on the features I would otherwise have considered highest priority.
Some free software developers make money by selling support services. In 1994, Cygnus Support, with around 50 employees, estimated that about 15 percent of its staff activity was free software development—a respectable percentage for a software company.
In the early 1990s, companies including Intel, Motorola, Analog Devices Texas Instruments and Analog Devices combined to fund the continued development of the GNU C compiler. Most GCC development is still done by paid developers. The GNU compiler for the Ada language was funded in the 90s by the US Air Force, and continued since then by a company formed specifically for the purpose.
The free software movement is still small, but the example of listener-supported radio in the US shows it’s possible to support a large activity without forcing each user to pay.
As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying no to proprietary software.
You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software. You deserve to be able to learn how the software works, and to teach your students with it. You deserve to be able to hire your favorite programmer to fix it when it breaks.
You deserve free software.
Copyright © 1994, 2009 Richard Stallman
This essay was originally published in
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire chapter are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Chapter 6.
Why Software Should Be Free
Introduction
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”?
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.
I would like to consider the same question using a different criterion: the prosperity and freedom of the public in general.
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.
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 “free” software.[1]
How Owners Justify Their Power
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.
The emotional argument goes like this: “I put my sweat, my heart, my soul into this program. It comes from
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Argument against Having Owners
The question at hand is, “Should development of software be linked with having owners to restrict the use of it?”
In order to decide this, we have to judge the effect on society of each of those two activities
To put it another way, if restricting the distribution of a program already developed is harmful to society
