Richard Stallman

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)

Software & Patents: Stallman Declares "The Battle...Must Continue!"

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)

Software Patents: "Programmers and Consumers Should Gather Forces," Says Richard Stallman

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)

Richard Stallman Corrects Misunderstandings of the GPL

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)

Java Viewpoint: Free But Shackled - The "Java Trap"

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)