Yesterday I came across a transcript of a speech Richard Stallman gave at NYU in 2001 in which he defined the meaning of Free Software, and defined “Freedom Zero”.

And now, I will give my answer to that question for the particular area of using software. A program is free software for you, a particular user, if you have the following freedoms:

  • First, Freedom Zero is the freedom to run the program for any purpose, any way you like.
  • Freedom One is the freedom to help yourself by changing the program to suit your needs.
  • Freedom Two is the freedom to help your neighbor by distributing copies of the program.
  • And Freedom Three is the freedom to help build your community by publishing an improved version so others can get the benefit of your work.
Richard Stallman, 29 May 2001

That’s probably one of the best descriptions of “Free As In Speech” Software that I’ve ever read. Also, I found the following paragraph especially poignant given what I’ve been dealing with at work:

But it also affects people’s morale. You know if the computer is constantly frustrating to use, and people are using it, their lives are going to be frustrating, and if they’re using it in their jobs, their jobs are going to be frustrating; they’re going to hate their jobs. And you know, people protect themselves from frustration by deciding not to care. So you end up with people whose attitude is, “Well, I showed up for work today. That’s all I have to do. If I can’t make progress, that’s not my problem; that’s the boss’s problem.” And when this happens, it’s bad for those people, and it’s bad for society as a whole. That’s Freedom One, the freedom to help yourself.

It’s a good read, listing not only the problems with proprietary systems but the problems with trying to keep them that way. The dangers of Non-Disclosure Agreements, the importance of enforcing the GPL, copyleft, and alot more.
[tag:gpl][tag:stallman][tag:freedomzero]

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