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CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: GNUN <gnun> 14/04/30 23:58:17
Modified files:
philosophy : shouldbefree.hr.html
philosophy/po : shouldbefree.translist
Added files:
philosophy/po : shouldbefree.hr-diff.html
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Automatic update by GNUnited Nations.
CVSWeb URLs:
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Index: shouldbefree.hr.html
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RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/shouldbefree.hr.html,v
retrieving revision 1.4
retrieving revision 1.5
diff -u -b -r1.4 -r1.5
--- shouldbefree.hr.html 31 Aug 2013 20:12:38 -0000 1.4
+++ shouldbefree.hr.html 30 Apr 2014 23:58:16 -0000 1.5
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+<!--#set var="PO_FILE"
+ value='<a href="//philosophy/po/shouldbefree.hr.po">
+ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.hr.po</a>'
+ --><!--#set var="ORIGINAL_FILE" value="/philosophy/shouldbefree.html"
+ --><!--#set var="DIFF_FILE" value="/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.hr-diff.html"
+ --><!--#set var="OUTDATED_SINCE" value="2014-03-01" -->
<!--#include virtual="/server/header.hr.html" -->
@@ -11,6 +17,7 @@
<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.translist" -->
<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.hr.html" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/outdated.hr.html" -->
<h2>Zašto bi softver trebao biti slobodan</h2>
<p>
@@ -864,7 +871,7 @@
<p><!-- timestamp start -->
Vrijeme zadnje izmjene:
-$Date: 2013/08/31 20:12:38 $
+$Date: 2014/04/30 23:58:16 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
Index: po/shouldbefree.translist
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retrieving revision 1.10
retrieving revision 1.11
diff -u -b -r1.10 -r1.11
--- po/shouldbefree.translist 24 Aug 2013 18:58:42 -0000 1.10
+++ po/shouldbefree.translist 30 Apr 2014 23:58:17 -0000 1.11
@@ -2,25 +2,25 @@
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diff -N po/shouldbefree.hr-diff.html
--- /dev/null 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ po/shouldbefree.hr-diff.html 30 Apr 2014 23:58:17 -0000 1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,902 @@
+<!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>
+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: <span
class="removed"><del><strong>1.75</strong></del></span> <span
class="inserted"><ins><em>1.77</em></ins></span> -->
+<title>Why Software Should Be Free
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/shouldbefree.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>Why Software Should Be Free</h2>
+
+<p>
+by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/"><strong>Richard
Stallman</strong></a></p>
+<h3 id="introduction">Introduction</h3>
+<p>
+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 “owner”?</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ I would like to consider the same question using a different
+criterion: the prosperity and freedom of the public in general.</p>
+<p>
+ This answer cannot be decided by current law—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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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
+<a href="/philosophy/free-sw.html">“free”
+software</a>.<a href="#f1">(1)</a></p>
+
+<h3 id="owner-justification">How Owners Justify Their Power</h3>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ The emotional argument goes like this: “I put my sweat, my
+heart, my soul into this program. It comes from <em>me</em>,
+it's <em>mine</em>!”</p>
+<p>
+ 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—and
+the purpose it would serve. This view prevailed for hundreds of
+years.</p>
+<p>
+ The economic argument goes like this: “I want to get rich
+(usually described inaccurately as ‘making a living’), 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!” This threat is
+usually veiled as friendly advice from the wise.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—proprietary software versus no software—and assuming
+there are no other possibilities.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h3 id="against-having-owners">The Argument against Having
Owners</h3>
+<p>
+ The question at hand is, “Should development of software be linked
+with having owners to restrict the use of it?”</p>
+<p>
+ In order to decide this, we have to judge the effect on society of
+each of those two activities <em>independently</em>: 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ This analysis also addresses the simple counterargument sometimes
+made that “the benefit to the neighbor of giving him or her a
+copy of a program is cancelled by the harm done to the owner.”
+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.</p>
+<p>
+ To elucidate this argument, let's apply it in another area: road
+construction.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—artificial, because it is not a consequence of
+how roads or cars work.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.<a href="#f2">(2)</a> 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.</p>
+<p>
+ When the advocates of toll booths propose them as
<em>merely</em> 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—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.</p>
+<p>
+ To apply the same argument to software development, I will now show
+that having “toll booths” 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.</p>
+
+<h4 id="harm-done">The Harm Done by Obstructing Software</h4>
+<p>
+ 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.<a href="#f3">(3)</a></p>
+<p>
+ 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?</p>
+<p>
+ Three different levels of material harm come from such
obstruction:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Fewer people use the program.</li>
+
+<li>None of the users can adapt or fix the program.</li>
+
+<li>Other developers cannot learn from the program, or base new work on
it.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ However, taking account of the concomitant psychosocial harm, there
+is no limit to the harm that proprietary software development can do.</p>
+
+<h4 id="obstructing-use">Obstructing Use of Programs</h4>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ But this does not reduce the amount of work it takes to
<em>develop</em>
+the program. As a result, the efficiency of the whole process, in
+delivered user satisfaction per hour of work, is reduced.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h4 id="damaging-social-cohesion">Damaging Social Cohesion</h4>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying your
+neighbor: “I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so
+that I can have a copy for myself.” People who make such choices
+feel internal psychological pressure to justify them, by downgrading
+the importance of helping one's neighbors—thus public spirit
+suffers. This is psychosocial harm associated with the material harm
+of discouraging use of the program.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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, “Will I be
+permitted to use it?”, 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h4 id="custom-adaptation">Obstructing Custom Adaptation of
Programs</h4>
+<p>
+ 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—that is all.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ Programmers normally work with the “source code” 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
+‘+’ for addition and ‘-’ 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:</p>
+
+<pre>
+ 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);
+ }
+</pre>
+<p>
+ 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:
+</p>
+
+<pre>
+ 1314258944 -232267772 -231844864 1634862
+ 1411907592 -231844736 2159150 1420296208
+ -234880989 -234879837 -234879966 -232295424
+ 1644167167 -3214848 1090581031 1962942495
+ 572518958 -803143692 1314803317
+</pre>
+
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—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.</p>
+<p>
+ The <abbr title="Massachusetts Institute of
Technology">MIT</abbr>
+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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ Giving up causes psychosocial harm—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.</p>
+<p>
+ Imagine what it would be like if recipes were hoarded in the same
+fashion as software. You might say, “How do I change this
+recipe to take out the salt?” and the great chef would respond,
+“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!”</p>
+<p>
+ “But my doctor says I'm not supposed to eat salt! What can I
+do? Will you take out the salt for me?”</p>
+<p>
+ “I would be glad to do that; my fee is only $50,000.”
+Since the owner has a monopoly on changes, the fee tends to be large.
+“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.”</p>
+
+<h4 id="software-development">Obstructing Software Development</h4>
+<p>
+ 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
+“cannibalized” to form the beginnings of other
+programs.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—you can only stand on the
+shoulders of the other people <em>in your own
company</em>.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h4 id="does-not-matter-how">It Does Not Matter How Sharing Is
Restricted</h4>
+<p>
+ 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 <acronym title="Read-only
Memory">ROM</acronym>
+cards, or hardware serial numbers, if it <em>succeeds</em> in
+preventing use, it does harm.</p>
+<p>
+ Users do consider some of these methods more obnoxious than others.
+I suggest that the methods most hated are those that accomplish their
+objective.</p>
+
+<h4 id="should-be-free">Software Should be Free</h4>
+<p>
+ I have shown how ownership of a program—the power to restrict
+changing or copying it—is obstructive. Its negative effects are
+widespread and important. It follows that society shouldn't have
+owners for programs.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ Vaclav Havel has advised us to “Work for something because it is
+good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.” A business
+making proprietary software stands a chance of success in its own narrow
+terms, but it is not what is good for society.</p>
+
+<h3 id="why-develop">Why People Will Develop Software</h3>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h4 id="fun">Programming is Fun</h4>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ This change happened in the field of computer programming in the
+1980s. In the 1970s, there were articles on
+“computer addiction”: users were “onlining”
+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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ The question “How can we pay programmers?” 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.</p>
+
+<h4 id="funding">Funding Free Software</h4>
+<p>
+ Institutions that pay programmers do not have to be software houses.
+Many other institutions already exist that can do this.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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 “finished”, and then start companies where they
+really finish the project and make it usable. Sometimes they declare
+the unfinished version “free”; 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.</p>
+<p>
+ Programmers writing free software can make their living by selling
+services related to the software. I have been hired to port the
+<a href="/software/gcc/">GNU C compiler</a> to new hardware, and
+to make user-interface extensions to
+<a href="/software/emacs/">GNU Emacs</a>. (I offer these
improvements
+to the public once they are done.) I also teach classes for which I
+am paid.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—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.</p>
+<p>
+ New institutions such as the <a href="/fsf/fsf.html">Free Software
+Foundation</a> 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 “free software” 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.)</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h4 id="owe">What Do Users Owe to Developers?</h4>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ However, this does not apply to proprietary software developers,
+since obstructionism deserves a punishment rather than a reward.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h3 id="productivity">What Is Software Productivity? </h3>
+<p>
+ If software were free, there would still be programmers, but perhaps
+fewer of them. Would this be bad for society?</p>
+<p>
+ 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:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li> Wider use of each program that is developed.</li>
+<li> The ability to adapt existing programs for customization instead
+ of starting from scratch.</li>
+<li> Better education of programmers.</li>
+<li> The elimination of duplicate development effort.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>
+ 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?</p>
+<p>
+ “Software productivity” 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 “software
+productivity” focus only on the second, limited, sense of the
+term, where improvement requires difficult technological advances.</p>
+
+<h3 id="competition">Is Competition Inevitable?</h3>
+<p>
+ 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 <em>combat</em>.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—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, <em>as long as</em> the spirit of good sportsmanship is
+maintained.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ Competition becomes combat when the competitors begin trying to
+impede each other instead of advancing themselves—when
+“Let the best person win” gives way to “Let me win,
+best or not.” 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h3 id="communism">“Why Don't You Move to Russia?”</h3>
+<p>
+ 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?</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ Thus, if we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian
+Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists.</p>
+
+<h3 id="premises">The Question of Premises</h3>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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—regardless of how this may affect the public.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ It is important for these people to know that this premise is not
+part of our legal tradition. It never has been.</p>
+<p>
+ Thus, the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright is to
+“promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts.” The
+Supreme Court has elaborated on this, stating in <em>Fox Film
+v. Doyal</em>; that “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.”</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+<h3 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h3>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+<p>
+ 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.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="footnotes">Footnotes</h3>
+
+<ol>
+<li id="f1">The word “free” in “free software”
+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.</li>
+
+<li id="f2">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.</li>
+
+<li id="f3">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 <em>completely</em> unavailable, as one
would
+wish in the case of a program whose use is considered
+destructive.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<hr />
+<span class="removed"><del><strong><h4>This</strong></del></span>
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em><blockquote id="fsfs"><p
class="big">This</em></ins></span> essay is published
+in <a
href="http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society/"><cite>Free
+Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard
+M. <span
class="removed"><del><strong>Stallman</cite></a></h4></strong></del></span>
<span
class="inserted"><ins><em>Stallman</cite></a>.</p></blockquote></em></ins></span>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em><div
class="unprintable"></em></ins></span>
+
+<p>Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to <a
+href="mailto:address@hidden"><address@hidden></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"><address@hidden></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">
+ <address@hidden></a>.</p>
+
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+Please see the <a
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README</a> for
+information on coordinating and submitting translations of this
article.</p>
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em></div></em></ins></span>
+
+<p>Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2006, 2007, 2010 Free
+Software Foundation, Inc.</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" -->
+
+<span class="removed"><del><strong><p>Updated:</strong></del></span>
+
+<span class="inserted"><ins><em><p
class="unprintable">Updated:</em></ins></span>
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2014/04/30 23:58:17 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
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