Related Posts

  • None

    • Tags



    Richard Stallman – The free software movement

    Free software changes the way value is produced, argues Richard Stallman, because the business or worker can make the software do what he or she wants it to do. It alters patterns of innovation by inviting everyone to participate


    An interview to Thanasis Priftis for Re-public


    Thanasis Priftis: Could you explain free software activism?


    Richard Stallman: First I’d better explain what free software means. Free software means software that respects the user’s freedom. There are four essential freedoms that the user of any software ought to have:


    Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program, as you wish.


    Freedom 1: the freedom to study the program’s source code and then change it so that it does what you wish.


    Freedom 2: the freedom to distribute copies of the program when you wish.


    Freedom 3: the freedom to distribute copies of our modified versions, when you wish.


    Freedom 2 is the freedom to help your neighbor; freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute to your community. Both of them include both private distribution and publication–whichever you wish. Both include gratis distribution as well as sale of copies, whichever you wish


    So what is free software activism? It is the struggle to establish and maintain these freedoms. This is a struggle because most computer users do not have these freedoms. They were taken away back in the 1970s, when a tiny fraction of society used computers; when use of computers spread widely in the 90s, what spread was the use of user-subjugating proprietary software.


    The developer of a proprietary program maintains its power over the users by keeping them divided and helpless. They are divided because they are forbidden to share it with anyone. They are helpless because they lack the plans (the program source code), so they cannot feasibly change it. This power is what creates megacorporations such as Adobe, Apple and Microsoft, which use their power to expand their power.


    T.P.: Why do you consider ethical issues, such as freedom, to be more important than technological developments?


    R.S.: If ethics means anything, it has to take priority over practical convenience. The only other choice is to be amoral.


    T.P.: What kind of community does the free software movement envision?


    R.S.: Our campaign’s success is the necessary prerequisite for software users to be allowed to cooperate in a community in any fashion.


    We know from experience something about what this community is like. It is made up of many separate subcommunities that operate separately, and each person can choose which ones to participate in.


    The Free World isn’t paradise; people have different goals, and there are disputes. Freedom is like that; to eliminate disagreement takes a dictatorship.


    T.P.: Is free software changing the way we learn, work, innovate and, in a way, live? How?


    R.S.: Free software changes the way people learn about software by making it possible in the first place. The typical binary-only proprietary program does not allow people to learn how it works.


    Free software changes little, directly, about how most users do their work. At a deeper level, it changes everything, because the business or worker can make the software do what he or she wants it to do.


    Free software alters patterns of innovation by inviting everyone to participate; but in my view patterns of innovation don’t deserve as much emphasis as our society tends to give them. Freedom is more important.


    Free software changes our life with computers by preventing developers from taking control over how we live. Whereas proprietary software is controlled by its developer, free software develops democratically under the control of the users.


    T.P.: Do you think that the expansion of free wireless networks can liberate digital media from market and state control?


    R.S.: I think the term “market control” is partly misleading: markets as such don’t control what you can do with the Internet. The control is imposed separately by governments: defamation law (unjustly restrictive in the UK), copyright (too restrictive everywhere for the digital age), surveillance requirements, and outright censorship.


    Free wireless networks could reduce this control, but as long as they are only usable for local communication, they cannot do much to enable general publication of anything.


    T.P.: Do you agree with the promotion and the expansion of free software and free wireless local networks?


    R.S.: If you mean gratis local wireless networks, I am in favor of them of course; but that doesn’t relate very directly to free software. The kind of freedom that gratis local networks can offer is freedom from government surveillance–but this is not automatic.


    T.P.: How would you picture a common platform between a wider political/social commons and free software movements? What would be the common goals and the main pitfalls?


    R.S.: The free software movement could extend naturally to a movement for other kinds of works to be free. I would extend it in this way to say that all works whose main social use is of a practical nature ought to be free. This includes reference works and educational works, as well as recipes and software.


    I would not extend it further to all works; I don’t believe that all essays of opinion and all works of art ought to be free. However, they ought to be free-er. Everyone should be free to noncommercially distribute exact copies of any published work. And everyone should be free to combine and transform small pieces of other works to make a new work of art.


    Free software is an example of beneficial globalization. Many free programs have both developers and users around the world.


    When people object to globalization, they usually mean the globalization of the power of business. For business to have particular effective power is an offense against democracy; globalizing such an injustice makes a bigger one. But free software is human knowledge and cooperation. Globalizing this social good makes it better.


    Further links


    The GNU manifesto


    The Free Software Community After 20 Years


    Special issue: commons, recent articles
    Tags: , , ,

    | Print This Post Print This Post
    0 σχόλια »

    your comment