Philosophy of the GNU Project

This directory describes the philosophy of the Free Software Movement, which is the motivation for our development of the free software operating system GNU.

We also keep a list of Organizations that Work for Freedom in Computer Development and Electronic Communications.

About Free Software

Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use software in all the ways that are socially useful. Software differs from material objects--such as chairs, sandwiches, and gasoline--in that it can be copied and changed much more easily. These possibilities make software as useful as it is; we believe software users should be able to make use of them.

What is Free Software?
Why Software Should Not Have Owners
Why Software Should Be Free (This is an older and longer essay about the same topic as the previous one)
Why Free Software Needs Free Documentation
Selling Free Software Can Be OK!
Categories of Free and Non-Free Software
Free Software is More Reliable!
Is `Open Source' Synonymous With `Free Software'?
Open Source and Free Software, a document explaning the differences between the Free Software and Open Source philosophies from the Slackware project.
Linux, GNU, and Freedom
Regarding Gnutella
Why Schools Should Use Exclusively Free Software
The Free Software Community After 20 Years, With great but incomplete success, what now?
MyDoom and You

About the GNU Project

Initial announcement of the GNU Project
The GNU Manifesto
Brief history of the GNU Project
The GNU Project, a longer and more complete description of the project and its history.
What is the Free Software Foundation?
Why GNU/Linux?

Licensing Free Software

Laws and Issues

Why We Need "Free Software" Voting Machines
World Summit on the Information Society
FSF's Position on W3 Consortium "Royalty-Free" Patent Policy rewritten
Comments from Richard Stallman on the ICLC's rejection of the IP Enforcement Directive
Richard Stallman has written a review of Boldrin and Levine's "The case against intellectual property."
SCO, GNU, and Linux, by Richard Stallman, discusses how SCO's lawsuit against IBM pertains to the work of the GNU project. Please see the FSF SCO Response Page for more details on this subject.
That's fighting talk a slightly modified version of the article, originally published inThe Guardian of London by Richard Stallman and Nick Hill.
Ebooks: Freedom Or Copyright a slightly modified version of the article, originally published in Technology Review in 2000, by Richard Stallman
The introduction by Lawrence Lessig to Free Software, Free Society: The Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman is available for reading.
Misinterpreting Copyright is another essay by Richard Stallman about the flaws in popular defenses of copyright law.
Can you trust your computer?, a work by Richard Stallman about the so-called "trusted computing" initiatives.
FSF's Brief Amicus Curiae in the Eldred v. Ashcroft Supreme Court case
Science must `push copyright aside', another work of Richard Stallman, explains how copyright is impeding progress in scientific research.
- You may also be interested in The Public Library of Science, which is dedicated to making scientific research freely available to all on the Internet.
- A related article describes how the principal scientific organizations of Germany have issued a joint declaration in support of the provision of free scientific information over the Internet.
FSF's Statement in Response to Proposed Revised Final Judgment in Microsoft vs. United States, submitted to the US Department of Justice under the Tunney Act.
In Felten v. RIAA, scientists are asking a court to rule that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not prohibit them from publishing their research.
EFF "Intellectual Property: MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) DVD Cases" Archive
Reevaluating Copyright: The Public must prevail
The Right to Read: A Dystopian Short Story by Richard Stallman
Eldred v. Reno is about a lawsuit to overturn a law that extends copyright by 20 extra years.
Encryption software volunteers needed in countries without export control.
How to Protect the Right to Write Software (independent of whether it's free or not)
The Right Way to Tax DAT
How to Protect the Freedoms of Speech, Press, and Association on the Internet
Patent Reform Is Not Enough
Saving Europe from Software Patents
Boycott Amazon!
Why We Must Fight UCITA
A world with UCITA may allow fine print to outweigh the right thing by Ed Foster <gripe@infoworld.com>
Freedom-Or Copyright? by Richard Stallman
Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation is a paper that presents a mathematical model showing how patents can impede progress in fields like software.
Copyright versus community in the age of computer networks: is a verbatim transcript of a talk by Richard Stallman at the Logiciel Libre Conference in July 2000.
Harm from the Hague.
An English translation of the famous decision of the District Court of Munich (Germany) regarding the enforceability and validity of the GPL. The translation was done by the Oxford Internet Institute.
Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage. An essay on the true meaning of the phrase "Intellectual Property", by Richard M. Stallman

Terminology and Definitions

Confusing Words which You Might Want to Avoid
"Open Source Software" or "Free Software"?
Richard Stallman wrote letter to the editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal in June which further explains the distinction between the Free Software and Open Source movements.
Categories of Free and Non-Free Software

Third Party Ideas

These articles give other people's philosophical opinions in support of free software, or related issues, and don't speak for the GNU project -- but we more or less agree with them.

Many of the Organizations that Work for Freedom in Computer Development and Electronic Communications also have philosophical opinions in support of free software, or related issues.

Jimmy Wales explains why Free Knowledge requires Free Software and Free File Formats in this paper. He also exposes why Wikipedia needs to be free software.
Software patents under the magnifying glass. In this article the author uses arguments based on lambda calculus to show why software cannot be patented.
Lakhani and Wolf's paper on the motivation of free software developers says that a considerable fraction are motivated by the view that software should be free. This was despite the fact that they surveyed the developers on SourceForge, a site that does not support the view that this is an ethical issue.
Groklaw sends a Dear Darl letter; a group from the free software and open source community has put together a response to SCO CEO Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community.
Hardware Central. We disagree with one aspect of this article's conclusion: It's not legitimate for Microsoft to help Disney and the RIAA impose Digital Restrictions Management on you, any more than it is legitimate for Disney and the RIAA to try it. The full power of computing should be available to you, not just to the owners of information.
The Brazilian Federal Goverment sponsored a national Free Software Movement in Brazil. This article is in Brazilian Porteguese.
The SCO Sue Me Petition has overwhelmed its inceptor and the petition is no longer taking votes. The author of the petition, John Everitt, was expecting only several responses but instead he had thousands of participants. In the last available public communication about the petition, he urged people to help FSF in any way possible.
Senator Alberto Conde's answer to CESSI regarding Bill E-135/02-03 which proposes use of Free Software in the public sector for the province of Buenos Aires. The bill has been submitted by Senator Alberto Conde himself.
Some economists argue that copyright and patents fail to promote the progress that they supposedly exist to promote.
This article takes a narrowly economic view of its subject, measuring social alternatives only by what goods are available for what price, assuming that you the citizen are a mere consumer and place no value on your freedom in itself. It also uses the misleading term "intellectual property", which is misleading because it lumps copyrights and patents together. The article also lumps them together, which it can get away with because it ignores the (different) social issues that copyrights and patents raise.
Despite those flaws, it is significant. If one can judge copyright to be harmful even on narrow economic terms, disregarding the ethical wrong of stopping people from sharing, it can only be more harmful once we consider the ethics as well.
Sincere Choice explains the dishonesty of Microsoft's "Software Choice" program.
We don't completely agree with Sincere Choice, since it says that proprietary software is just as legitimate as free software. We firmly disagree: software should be free. However, if you know people who have been taken in by "Software Choice", please refer them to the Sincere Choice site.
Two articles by Duncan Campbell describe how NSA backdoors were hidden in proprietary software programs: "Only NSA can listen, so that's OK" and "How NSA access was built into Windows". Both are clear demonstrations of how users of proprietary software can often be unaware of what they are actually running.
"Copyright C.P.U." by Harry Hillman Chartrand is a good summary of the history of copyright.
Malla Pollack's "What is Congress Supposed to Promote?" explains how the United States' government's recent tendencies to provide maximum control to copyright holders defies the justification for establishment of copyright set out in the constitution.
Mikael Pawlo's "Software lemon law with bitter taste" explains how a "lemon law" for software could threaten free software development.
Peruvian Congressman Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez wrote a letter to a Microsoft manager after they wrote expressing concern about the country's pending Free Software in Public Administration bill. It does an excellent job of allaying concerns about free software often raised by Microsoft and others. The English translation of the letter is here.
British historian Thomas Macaulay had ideas about copyright in 1841 which still hold true today.
openrevolt.org is a site devoted to providing information about the European Copyright Directive and similar legislation. It concentrates on the two principal problems of the EUCD, which make it easier for copyright holders to censor webpages on ISPs and give legal protection to copy-protection measures.
Chilling Effects is a collection point for cease and desist notices concerning online activity -- we invite visitors to enter C&Ds they have received or sent. The website collects the C&Ds in a searchable database and hyperlinks them to explanations of the legal issues.
Coding is a Crime, by Shannon Cochran, is a commentary on the indictment of Jon Johansen on felony charges for helping write DeCSS.
The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain., by James Boyle, also available here.
Intellectual Property: The Attack on Public Space in Cyberspace, by Howard Besser, describes how various industries are using their leverage with copyright to make fewer locations on the Internet less and less public.
Wipout is holding a counter-essay contest to the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) own student contest. It aims to raise awareness about the ways in which protection of intellectual property may negatively impact our daily lives.
Technology and the corruption of copyright, by Joshua S. Bauchner
"Locating Copyright Within the First Amendment Skein,", by Neil W. Netanel, argues that the United States court system has been wrong in its dated assumption that fair use eliminates the conflict between copyright law and the First Amendment.
Richard Stallman co-signed a joint statement responding to comments by Craig Mundie of Microsoft.
In Patent Reform Now!, Don Marti calls for free software supporters to nominate Richard M. Stallman to US Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Public Advisory Committee.
Copyrighting fire
Read Them And Weep, by Simson Garfinkel, talks about the pending bills that would give information owners sweeping new powers, and restrict the activities of users.
Applying Copyleft To Non-Software Information, by Michael Stutz.
Only the Free World Can Stand Up to Microsoft, by Tom Hull.
The Free Music Philosophy, by Ram Samudrala.
Record companies argue for more copyright power by saying they are the support of the musicians. This article shows how record companies really treat musicians.
The Manifesto: Piracy is Your Friend, by Jaron Lanier.
Note that the GNU Project recommends avoiding the term piracy since it implies that sharing copies is somehow illegitimate.
A primer on the ethics of ``Intellectual property'', by Ram Samudrala.
Is Self-Interest Sufficient to Organize an Free Economy? by Loyd Fueston.
The Free Science Campaign is a campaign for the freedom to distribute scientific work.
People, places, things and ideas by Kragen Sitaker
The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights by Roderick T. Long
The Free Software Movement does not endorse Libertarianism, and we do not agree entirely with that article. But it is useful for refuting one specific argument that is made in favor of proprietary software.
Articles in Spanish about free software issues
Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright
The Death and Rebirth of Plagiarism by Rodney Riegle. (We don't entirely agree with this article--we think there is no harm in asking people to make some extra effort to write ``footnotes'' to give credit.)
Save the Web is a website devoted to protecting Internet users rights in Europe.
Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation? by Frank, Gilovich, and Regan.
Development, Ethical Trading, and Free Software by Danny Yee.
THE BALLAD OF DENNIS KARJALA: A political comment in the form of a broadside ballad by Timothy R. Phillips.
Shaping Collaborative ICT Development and Initiatives for Global Prosperity by Robert J. Chassell
Competitive Advantages of Free Software by Alexandre Oliva.
Patent grant under the GPL.
The Concept of Copyright Fights for Internet Survival by John Markoff.
The Real Purpose of Copyright by John N. Berry III.
Copyrighting Fire! (Humor) by Ian Clarke.
The Future Brings "Infirmation Technology" by Andy Oram.
The Free Protocols Foundation is an independent public forum, dedicated to the support of patent-free protocols.
Software Libre and Commercial Viability by Alessandro Rubini
Information liberation by Brian Martin. We urge people to avoid using the term intellectual property and to instead speak about copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.
Seat Sale, a satire about copyright.
A gallery of examples demonstrating how outrageous and absurd the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is.
Frankentoons by Joel Kahn.
A book review of Digital Copyright.
Live and let license by Joe Barr.
Piecepack is a set of boardgame pieces which everyone is free to use in creating or playing various types of games.
Eastern Gianozia has put together a tongue-in-cheek look at Software Patents and DRM.
Here is an interesting allegory (in Spanish) comparing Free Software to a dining experience.
Free Software and Scouting
Patents Are An Economic Absurdity: This article adopts as a premise the popular view that free trade is desirable. We don't always agree - beyond a certain point, free trade gives businesses too much power, allowing them to intimidate democracy. But that is a different matter.

Miscellaneous

Philosophy Humor. We don't have to be serious all the time.

Translations of These Documents

Unofficial Korean translations of many of these documents
Translations of the GNU Manifesto
Translations of the term ``free software''
Translations of the GNU GPL
Translations of the GNU LGPL
Translations of the GNU FDL

Philosophy of the GNU Project

Table of Contents