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

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.

Chapter 3 notes

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.

Chapter 4 notes

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.