Free Software, Free Society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman. 2nd edition.

1

See http://freedomdefined.org.

1

The use of “hacker” to mean “security breaker” is a confusion on the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean someone who loves to program, someone who enjoys playful cleverness, or the combination of the two. See my article, “On Hacking,” at http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html.

2

As an Atheist, I don’t follow any religious leaders, but I sometimes find I admire something one of them has said.

3

In 1984 or 1985, Don Hopkins (a very imaginative fellow) mailed me a letter. On the envelope he had written several amusing sayings, including this one: “Copyleft—all rights reversed.” I used the word “copyleft” to name the distribution concept I was developing at the time.

4

We now use the GNU Free Documentation License for documentation.

5

“Bourne Again Shell” is a play on the name “Bourne Shell,” which was the usual shell on Unix.

6

That was written in 1998. In 2009 we no longer maintain a long task list. The community develops free software so fast that we can’t even keep track of it all. Instead, we have a list of High Priority Projects, a much shorter list of projects we really want to encourage people to write.

7

This license is now called the GNU Lesser General Public License, to avoid giving the idea that all libraries ought to use it.

8

Eric Raymond is a prominent open source advocate; see “Why Open Source Misses the Point”.

9

Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, rev. ed. (Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly, 2001), p. 23.

1

The wording here was careless. The intention was that nobody would have to pay for permission to use the GNU system. But the words don’t make this clear, and people often interpret them as saying that copies of GNU should always be distributed at little or no charge. That was never the intent.

1

The wording here was careless. The intention was that nobody would have to pay for permission to use the GNU system. But the words don’t make this clear, and people often interpret them as saying that copies of GNU should always be distributed at little or no charge. That was never the intent; later on, the manifesto mentions the possibility of companies providing the service of distribution for a profit. Subsequently I have learned to distinguish carefully between “free” in the sense of freedom and “free” in the sense of price. Free software is software that users have the freedom to distribute and change. Some users may obtain copies at no charge, while others pay to obtain copies—and if the funds help support improving the software, so much the better. The important thing is that everyone who has a copy has the freedom to cooperate with others in using it.

2

The expression “give away” is another indication that I had not yet clearly separated the issue of price from that of freedom. We now recommend avoiding this expression when talking about free software. See “Words to Avoid (or Use with Care)” for more explanation.

3

Nowadays, for software tasks to work on, see the High Priority Projects list, at http://fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/, and the GNU Help Wanted list, the general task list for GNU software packages, at http://savannah.gnu.org/people/?type_id=1. For other ways to help, see http://gnu.org/help/help.html.

4

This is another place I failed to distinguish carefully between the two different meanings of “free.” The statement as it stands is not false—you can get copies of GNU software at no charge, from your friends or over the net. But it does suggest the wrong idea.

5

Several such companies now exist.

6

Although it is a charity rather than a company, the Free Software Foundation for 10 years raised most of its funds from its distribution service. You can order things from the FSF to support its work.

7

A group of computer companies pooled funds around 1991 to support maintenance of the GNU C Compiler.

8

I think I was mistaken in saying that proprietary software was the most common basis for making money in software. It seems that actually the most common business model was and is development of custom software. That does not offer the possibility of collecting rents, so the business has to keep doing real work in order to keep getting income. The custom software business would continue to exist, more or less unchanged, in a free software world. Therefore, I no longer expect that most paid programmers would earn less in a free software world.

9

In the 1980s I had not yet realized how confusing it was to speak of “the issue” of “intellectual property.” That term is obviously biased; more subtle is the fact that it lumps together various disparate laws which raise very different issues. Nowadays I urge people to reject the term “intellectual property” entirely, lest it lead others to suppose that those laws form one coherent issue. The way to be clear is to discuss patents, copyrights, and trademarks separately. See “Did You Say ‘Intellectual Property’? It’s a Seductive Mirage” for further explanation of how this term spreads confusion and bias.

10

Subsequently we learned to distinguish between “free software” and “freeware.” The term “freeware” means software you are free to redistribute, but usually you are not free to study and change the source code, so most of it is not free software. See “Words to Avoid (or Use with Care)” for more explanation.

1

The charges were subsequently dismissed.

1

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.

2

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.

3

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 completely unavailable, as one would wish in the case of a program whose use is considered destructive.

4

Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, 286 US 123, 1932.

1

RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company was fined $15m in 2002 for handing out free samples of cigarettes at events attended by children. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/features/health/tobaccotrial/usa.htm.

*

Some views on the ideas of selling exceptions to free software licenses, such as the GNU GPL, are also available, at http://gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html.

*

This song is in a rhythm of 7/8; those unaccustomed to odd rhythms often take the unevenness to be a mistake. The meter can be analyzed into three subgroups as slow-quick-quick or 3-2-2. Such meters in Bulgarian music can often be stretched, and some musicians analyze this song as 3-2-3 instead; however, the last “3” is not as long as the first. Yves Moreau, who collected and taught the dance, endorses the rhythm of 7.

*

To learn more about this issue, you can read our GNU/Linux FAQ, at http://gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html, our page on Linux and the GNU Project, at http://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html, which gives a history of the GNU/Linux system as it relates to this issue of naming, and the article “GNU Users Who Have Never Heard of GNU,” at http://gnu.org/gnu/gnu-users-never-heard-of-gnu.html.

1

Michelle Finley, “French Pols Say, ‘Open It Up,’ ” 24 April 2000, http://wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/04/35862.

1

See http://opensource.org/docs/osd for the full definition.

2

Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning… Was the Command Line (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999), p. 94.

3

Mary Jane Irwin, “The Brave New World of Open-Source Game Design,” New York Times, online ed., 7 February 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/02/07/07gigaom-the-brave-new-world-of-open-source-game-design-37415.html.

1

Dan Farber, “Oracle’s Ellison Nails Cloud Computing,” 26 September 2008, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10052188-80.html.

2

An unedited transcript of American rock musician Courtney Love’s 16 May 2000 speech to the Digital Hollywood online-entertainment conference, in New York, is available at http://salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html.

3

See my article, “On Hacking,” at http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html.

4

“Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions,” 24 September 2003, http://eupat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309.

1

This note has been updated several times since the first publication of the story.

1

Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, 286 US 123, 1932.

2

Congressional Record, S. 483, “The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995,” 2 March 1995, pp. S3390–4.

3

Congressional Record, “Statement on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions,” 2 March 1995, p. S3390, http://gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1995-03-02/pdf/CREC-1995-03-02-pt1-PgS3390-2.pdf.

4

Jack Valenti was a longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

5

Congressional Record, remarks of Rep. Bono, 7 October 1998, p. H9952, http://gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1998-10-07/pdf/CREC-1998-10-07-pt1-PgH9946.pdf.

6

Since renamed to the unpronounceable CBDTPA, for which a good mnemonic is “Consume, But Don’t Try Programming Anything,” but it really stands for the “Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act.”

7

If you would like to help, I recommend the web sites http://defectivebydesign.org, http://publicknowledge.org, and http://eff.org.

1

“Nine Inch Nails Made at Least $750k from CC Release in Two Days,” posted by Cory Doctorow, 5 March 2008, http://boingboing.net/2008/03/05/nine-inch-nails-made.html.

2

Mike Masnick, “The Future of Music Business Models (and Those Who Are Already There),” 25 January 2010, http://techdirt.com/articles/20091119/1634117011.shtml.

3

Kevin Kelly is a commentator on digital culture and the founder of Wired magazine.

4

Kevin Kelly, “1,000 True Fans,” 4 March 2008, http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php.

5

See http://mecenatglobal.org/ for more information.

6

The SGAE is Spain’s main copyright collective for composers, authors, and publishers.

1

Brad Stone, “Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle,” New York Times, 17 July 2009, sec. B1, http://nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html.

1

Bradley Horowitz, “The Tech Lab: Bradley Horowitz,” BBC News, 29 June 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6252716.stm.

2

Charles Stross, “The Tech Lab: Charles Stross,” BBC News, 10 July 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6287126.stm.

3

Dave Winer, “The Tech Lab: Dave Winer,” BBC News, 14 June 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6748103.stm.

1

William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), p. 111, as quoted by Lawrence Lessig in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0 (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006), p. 5.

1

In other programming languages, such as Scheme, the Hello World program is usually not your first program. In Scheme you often start with a program like this:

(define (factorial n)
 (if (= n 0) 
     1 
     (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))

This computes the factorial of a number; that is, running

(factorial 5)