www/philosophy free-software-even-more-importan...

[Robert Musial]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Robert Musial <musial>  13/11/06 01:34:42

Added files:
        philosophy     : free-software-even-more-important.html 

Log message:
        added free-software-even-more-important.html per RT #867959

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1

Patches:
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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.75 -->
+<title>Free Software Is Even More Important Now -- Richard Stallman
+</title>
+ <!--#include 
virtual="/philosophy/po/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-program.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+
+<h2>Free Software Is Even More Important Now</h2>
+
+<p>by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/";><strong>Richard
+Stallman</strong></a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+A substantially edited version of this article was published in <a
+href="http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/why-free-software-is-more-important-now-than-ever-before";>Wired</a>.
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>It is 30 years since the launch of the Free Software Movement which
+campaigns for software to respect the users' freedom and community.
+We call such software "free" and "libre" (we use that word to
+emphasize that we're talking about freedom, not price).  Some
+proprietary programs, such as Photoshop, are very expensive; others,
+such as Flash Player, are available gratis -- either way, they subject
+their users to someone else's power.</p>
+
+<p>Much has changed since the beginning: most people, in advanced
+countries, now own computers (sometimes called "phones") and connect
+to the Internet with them.  Nonfree software still makes the users
+surrender control over their computing to someone else, but now there
+is another way to lose it: Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS,
+which means letting someone else's server do your own computing
+activities.</p>
+
+<p>Both nonfree software and SaaSS can spy on the user, shackle the user,
+and even attack the user.  Malware is common in services and
+proprietary software products because the users don't have control
+over them.  That's the fundamental issue: while nonfree software and
+SaaSS are contolled by some other entity (typically a corporation or a
+state), free software is controlled by its users.</p>
+
+<p>Why does this control matter?  Because freedom means having control
+over your own life.  If you use a program to carry out activities in
+your life, your freedom depends on your having control over the program.
+You deserve to have control over the programs you use, and all the more
+so when you use them for something important in your life.</p>
+
+<p>Your control over the program requires four
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html";>essential freedoms</a>
+If any of them is missing or inadequate, the program is proprietary
+(or "non-free").</p>
+
+<p>(0) The freedom to run the program as you wish, for whatever purpose.</p>
+
+<p>(1) The freedom to study the program's "source code", and change it,
+so the program does your computing as you wish.  Programs are written
+by programmers in a programming language -- like English combined with
+algebra -- and that form of the program is the "source code".  Anyone
+who knows programming, and has the program in source code form, can
+read the source code, understand its functioning, and change it too.
+When all you get is the executable form, a series of numbers that are
+efficient for the computer to run but extremely hard for a human being
+to understand, understanding and changing the program in that form are
+forbiddingly hard.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish.
+(It is not an obligation; doing this is your choice.  If the program
+is free, that doesn't mean someone has an obligation to offer you a
+copy, or that you have an obligation to offer him a copy.
+Distributing a program to users without freedom mistreats them;
+however, choosing not to distribute the program -- using it privately
+-- does not mistreat anyone.)</p>
+
+<p>(3) The freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified
+versions, when you wish.</p>
+
+<p>The first two freedoms mean each user has individual control over the
+program.  With the other two freedoms, any group of users can together
+exercise <em>collective control</em> over the program.  The result is
+that the users control the program.</p>
+
+<p>Other kinds of works are also used for practical activities, including
+recipes for cooking, educational works such as textbooks, reference
+works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, fonts for displaying
+paragraphs of text, circuit diagrams for hardware for people to build,
+and patterns for making useful (not merely decorative) objects with a
+3D printer.  Since these are not software, the free software movement
+strictly speaking doesn't cover them; but the same reasoning applies
+and leads to the same conclusion: these works should carry the four
+freedoms.</p>
+
+<p>A free program allows you to tinker with it to make it do what you
+want (or cease do to something you dislike).  Tinkering with software
+may sound ridiculous if you are accustomed to proprietary software as
+a sealed box, but in the Free World it's a common thing to do, and a
+good way to learn programming.  Even the traditional American pastime
+of tinkering with cars is obstructed because cars now contain nonfree
+software.</p>
+
+<h3>The Injustice of Proprietary</h3>
+
+<p>If the users don't control the program, the program controls the
+users.  With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the
+"owner" of the program, that controls the program -- and through it,
+exercises power over its users.  A non-free program is a yoke, an
+instrument of unjust power.</p>
+
+<p>In extreme cases (though this extreme has become widespread)
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/proprietary.html"proprietary programs">
+are designed to spy on the users, restrict them, censor them, and abuse 
them.</a>
+For instance, the operating system of Apple iThings does all of these, and so 
does
+Windows on mobile devices with ARM chips.  Windows, mobile phone
+firmware, and Google Chrome for Windows include a universal back door
+that allows some company to change the program remotely without asking
+permission. The Amazon Kindle has a back door that can erase books.</p>
+
+<p>With the goal of ending the injustice of non-free software, the free
+software movement develops free programs so users can free
+themselves.  We began in 1984 by developing the free operating system
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html";>GNU.</a> Today,
+millions of computers run GNU, mainly in the
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html";>GNU/Linux 
combination</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Distributing a program to users without freedom mistreats those users;
+however, choosing not to distribute the program does not mistreat
+anyone.  If you write a program and use it privately, that does no
+wrong to others.  (You do miss an opportunity to do good, but that's
+not the same as doing wrong.)  Thus, when we say all software must
+be free, we mean that every copy must come with the four freedoms,
+but we don't mean that someone has an obligation to offer you a copy.</p>
+
+<h3>Non-Free Software and SaaSS</h3>
+
+<p>Non-free software was the first way for companies to take control of
+people's computing.  Nowadays, there is another way, called Service as
+a Software Substitute, or SaaSS.  That means letting someone else's
+server do your own computing tasks.</p>
+
+<p>SaaSS doesn't mean the programs on the server are non-free (though they
+often are).  Rather, using SaaSS causes the same injustices as using a
+non-free program: they are two paths to the same bad place.  Take the
+example of a SaaSS translation service: The user sends text to the
+server, and the server translates it (from English to Spanish, say)
+and sends the translation back to the user.  Now the job of
+translating is under the control of the server operator rather than
+the user.</p>
+
+<p>If you use SaaSS, the server operator controls your computing.  It
+requires entrusting all the pertinent data to the server operator,
+which will be forced to show it to the state as well --
+<a 
href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html";>who
+does that server really serve, after all?</a></p>
+
+<h3>Primary And Secondary Injustices</h3>
+
+<p>When you use proprietary programs or SaaSS, first of all you do wrong
+to yourself, because it gives some entity unjust power over you.  For
+your own sake, you should escape.  It also wrongs others if you make a
+promise not to share.  It is evil to keep such a promise, and a lesser
+evil to break it; to be truly upright, you should not make the promise
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>There are cases where using non-free software puts pressure directly
+on others to do likewise.  Skype is a clear example: when one person
+uses the non-free Skype client software, it requires another person to
+use that software too -- thus surrendering their freedoms along with
+yours.  (Google Hangouts have the same problem.)  It is wrong to make
+such a suggestion.  We should refuse to use such programs even
+briefly, even on someone else's computer.</p>
+
+<p>Another harm of using non-free programs and SaaSS is that it rewards
+the perpetrator, encouraging further development of that program or
+"service", leading in turn to even more people falling under the
+company's thumb.</p>
+
+<p>All the forms of indirect harm are magnified when the user is a
+public entity or a school.</p>
+
+<h3>Free Software and the State</h3>
+
+<p>Public agencies exist for the people, not for themselves.  When they
+do computing, they do it for the people.  They have a duty to maintain
+full control over that computing so that they can assure it is done
+properly for the people.  (This constitutes the computational
+sovereignty of the state.)  They must never allow control over the
+state's computing to fall into private hands.</p>
+
+<p>To maintain control of the people's computing, public agencies must
+not do it with proprietary software (software under the control of an
+entity other than the state).  And they must not entrust it to a
+service programmed and run by an entity other than the state, since
+this would be SaaSS.</p>
+
+<p>Proprietary software has no security at all in one crucial case --
+against its developer.  And the developer may help others attack.
+Microsoft shows Windows bugs to the US government digital spying
+agency, the NSA, before fixing them.  (See
+<a 
href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/nsa-gets-early-access-to-zero-day-data-from-microsoft-others/";>
+http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/nsa-gets-early-access-to-zero-day-data-from-microsoft-others/</a>).
+We do not know whether Apple does likewise, but it is under the same
+government pressure as Microsoft.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, if the government of any other
+country uses such software, it endangers national security.  Do you
+want the NSA to break into your government's computers?  See
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/government-free-software.html";>
+http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/government-free-software.html</a> for our
+suggested policies for governments to promote free software.</p>
+
+<h3>Free Software and Education</h3>
+
+<p>Schools (and this includes all educational activities) influence the
+future of society through what they teach.  They should teach
+exclusively free software, so as to use their influence for the good.
+To teach a proprietary program is to implant dependence, which goes
+against the mission of education.  By training in use of free
+software, schools will direct society's future towards freedom, and
+help talented programmers master the craft.</p>
+
+<p>They will also teach students the habit of cooperating, helping other
+people.  Each class should have this rule: "Students, this class is a
+place where we share our knowledge.  If you bring software to class,
+you may not keep it for yourself.  Rather, you must share copies with
+the rest of the class -- including the program's source code, in case
+someone else wants to learn.  Therefore, bringing proprietary software
+to class is not permitted except to reverse engineer it."</p>
+
+<p>Proprietary developers would have us punish students who are good
+enough at heart to share software and thwart those curious enough to
+want to change it.  This means a bad education.  See
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/education/";>http://www.gnu.org/education/</a>
+for more discussion of the use of free software in schools.</p>
+
+<h3>Free Software: More Than "Advantages"</h3>
+
+<p>I'm often asked to describe the "advantages" of free software.  But the
+word "advantages" is too weak when it comes to freedom.  Life without
+freedom is oppression, and that applies to computing as well as every
+other activity in our lives.  We must refuse to give the
+owners of the programs or computing services control over the
+computing we do.  This is the right thing to do, for selfish reasons;
+but not solely for selfish reasons.</p>
+
+<p>Freedom includes the freedom to cooperate with others.  Denying people
+that freedom means keeping them divided, which is the start of a
+scheme to oppress them.  In the free software community, we are very
+much aware of the importance of the freedom to cooperate because our
+work consists of organized cooperation.  If your friend comes to visit
+and sees you use a program, she might ask for a copy.  A program which
+stops you from redistributing it, or says you're "not supposed to", is
+antisocial.</p>
+
+<p>In computing, cooperation includes redistributing exact copies of a
+program to other users.  It also includes distributing your changed
+versions to them.  Free software encourages these forms of
+cooperation, while proprietary software forbids them.  It forbids
+redistribution of copies, and by denying users the source code, it
+blocks them from making changes.  SaaSS has the same effects: if your
+computing is done over the web in someone else's server, by someone
+else's copy of a program, you can't see it or touch the software that
+does your computing, so you can't redistribute it or change it.</p>
+
+<h3>Conclusion</h3>
+
+<p>We deserve to have control of our own computing; how can we win this
+control?  By rejecting non-free software on the computers we own or
+regularly use, and rejecting SaaSS.  By
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html";>
+developing free software</a> (for those of us who are programmers) By
+refusing to develop or promote non-free software or SaaSS.  By
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/help";>spreading these ideas to others</a>.</p>
+
+<p>We and thousands of users have done this since 1984, which is how we
+now have the free GNU/Linux operating system that anyone -- programmer
+or not -- can use.  Join our cause, as a programmer or an activist.
+Let's make all computer users free.</p>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
+<a href="mailto:address@hidden";>&lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.
+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
+the FSF.  Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
+to <a href="mailto:address@hidden";>&lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- 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 <a href="mailto:address@hidden";>
+        &lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+        <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+        our web pages, see <a
+        href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+        README</a>. -->
+Please see the <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting translations
+of this article.</p>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
+     files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
+     be under CC BY-ND 3.0 US.  Please do NOT change or remove this
+     without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
+     Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
+     document.  For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the
+     document was modified, or published.
+     
+     If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
+     Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying
+     years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable
+     year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including
+     being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).
+     
+     There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
+     Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 2013 Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/";>Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p>Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2013/11/06 01:34:41 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>