While we have never released a complete GNU system suitable for production
use, a variant of the GNU system is now used by tens of millions of people
who mostly are not aware it is such. Free software does not mean "gratis"; it
means that users are free to run the program, study the source code, change
it, and redistribute it either with or without changes, either gratis or for
a fee.
My hope was that a free operating system would open a path to escape forever
from the system of subjugation which is proprietary software. I had
experienced the ugliness of the way of life that non-free software imposes on
its users, and I was determined to escape and give others a way to escape.
Non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits
cooperation and communit... (more)
Last year IBM took a significant step forward in cooperation with the free
software community by offering blanket licenses for 500 of its patents to all
free software developers. This does not cover all of IBM's software patents,
which must number in the thousands. And there are other areas where IBM does
not yet cooperate with the free software community -- they have not provided
the ne... (more)
Last July 6, the free-software community and programmers everywhere awaited a
showdown in the European parliament over software patents. The outcome was
far from predictable.
If we, the free-software proponents, had lost, it would have been a final
defeat in Europe. The relevant part of the European commission works hand in
glove with the Business Software Alliance (BSA), and a BSA lawyer ... (more)
Don Rosenberg's review in LWM (Vol. 3, issue 4) of Larry Rosen's book, Open
Source Licensing, did double-duty as a platform for FUD about the GNU GPL.
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL for short) was not the first free
software license, but was the first to embody the concept of "copyleft": the
requirement that all modified and extended versions of the program be free
under the same... (more)
Headnote
As of December 2006, Sun is in the middle of rereleasing its Java platform
under the GNU GPL. When this license change is completed, we expect that Java
will no longer be a trap. Nonetheless, the general issue described here will
remain important, because any non-free library or programming platform can
cause a similar problem. We must learn a lesson from the history of Java, so ... (more)