
+prohibited in certain places.  Criticism of the Chinese government is
+also prohibited &mdash; in China.  If a French court ruling against
+Nazi statements is enforceable in the US, or in your country, maybe a
+Chinese court ruling against anti-Chinese-government statements will
+be enforceable there too.  (This might be why China has joined the
+Hague treaty negotiations.)  The Chinese government can easily adapt
+its censorship law so that the Hague treaty would apply to it; all it
+has to do is give private individuals (and government agencies) the
+right to sue dissident publications.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+China is not the only country to ban criticism of the government; as
+of this writing, the government of Victoria (Australia) is suing to
+suppress a book called Victoria Police Corruption on the grounds that
+it &ldquo;scandalizes the courts.&rdquo; This book is available on the
+Internet outside Australia.  Australia is a Hague treaty participant;
+if the treaty applies to such cases, an Australian court judgment
+against the book could be used to suppress it elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Meanwhile, works that criticize Islam have faced increasing censorship
+in Egypt, a Hague treaty participant; this too could be globalized by
+the Hague treaty.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Americans may turn to the First Amendment to protect them from foreign
+judgments against their speech.  The draft treaty permits a court to
+ignore a foreign judgment that is &ldquo;manifestly incompatible with
+public policy.&rdquo; That is a stringent criterion, so you cannot
+count on it to protect you just because your conduct is legal where
+you are.  Just what it does cover is up to the particular judge.  It
+is unlikely to help you against broad foreign interpretations of
+copyright, trademarks or software patents, but U.S. courts might use
+it to reject outright censorship judgments.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+However, even that won't help you if you publish on the Internet,
+because your &lt;abbr title="Internet service provider"&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt; 
either
+has assets in other countries or communicates to the world through
+larger &lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt;s that have them.  A censorship judgment
+against your site, or any other kind, could be enforced against
+your &lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt;, or your &lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt;'s
+&lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt;, in any other country where it has assets &mdash; 
and
+where there is no Bill of Rights, and freedom of speech does not enjoy
+the same exalted status as in the U.S.  In response, the ISP will shut
+off your site.  The Hague treaty would globalize pretexts for
+lawsuits, but not the protections for civil liberties, so any local
+protection could be bypassed.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Does suing your &lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt; seem far-fetched?  It already
+happens.  When the multinational company Danone announced plans to
+close factories in France, Olivier Malnuit opened a site,
+jeboycottedanone.com, to criticize this.  (The name is French for
+&ldquo;I boycott Danone.&rdquo;) Danone sued not only him but his site
+hosting company and domain name registrar for &ldquo;counterfeiting of
+goods&rdquo; &mdash; and in April 2001 received a ruling prohibiting
+Malnuit from mentioning the name &ldquo;Danone&rdquo; either in the
+domain name or in the text of the site.  Even more telling, the
+registrar removed the domain in fear before the court made a
+ruling.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+The natural response for French dissidents is to publish their
+criticism of Danone outside France, just as Chinese dissidents publish
+their criticism of China outside China.  But the Hague treaty would
+enable Danone to attack them everywhere.  Perhaps even this article
+would be suppressed through its &lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt; or
+its &lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt;'s &lt;abbr&gt;ISP&lt;/abbr&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+The potential effects of the treaty are not limited to laws that exist
+today.  When 50 countries know that their court judgments could be
+enforced throughout North America, Europe and Asia, they would have
+plenty of temptation to pass laws just for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Suppose, for example, that Microsoft would like to be able to impose
+copyright on languages and network protocols.  They could approach a
+small, poor country and offer to spend $50 million a year there for 20
+years, if only that country will pass a law saying that implementing a
+Microsoft language or protocol constitutes copyright infringement.  They
+can surely find some country which would take the offer.  Then if you
+implement a compatible program, Microsoft could sue you in that country,
+and win.  When the judge rules in their favor and bans distribution of
+your program, the courts in your country will enforce the judgment on
+you, obeying the Hague treaty.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Does this seem implausible?  In 2000, Cisco pressured Liechtenstein, a
+small European country, to legalize software patents.  And IBM's chief
+lobbyist threatened many European governments with a termination of
+investment if they did not support software patents.  Meanwhile, the
+U.S. trade representative pressured Middle Eastern country Jordan to
+allow patents on mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;!-- The following link is dead, disabled - mhatta 2002/9/30 --&gt;
+&lt;!--
+&lt;A HREF="http://www.usjoft.com/usjoft/memopro/memopro.html"&gt;patents on
+mathematics&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;p&gt;
+--&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+A meeting of consumer organizations
+(&lt;a href="http://www.tacd.org"&gt;http://www.tacd.org&lt;/a&gt;) 
recommended in
+May 2001 that patents, copyrights and trademarks (&ldquo;intellectual
+property&rdquo;) should be excluded from the scope of the Hague
+treaty, because these laws vary considerably between countries.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+That is a good recommendation, but it only solves part of the problem.
+Patents and bizarre extensions of copyright are just two of many excuses
+used for suppression of publication in certain countries.  To solve the
+problem thoroughly, all cases about the legality of distributing or
+transmitting particular information should be excluded from
+globalization under the treaty, and only the country where the
+distributor or transmitter operates should have jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+In Europe, people opposed to software patents will be active in
+working to change the Hague treaty.
+&lt;!-- link dead, disabled - yavor, 24 Apr 2007 --&gt; 
+&lt;!-- ; for more information, see
+&lt;a 
href="http://www.noepatents.org/hague"&gt;http://www.noepatents.org/hague&lt;/a&gt;.
+--&gt; 
+In the U.S., the Consumer Project for Technology is taking the
+lead; for more information, see
+&lt;a 
href="http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html"&gt;http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+A diplomatic conference is slated to begin today (June 6, 2001) to work
+on the details of the Hague treaty.  We should make ministries and the
+public aware of the possible dangers as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;hr /&gt;
+
+&lt;!-- link dead, disabled - yavor, 24 Apr 2007 --&gt;
+&lt;!--
+You can read a draft of the Hague
+treaty &lt;a 
href="http://www.hcch.net/e/conventions/draft36e.html"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+--&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+There is more information about the problems with the Hague
+at &lt;a 
href="http://web.lemuria.org/DeCSS/hague.html"&gt;http://web.lemuria.org/DeCSS/hague.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;/div&gt;</strong></del></span>
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em>&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- for id="content", starts 
in the include above --&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" --&gt;
+&lt;div id="footer"&gt;
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;p&gt;
+Please</strong></del></span>
+
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em>&lt;p&gt;Please</em></ins></span> send <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>general</em></ins></span> FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to 
&lt;a <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;&lt;em&gt;address@hidden&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.</strong></del></span>
+<span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;&lt;address@hidden&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.</em></ins></span>
  There are also &lt;a
+href="/contact/"&gt;other ways to contact&lt;/a&gt; the FSF.
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;br /&gt;
+Please send broken</strong></del></span>  <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Broken</em></ins></span> links and other
+corrections or suggestions <span class="inserted"><ins><em>can be 
sent</em></ins></span> to &lt;a <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;&lt;em&gt;address@hidden&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;</strong></del></span>
+<span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;&lt;address@hidden&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+        replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+        We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+        translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+        Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+        to &lt;a href="mailto:address@hidden"&gt;
+        &lt;address@hidden&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+        &lt;p&gt;For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+        our web pages, see &lt;a
+        href="/server/standards/README.translations.html"&gt;Translations
+        README&lt;/a&gt;. --&gt;</em></ins></span>
+Please see the &lt;a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html"&gt;Translations 
README&lt;/a&gt; for
+information on coordinating and submitting translations of this <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>article.
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Copyright</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>article.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;Copyright</em></ins></span> &copy; 2001 Richard <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>Stallman
+&lt;br</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Stallman&lt;br</em></ins></span> /&gt;
+Copyright &copy; 2001 Free Software Foundation, <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>Inc.,
+&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;address&gt;51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, 
USA&lt;/address&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Inc.&lt;/p&gt;</em></ins></span>
+
+&lt;p&gt;This page is licensed under a &lt;a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/"&gt;Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States <span 
class="removed"><del><strong>License&lt;/a&gt;.
+&lt;/p&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</em></ins></span>
+
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" --&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;Updated:
+&lt;!-- timestamp start --&gt;
+$Date: 2013/05/22 21:28:52 $
+&lt;!-- timestamp end --&gt;
+&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;/div&gt;
+&lt;/div&gt;
+&lt;/body&gt;
+&lt;/html&gt;
+</pre></body></html>

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diff -N po/shouldbefree.nl-diff.html
--- /dev/null   1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
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@@ -0,0 +1,925 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd";>
+<!-- Generated by GNUN -->
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"; xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
+<title>/philosophy/shouldbefree.html-diff</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+span.removed { background-color: #f22; color: #000; }
+span.inserted { background-color: #2f2; color: #000; }
+</style></head>
+<body><pre>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" --&gt;
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em>&lt;!-- Parent-Version: 1.75 
--&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;title&gt;Why Software Should Be Free
+- GNU Project - Free Software <span class="removed"><del><strong>Foundation 
(FSF)&lt;/title&gt;</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>Foundation&lt;/title&gt;</em></ins></span>
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.translist" --&gt;
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" --&gt;
+&lt;h2&gt;Why Software Should Be Free&lt;/h2&gt;
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;!-- This document uses XHTML 1.0 
Strict, but may be served as --&gt;
+&lt;!-- text/html.  Please ensure that markup style considers --&gt;
+&lt;!-- appendex C of the XHTML 1.0 standard. See validator.w3.org. --&gt;
+
+&lt;!-- Please ensure links are consistent with Apache's MultiView. --&gt;
+&lt;!-- Change include statements to be consistent with the relevant --&gt;
+&lt;!-- language, where necessary. --&gt;</strong></del></span>
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+by &lt;a href="http://www.stallman.org/"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Richard 
Stallman&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;h3 id="introduction"&gt;Introduction&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+The existence of software inevitably raises the question of how
+decisions about its use should be made.  For example, suppose one
+individual who has a copy of a program meets another who would like a
+copy.  It is possible for them to copy the program; who should decide
+whether this is done?  The individuals involved?  Or another party,
+called the &ldquo;owner&rdquo;?&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Software developers typically consider these questions on the
+assumption that the criterion for the answer is to maximize developers'
+profits. The political power of business has led to the government
+adoption of both this criterion and the answer proposed by the
+developers: that the program has an owner, typically a corporation
+associated with its development.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I would like to consider the same question using a different
+criterion: the prosperity and freedom of the public in general.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This answer cannot be decided by current law&mdash;the law should
+conform to ethics, not the other way around.  Nor does current
+practice decide this question, although it may suggest possible
+answers.  The only way to judge is to see who is helped and who is
+hurt by recognizing owners of software, why, and how much.  In other
+words, we should perform a cost-benefit analysis on behalf of society
+as a whole, taking account of individual freedom as well as production
+of material goods.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   In this essay, I will describe the effects of having owners, and
+show that the results are detrimental.  My conclusion is that
+programmers have the duty to encourage others to share, redistribute,
+study, and improve the software we write: in other words, to write
+&lt;a href="/philosophy/free-sw.html"&gt;&ldquo;free&rdquo;
+software&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;a href="#f1"&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="owner-justification"&gt;How Owners Justify Their Power&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Those who benefit from the current system where programs are property
+offer two arguments in support of their claims to own programs: the
+emotional argument and the economic argument.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The emotional argument goes like this: &ldquo;I put my sweat, my
+heart, my soul into this program.  It comes from &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt;,
+it's &lt;em&gt;mine&lt;/em&gt;!&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This argument does not require serious refutation.  The feeling of
+attachment is one that programmers can cultivate when it suits them;
+it is not inevitable.  Consider, for example, how willingly the same
+programmers usually sign over all rights to a large corporation for a
+salary; the emotional attachment mysteriously vanishes.  By contrast,
+consider the great artists and artisans of medieval times, who didn't
+even sign their names to their work.  To them, the name of the artist
+was not important.  What mattered was that the work was done&mdash;and
+the purpose it would serve.  This view prevailed for hundreds of
+years.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The economic argument goes like this: &ldquo;I want to get rich
+(usually described inaccurately as &lsquo;making a living&rsquo;), and
+if you don't allow me to get rich by programming, then I won't
+program.  Everyone else is like me, so nobody will ever program.  And
+then you'll be stuck with no programs at all!&rdquo; This threat is
+usually veiled as friendly advice from the wise.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I'll explain later why this threat is a bluff.  First I want to
+address an implicit assumption that is more visible in another
+formulation of the argument.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This formulation starts by comparing the social utility of a
+proprietary program with that of no program, and then concludes that
+proprietary software development is, on the whole, beneficial, and
+should be encouraged.  The fallacy here is in comparing only two
+outcomes&mdash;proprietary software versus no software&mdash;and assuming
+there are no other possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Given a system of software copyright, software development is
+usually linked with the existence of an owner who controls the
+software's use.  As long as this linkage exists, we are often faced with
+the choice of proprietary software or none.  However, this linkage is
+not inherent or inevitable; it is a consequence of the specific
+social/legal policy decision that we are questioning: the decision to
+have owners.  To formulate the choice as between proprietary software
+versus no software is begging the question.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="against-having-owners"&gt;The Argument against Having 
Owners&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The question at hand is, &ldquo;Should development of software be linked
+with having owners to restrict the use of it?&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   In order to decide this, we have to judge the effect on society of
+each of those two activities &lt;em&gt;independently&lt;/em&gt;: the effect of 
developing
+the software (regardless of its terms of distribution), and the effect
+of restricting its use (assuming the software has been developed).  If
+one of these activities is helpful and the other is harmful, we would be
+better off dropping the linkage and doing only the helpful one.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   To put it another way, if restricting the distribution of a program
+already developed is harmful to society overall, then an ethical
+software developer will reject the option of doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   To determine the effect of restricting sharing, we need to compare
+the value to society of a restricted (i.e., proprietary) program with
+that of the same program, available to everyone.  This means comparing
+two possible worlds.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This analysis also addresses the simple counterargument sometimes
+made that &ldquo;the benefit to the neighbor of giving him or her a
+copy of a program is cancelled by the harm done to the owner.&rdquo;
+This counterargument assumes that the harm and the benefit are equal
+in magnitude.  The analysis involves comparing these magnitudes, and
+shows that the benefit is much greater.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   To elucidate this argument, let's apply it in another area: road
+construction.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   It would be possible to fund the construction of all roads with
+tolls. This would entail having toll booths at all street corners.
+Such a system would provide a great incentive to improve roads.  It
+would also have the virtue of causing the users of any given road to
+pay for that road.  However, a toll booth is an artificial obstruction
+to smooth driving&mdash;artificial, because it is not a consequence of
+how roads or cars work.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Comparing free roads and toll roads by their usefulness, we find
+that (all else being equal) roads without toll booths are cheaper to
+construct, cheaper to run, safer, and more efficient to
+use.&lt;a href="#f2"&gt;(2)&lt;/a&gt; In a poor country, tolls may make the 
roads
+unavailable to many citizens.  The roads without toll booths thus
+offer more benefit to society at less cost; they are preferable for
+society.  Therefore, society should choose to fund roads in another
+way, not by means of toll booths.  Use of roads, once built, should be
+free.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   When the advocates of toll booths propose them as 
&lt;em&gt;merely&lt;/em&gt; a
+way of raising funds, they distort the choice that is available.  Toll
+booths do raise funds, but they do something else as well: in effect,
+they degrade the road.  The toll road is not as good as the free road;
+giving us more or technically superior roads may not be an improvement
+if this means substituting toll roads for free roads.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Of course, the construction of a free road does cost money, which the
+public must somehow pay.  However, this does not imply the inevitability
+of toll booths.  We who must in either case pay will get more value for
+our money by buying a free road.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I am not saying that a toll road is worse than no road at all.
+That would be true if the toll were so great that hardly anyone used
+the road&mdash;but this is an unlikely policy for a toll collector.
+However, as long as the toll booths cause significant waste and
+inconvenience, it is better to raise the funds in a less obstructive
+fashion.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   To apply the same argument to software development, I will now show
+that having &ldquo;toll booths&rdquo; for useful software programs
+costs society dearly: it makes the programs more expensive to
+construct, more expensive to distribute, and less satisfying and
+efficient to use.  It will follow that program construction should be
+encouraged in some other way.  Then I will go on to explain other
+methods of encouraging and (to the extent actually necessary) funding
+software development.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="harm-done"&gt;The Harm Done by Obstructing Software&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Consider for a moment that a program has been developed, and any
+necessary payments for its development have been made; now society must
+choose either to make it proprietary or allow free sharing and use.
+Assume that the existence of the program and its availability is a
+desirable thing.&lt;a href="#f3"&gt;(3)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Restrictions on the distribution and modification of the program
+cannot facilitate its use.  They can only interfere.  So the effect can
+only be negative.  But how much?  And what kind?&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Three different levels of material harm come from such 
obstruction:&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;ul&gt;
+&lt;li&gt;Fewer people use the program.&lt;/li&gt;
+
+&lt;li&gt;None of the users can adapt or fix the program.&lt;/li&gt;
+
+&lt;li&gt;Other developers cannot learn from the program, or base new work on 
it.&lt;/li&gt;
+&lt;/ul&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Each level of material harm has a concomitant form of psychosocial
+harm. This refers to the effect that people's decisions have on their
+subsequent feelings, attitudes, and predispositions.  These changes in
+people's ways of thinking will then have a further effect on their
+relationships with their fellow citizens, and can have material
+consequences.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The three levels of material harm waste part of the value that the
+program could contribute, but they cannot reduce it to zero.  If they
+waste nearly all the value of the program, then writing the program
+harms society by at most the effort that went into writing the program.
+Arguably a program that is profitable to sell must provide some net
+direct material benefit.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   However, taking account of the concomitant psychosocial harm, there
+is no limit to the harm that proprietary software development can do.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="obstructing-use"&gt;Obstructing Use of Programs&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The first level of harm impedes the simple use of a program.  A copy
+of a program has nearly zero marginal cost (and you can pay this cost by
+doing the work yourself), so in a free market, it would have nearly zero
+price.  A license fee is a significant disincentive to use the program.
+If a widely useful program is proprietary, far fewer people will use 
it.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   It is easy to show that the total contribution of a program to
+society is reduced by assigning an owner to it.  Each potential user of
+the program, faced with the need to pay to use it, may choose to pay,
+or may forego use of the program.  When a user chooses to pay, this is a
+zero-sum transfer of wealth between two parties.  But each time someone
+chooses to forego use of the program, this harms that person without
+benefiting anyone.  The sum of negative numbers and zeros must be
+negative.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   But this does not reduce the amount of work it takes to 
&lt;em&gt;develop&lt;/em&gt;
+the program.  As a result, the efficiency of the whole process, in
+delivered user satisfaction per hour of work, is reduced.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This reflects a crucial difference between copies of programs and
+cars, chairs, or sandwiches.  There is no copying machine for material
+objects outside of science fiction.  But programs are easy to copy;
+anyone can produce as many copies as are wanted, with very little
+effort.  This isn't true for material objects because matter is
+conserved: each new copy has to be built from raw materials in the same
+way that the first copy was built.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   With material objects, a disincentive to use them makes sense,
+because fewer objects bought means less raw material and work needed
+to make them.  It's true that there is usually also a startup cost, a
+development cost, which is spread over the production run.  But as long
+as the marginal cost of production is significant, adding a share of the
+development cost does not make a qualitative difference.  And it does
+not require restrictions on the freedom of ordinary users.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   However, imposing a price on something that would otherwise be free
+is a qualitative change.  A centrally imposed fee for software
+distribution becomes a powerful disincentive.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   What's more, central production as now practiced is inefficient even
+as a means of delivering copies of software.  This system involves
+enclosing physical disks or tapes in superfluous packaging, shipping
+large numbers of them around the world, and storing them for sale.  This
+cost is presented as an expense of doing business; in truth, it is part
+of the waste caused by having owners.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="damaging-social-cohesion"&gt;Damaging Social Cohesion&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Suppose that both you and your neighbor would find it useful to run a
+certain program.  In ethical concern for your neighbor, you should feel
+that proper handling of the situation will enable both of you to use it.
+A proposal to permit only one of you to use the program, while
+restraining the other, is divisive; neither you nor your neighbor should
+find it acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying your
+neighbor: &ldquo;I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so
+that I can have a copy for myself.&rdquo; People who make such choices
+feel internal psychological pressure to justify them, by downgrading
+the importance of helping one's neighbors&mdash;thus public spirit
+suffers. This is psychosocial harm associated with the material harm
+of discouraging use of the program.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Many users unconsciously recognize the wrong of refusing to share, so
+they decide to ignore the licenses and laws, and share programs anyway.
+But they often feel guilty about doing so.  They know that they must
+break the laws in order to be good neighbors, but they still consider
+the laws authoritative, and they conclude that being a good neighbor
+(which they are) is naughty or shameful.  That is also a kind of
+psychosocial harm, but one can escape it by deciding that these licenses
+and laws have no moral force.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Programmers also suffer psychosocial harm knowing that many users
+will not be allowed to use their work.  This leads to an attitude of
+cynicism or denial.  A programmer may describe enthusiastically the
+work that he finds technically exciting; then when asked, &ldquo;Will I be
+permitted to use it?&rdquo;, his face falls, and he admits the answer is no. 
+To avoid feeling discouraged, he either ignores this fact most of the
+time or adopts a cynical stance designed to minimize the importance of
+it.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Since the age of Reagan, the greatest scarcity in the United States
+is not technical innovation, but rather the willingness to work together
+for the public good.  It makes no sense to encourage the former at the
+expense of the latter.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="custom-adaptation"&gt;Obstructing Custom Adaptation of 
Programs&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The second level of material harm is the inability to adapt programs.
+The ease of modification of software is one of its great advantages over
+older technology.  But most commercially available software isn't
+available for modification, even after you buy it.  It's available for
+you to take it or leave it, as a black box&mdash;that is all.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   A program that you can run consists of a series of numbers whose
+meaning is obscure.  No one, not even a good programmer, can easily
+change the numbers to make the program do something different.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Programmers normally work with the &ldquo;source code&rdquo; for a
+program, which is written in a programming language such as Fortran or
+C.  It uses names to designate the data being used and the parts of
+the program, and it represents operations with symbols such as
+&lsquo;+&rsquo; for addition and &lsquo;-&rsquo; for subtraction.  It
+is designed to help programmers read and change programs.  Here is an
+example; a program to calculate the distance between two points in a
+plane:&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;pre&gt;
+     float
+     distance (p0, p1)
+          struct point p0, p1;
+     {
+       float xdist = p1.x - p0.x;
+       float ydist = p1.y - p0.y;
+       return sqrt (xdist * xdist + ydist * ydist);
+     }
+&lt;/pre&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Precisely what that source code means is not the point; the point
+   is that it looks like algebra, and a person who knows this
+   programming language will find it meaningful and clear.  By
+   contrast, here is same program in executable form, on the computer
+   I normally used when I wrote this:
+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;pre&gt;
+     1314258944      -232267772      -231844864      1634862
+     1411907592      -231844736      2159150         1420296208
+     -234880989      -234879837      -234879966      -232295424
+     1644167167      -3214848        1090581031      1962942495
+     572518958       -803143692      1314803317
+&lt;/pre&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Source code is useful (at least potentially) to every user of a
+program. But most users are not allowed to have copies of the source
+code. Usually the source code for a proprietary program is kept secret
+by the owner, lest anybody else learn something from it.  Users receive
+only the files of incomprehensible numbers that the computer will
+execute. This means that only the program's owner can change the
+program.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   A friend once told me of working as a programmer in a bank for
+about six months, writing a program similar to something that was
+commercially available.  She believed that if she could have gotten
+source code for that commercially available program, it could easily
+have been adapted to their needs.  The bank was willing to pay for
+this, but was not permitted to&mdash;the source code was a secret.  So
+she had to do six months of make-work, work that counts in the GNP but
+was actually waste.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The &lt;abbr title="Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology"&gt;MIT&lt;/abbr&gt;
+Artificial Intelligence Lab (AI Lab) received a graphics printer as a
+gift from Xerox around 1977.  It was run by free software to which we
+added many convenient features.  For example, the software would
+notify a user immediately on completion of a print job.  Whenever the
+printer had trouble, such as a paper jam or running out of paper, the
+software would immediately notify all users who had print jobs
+queued. These features facilitated smooth operation.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Later Xerox gave the AI Lab a newer, faster printer, one of the first
+laser printers.  It was driven by proprietary software that ran in a
+separate dedicated computer, so we couldn't add any of our favorite
+features.  We could arrange to send a notification when a print job was
+sent to the dedicated computer, but not when the job was actually
+printed (and the delay was usually considerable).  There was no way to
+find out when the job was actually printed; you could only guess.  And
+no one was informed when there was a paper jam, so the printer often
+went for an hour without being fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The system programmers at the AI Lab were capable of fixing such
+problems, probably as capable as the original authors of the program.
+Xerox was uninterested in fixing them, and chose to prevent us, so we
+were forced to accept the problems.  They were never fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Most good programmers have experienced this frustration.  The bank
+could afford to solve the problem by writing a new program from
+scratch, but a typical user, no matter how skilled, can only give up.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Giving up causes psychosocial harm&mdash;to the spirit of
+self-reliance.  It is demoralizing to live in a house that you cannot
+rearrange to suit your needs.  It leads to resignation and
+discouragement, which can spread to affect other aspects of one's
+life.  People who feel this way are unhappy and do not do good
+work.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Imagine what it would be like if recipes were hoarded in the same
+fashion as software.  You might say, &ldquo;How do I change this
+recipe to take out the salt?&rdquo; and the great chef would respond,
+&ldquo;How dare you insult my recipe, the child of my brain and my
+palate, by trying to tamper with it?  You don't have the judgment to
+change my recipe and make it work right!&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   &ldquo;But my doctor says I'm not supposed to eat salt!  What can I
+do?  Will you take out the salt for me?&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   &ldquo;I would be glad to do that; my fee is only $50,000.&rdquo;
+Since the owner has a monopoly on changes, the fee tends to be large.
+&ldquo;However, right now I don't have time.  I am busy with a
+commission to design a new recipe for ship's biscuit for the Navy
+Department.  I might get around to you in about two years.&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="software-development"&gt;Obstructing Software Development&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The third level of material harm affects software development.
+Software development used to be an evolutionary process, where a
+person would take an existing program and rewrite parts of it for one
+new feature, and then another person would rewrite parts to add
+another feature; in some cases, this continued over a period of twenty
+years.  Meanwhile, parts of the program would be
+&ldquo;cannibalized&rdquo; to form the beginnings of other
+programs.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The existence of owners prevents this kind of evolution, making it
+necessary to start from scratch when developing a program.  It also
+prevents new practitioners from studying existing programs to learn
+useful techniques or even how large programs can be structured.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Owners also obstruct education.  I have met bright students in
+computer science who have never seen the source code of a large
+program.  They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't
+begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't
+see how others have done it.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by
+standing on the shoulders of others.  But that is no longer generally
+allowed in the software field&mdash;you can only stand on the
+shoulders of the other people &lt;em&gt;in your own 
company&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The associated psychosocial harm affects the spirit of scientific
+cooperation, which used to be so strong that scientists would cooperate
+even when their countries were at war.  In this spirit, Japanese
+oceanographers abandoning their lab on an island in the Pacific
+carefully preserved their work for the invading U.S. Marines, and left a
+note asking them to take good care of it.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Conflict for profit has destroyed what international conflict spared.
+Nowadays scientists in many fields don't publish enough in their papers
+to enable others to replicate the experiment.  They publish only enough
+to let readers marvel at how much they were able to do.  This is
+certainly true in computer science, where the source code for the
+programs reported on is usually secret.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="does-not-matter-how"&gt;It Does Not Matter How Sharing Is 
Restricted&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I have been discussing the effects of preventing people from
+copying, changing, and building on a program.  I have not specified
+how this obstruction is carried out, because that doesn't affect the
+conclusion.  Whether it is done by copy protection, or copyright, or
+licenses, or encryption, or &lt;acronym title="Read-only 
Memory"&gt;ROM&lt;/acronym&gt;
+cards, or hardware serial numbers, if it &lt;em&gt;succeeds&lt;/em&gt; in
+preventing use, it does harm.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Users do consider some of these methods more obnoxious than others. 
+I suggest that the methods most hated are those that accomplish their
+objective.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="should-be-free"&gt;Software Should be Free&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I have shown how ownership of a program&mdash;the power to restrict
+changing or copying it&mdash;is obstructive.  Its negative effects are
+widespread and important.  It follows that society shouldn't have
+owners for programs.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Another way to understand this is that what society needs is free
+software, and proprietary software is a poor substitute.  Encouraging
+the substitute is not a rational way to get what we need.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Vaclav Havel has advised us to &ldquo;Work for something because it is
+good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.&rdquo;  A business
+making proprietary software stands a chance of success in its own narrow
+terms, but it is not what is good for society.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="why-develop"&gt;Why People Will Develop Software&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   If we eliminate copyright as a means of encouraging
+people to develop software, at first less software will be developed,
+but that software will be more useful.  It is not clear whether the
+overall delivered user satisfaction will be less; but if it is, or if
+we wish to increase it anyway, there are other ways to encourage
+development, just as there are ways besides toll booths to raise money
+for streets. Before I talk about how that can be done, first I want to
+question how much artificial encouragement is truly necessary.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="fun"&gt;Programming is Fun&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   There are some lines of work that few will enter except for money;
+road construction, for example.  There are other fields of study and
+art in which there is little chance to become rich, which people enter
+for their fascination or their perceived value to society.  Examples
+include mathematical logic, classical music, and archaeology; and
+political organizing among working people.  People compete, more sadly
+than bitterly, for the few funded positions available, none of which is
+funded very well.  They may even pay for the chance to work in the
+field, if they can afford to.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Such a field can transform itself overnight if it begins to offer the
+possibility of getting rich.  When one worker gets rich, others demand
+the same opportunity.  Soon all may demand large sums of money for doing
+what they used to do for pleasure.  When another couple of years go by,
+everyone connected with the field will deride the idea that work would
+be done in the field without large financial returns.  They will advise
+social planners to ensure that these returns are possible, prescribing
+special privileges, powers, and monopolies as necessary to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This change happened in the field of computer programming in the
+1980s.  In the 1970s, there were articles on
+&ldquo;computer addiction&rdquo;: users were &ldquo;onlining&rdquo;
+and had hundred-dollar-a-week habits.  It was generally understood
+that people frequently loved programming enough to break up their
+marriages.  Today, it is generally understood that no one would
+program except for a high rate of pay. People have forgotten what they
+knew back then.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   When it is true at a given time that most people will work in a
+certain field only for high pay, it need not remain true.  The dynamic
+of change can run in reverse, if society provides an impetus.  If we
+take away the possibility of great wealth, then after a while, when the
+people have readjusted their attitudes, they will once again be eager
+to work in the field for the joy of accomplishment.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The question &ldquo;How can we pay programmers?&rdquo; becomes an
+easier question when we realize that it's not a matter of paying them
+a fortune.  A mere living is easier to raise.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="funding"&gt;Funding Free Software&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Institutions that pay programmers do not have to be software houses.
+Many other institutions already exist that can do this.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Hardware manufacturers find it essential to support software
+development even if they cannot control the use of the software.  In
+1970, much of their software was free because they did not consider
+restricting it. Today, their increasing willingness to join consortiums
+shows their realization that owning the software is not what is really
+important for them.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Universities conduct many programming projects.  Today they often
+sell the results, but in the 1970s they did not.  Is there any doubt
+that universities would develop free software if they were not allowed
+to sell software?  These projects could be supported by the same
+government contracts and grants that now support proprietary software
+development.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   It is common today for university researchers to get grants to
+develop a system, develop it nearly to the point of completion and
+call that &ldquo;finished&rdquo;, and then start companies where they
+really finish the project and make it usable.  Sometimes they declare
+the unfinished version &ldquo;free&rdquo;; if they are thoroughly
+corrupt, they instead get an exclusive license from the university.
+This is not a secret; it is openly admitted by everyone concerned.
+Yet if the researchers were not exposed to the temptation to do these
+things, they would still do their research.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Programmers writing free software can make their living by selling
+services related to the software.  I have been hired to port the
+&lt;a href="/software/gcc/"&gt;GNU C compiler&lt;/a&gt; to new hardware, and
+to make user-interface extensions to
+&lt;a href="/software/emacs/"&gt;GNU Emacs&lt;/a&gt;.  (I offer these 
improvements
+to the public once they are done.)  I also teach classes for which I
+am paid.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I am not alone in working this way; there is now a successful,
+growing corporation which does no other kind of work.  Several other
+companies also provide commercial support for the free software of the
+GNU system. This is the beginning of the independent software support
+industry&mdash;an industry that could become quite large if free
+software becomes prevalent.  It provides users with an option
+generally unavailable for proprietary software, except to the very
+wealthy.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   New institutions such as the &lt;a href="/fsf/fsf.html"&gt;Free Software
+Foundation&lt;/a&gt; can also fund programmers.  Most of the Foundation's
+funds come from users buying tapes through the mail.  The software on
+the tapes is free, which means that every user has the freedom to copy
+it and change it, but many nonetheless pay to get copies.  (Recall
+that &ldquo;free software&rdquo; refers to freedom, not to price.)
+Some users who already have a copy order tapes as a way of making a
+contribution they feel we deserve.  The Foundation also receives
+sizable donations from computer manufacturers.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The Free Software Foundation is a charity, and its income is spent on
+hiring as many programmers as possible.  If it had been set up as a
+business, distributing the same free software to the public for the same
+fee, it would now provide a very good living for its founder.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Because the Foundation is a charity, programmers often work for the
+Foundation for half of what they could make elsewhere.  They do this
+because we are free of bureaucracy, and because they feel satisfaction
+in knowing that their work will not be obstructed from use.  Most of
+all, they do it because programming is fun.  In addition, volunteers
+have written many useful programs for us.  (Even technical writers
+have begun to volunteer.)&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This confirms that programming is among the most fascinating of all
+fields, along with music and art.  We don't have to fear that no one
+will want to program.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h4 id="owe"&gt;What Do Users Owe to Developers?&lt;/h4&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moral
+obligation to contribute to its support.  Developers of free software
+are contributing to the users' activities, and it is both fair and in
+the long-term interest of the users to give them funds to continue.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   However, this does not apply to proprietary software developers,
+since obstructionism deserves a punishment rather than a reward.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   We thus have a paradox: the developer of useful software is entitled
+to the support of the users, but any attempt to turn this moral
+obligation into a requirement destroys the basis for the obligation.  A
+developer can either deserve a reward or demand it, but not both.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I believe that an ethical developer faced with this paradox must act
+so as to deserve the reward, but should also entreat the users for
+voluntary donations.  Eventually the users will learn to support
+developers without coercion, just as they have learned to support public
+radio and television stations.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="productivity"&gt;What Is Software Productivity? &lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   If software were free, there would still be programmers, but perhaps
+fewer of them.  Would this be bad for society?&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Not necessarily.  Today the advanced nations have fewer farmers than
+in 1900, but we do not think this is bad for society, because the few
+deliver more food to the consumers than the many used to do.  We call
+this improved productivity.  Free software would require far fewer
+programmers to satisfy the demand, because of increased software
+productivity at all levels:&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;ul&gt;
+&lt;li&gt; Wider use of each program that is developed.&lt;/li&gt;
+&lt;li&gt; The ability to adapt existing programs for customization instead
+     of starting from scratch.&lt;/li&gt;
+&lt;li&gt; Better education of programmers.&lt;/li&gt;
+&lt;li&gt; The elimination of duplicate development effort.&lt;/li&gt;
+&lt;/ul&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Those who object to cooperation claiming it would result in the
+employment of fewer programmers are actually objecting to increased
+productivity.  Yet these people usually accept the widely held belief
+that the software industry needs increased productivity.  How is 
this?&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   &ldquo;Software productivity&rdquo; can mean two different things:
+the overall productivity of all software development, or the
+productivity of individual projects.  Overall productivity is what
+society would like to improve, and the most straightforward way to do
+this is to eliminate the artificial obstacles to cooperation which
+reduce it.  But researchers who study the field of &ldquo;software
+productivity&rdquo; focus only on the second, limited, sense of the
+term, where improvement requires difficult technological advances.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="competition"&gt;Is Competition Inevitable?&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Is it inevitable that people will try to compete, to surpass their
+rivals in society?  Perhaps it is.  But competition itself is not
+harmful; the harmful thing is &lt;em&gt;combat&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   There are many ways to compete.  Competition can consist of trying
+to achieve ever more, to outdo what others have done.  For example, in
+the old days, there was competition among programming
+wizards&mdash;competition for who could make the computer do the most
+amazing thing, or for who could make the shortest or fastest program
+for a given task.  This kind of competition can benefit
+everyone, &lt;em&gt;as long as&lt;/em&gt; the spirit of good sportsmanship is
+maintained.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Constructive competition is enough competition to motivate people to
+great efforts.  A number of people are competing to be the first to have
+visited all the countries on Earth; some even spend fortunes trying to
+do this.  But they do not bribe ship captains to strand their rivals on
+desert islands.  They are content to let the best person win.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Competition becomes combat when the competitors begin trying to
+impede each other instead of advancing themselves&mdash;when
+&ldquo;Let the best person win&rdquo; gives way to &ldquo;Let me win,
+best or not.&rdquo; Proprietary software is harmful, not because it is
+a form of competition, but because it is a form of combat among the
+citizens of our society.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Competition in business is not necessarily combat.  For example, when
+two grocery stores compete, their entire effort is to improve their own
+operations, not to sabotage the rival.  But this does not demonstrate a
+special commitment to business ethics; rather, there is little scope for
+combat in this line of business short of physical violence.  Not all
+areas of business share this characteristic.  Withholding information
+that could help everyone advance is a form of combat.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Business ideology does not prepare people to resist the temptation to
+combat the competition.  Some forms of combat have been banned with
+antitrust laws, truth in advertising laws, and so on, but rather than
+generalizing this to a principled rejection of combat in general,
+executives invent other forms of combat which are not specifically
+prohibited.  Society's resources are squandered on the economic
+equivalent of factional civil war.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="communism"&gt;&ldquo;Why Don't You Move to Russia?&rdquo;&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   In the United States, any advocate of other than the most extreme
+form of laissez-faire selfishness has often heard this accusation.  For
+example, it is leveled against the supporters of a national health care
+system, such as is found in all the other industrialized nations of the
+free world.  It is leveled against the advocates of public support for
+the arts, also universal in advanced nations.  The idea that citizens
+have any obligation to the public good is identified in America with
+Communism.  But how similar are these ideas?&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Communism as was practiced in the Soviet Union was a system of
+central control where all activity was regimented, supposedly for the
+common good, but actually for the sake of the members of the Communist
+party. And where copying equipment was closely guarded to prevent
+illegal copying.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   The American system of software copyright exercises central control
+over distribution of a program, and guards copying equipment with
+automatic copying-protection schemes to prevent illegal copying.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   By contrast, I am working to build a system where people are free
+to decide their own actions; in particular, free to help their
+neighbors, and free to alter and improve the tools which they use in
+their daily lives.  A system based on voluntary cooperation and on
+decentralization.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Thus, if we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian
+Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="premises"&gt;The Question of Premises&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   I make the assumption in this paper that a user of software is no
+less important than an author, or even an author's employer.  In other
+words, their interests and needs have equal weight, when we decide
+which course of action is best.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   This premise is not universally accepted.  Many maintain that an
+author's employer is fundamentally more important than anyone else.
+They say, for example, that the purpose of having owners of software
+is to give the author's employer the advantage he
+deserves&mdash;regardless of how this may affect the public.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   It is no use trying to prove or disprove these premises.  Proof
+requires shared premises.  So most of what I have to say is addressed
+only to those who share the premises I use, or at least are interested
+in what their consequences are.  For those who believe that the owners
+are more important than everyone else, this paper is simply 
irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   But why would a large number of Americans accept a premise that
+elevates certain people in importance above everyone else?  Partly
+because of the belief that this premise is part of the legal traditions
+of American society.  Some people feel that doubting the premise means
+challenging the basis of society.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   It is important for these people to know that this premise is not
+part of our legal tradition.  It never has been.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Thus, the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright is to
+&ldquo;promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts.&rdquo; The
+Supreme Court has elaborated on this, stating in &lt;em&gt;Fox Film
+v. Doyal&lt;/em&gt;; that &ldquo;The sole interest of the United States
+and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in
+the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of
+authors.&rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   We are not required to agree with the Constitution or the Supreme
+Court.  (At one time, they both condoned slavery.)  So their positions
+do not disprove the owner supremacy premise.  But I hope that the
+awareness that this is a radical right-wing assumption rather than a
+traditionally recognized one will weaken its appeal.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;h3 id="conclusion"&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   We like to think that our society encourages helping your neighbor;
+but each time we reward someone for obstructionism, or admire them for
+the wealth they have gained in this way, we are sending the opposite
+message.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   Software hoarding is one form of our general willingness to disregard
+the welfare of society for personal gain.  We can trace this disregard
+from Ronald Reagan to Dick Cheney, from Exxon to Enron, from
+failing banks to failing schools.  We can measure it with the size of
+the homeless population and the prison population.  The antisocial
+spirit feeds on itself, because the more we see that other people will
+not help us, the more it seems futile to help them.  Thus society decays
+into a jungle.&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;p&gt;
+   If we don't want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. 
+We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who
+cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from
+others.  I hope that the free software movement will contribute to
+this: at least in one area, we will replace the jungle with a more
+efficient system which encourages and runs on voluntary cooperation.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+
+&lt;h3 id="footnotes"&gt;Footnotes&lt;/h3&gt;
+
+&lt;ol&gt;
+&lt;li id="f1"&gt;The word &ldquo;free&rdquo; in &ldquo;free software&rdquo;
+refers to freedom, not to price; the price paid for a copy of a free
+program may be zero, or small, or (rarely) quite large.&lt;/li&gt;
+
+&lt;li id="f2"&gt;The issues of pollution and traffic congestion do not
+alter this conclusion.  If we wish to make driving more expensive to
+discourage driving in general, it is disadvantageous to do this using
+toll booths, which contribute to both pollution and congestion.  A tax
+on gasoline is much better.  Likewise, a desire to enhance safety by
+limiting maximum speed is not relevant; a free-access road enhances
+the average speed by avoiding stops and delays, for any given speed
+limit.&lt;/li&gt;
+
+&lt;li id="f3"&gt;One might regard a particular computer program as a
+harmful thing that should not be available at all, like the Lotus
+Marketplace database of personal information, which was withdrawn from
+sale due to public disapproval.  Most of what I say does not apply to
+this case, but it makes little sense to argue for having an owner on
+the grounds that the owner will make the program less available.  The
+owner will not make it &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; unavailable, as one 
would
+wish in the case of a program whose use is considered
+destructive.&lt;/li&gt;
+&lt;/ol&gt;
+
+&lt;hr /&gt;
+&lt;h4&gt;This essay is published
+in &lt;a 
href="http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society/"&gt;&lt;cite&gt;Free
+Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard
+M. Stallman&lt;/cite&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;!-- If needed, change the copyright 
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+&lt;!-- Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the document 
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+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" --&gt;
+&lt;div id="footer"&gt;
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong>&lt;p&gt;
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+
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+
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+<span 
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+
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+&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;
+Copyright</strong></del></span> <span 
class="inserted"><ins><em>article.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;Copyright</em></ins></span> &copy; 1991, 1992, 1998, 2000, 2001, 
2006, 2007, 2010 Free
+Software Foundation, <span class="removed"><del><strong>Inc.
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class="inserted"><ins><em>Inc.&lt;/p&gt;</em></ins></span>
+
+&lt;p&gt;This page is licensed under a &lt;a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/"&gt;Creative
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+
+&lt;!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" --&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;Updated:
+&lt;!-- timestamp start --&gt;
+$Date: 2013/05/22 21:28:53 $
+&lt;!-- timestamp end --&gt;
+&lt;/p&gt;
+&lt;/div&gt;
+&lt;/div&gt;
+&lt;/body&gt;
+&lt;/html&gt;
+</pre></body></html>



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