Bonum Certa Men Certa

Richard M. Stallman (RMS) Debunks Misconceptions About What Free Software Means and Explains How It Works

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 11, 2024,
updated Sep 11, 2024

Free software activist Richard Stallman

Make fun of the person all you want (by cherry-picking 40+ years of video archives and articles, short quips etc.), but he has a point about Software Freedom

Free software means people (including users and developers) exercise control over the program, not the programmers. "It's disturbing how many people don't understand FOSS," an associate says, linking to "Yaak Is Now Open Source" (not Yacc). "Just because someone provides a patch, there is no obligation to push it into the code base. That should be obvious, but some just don't get it."

Remember how 12 years ago Linus Torvalds pushed back against Microsofters with Trojan horses ('secure' boot) and was attacked for doing so.

As our associate put it: "Microsoft has been able to confuse lots of people to think that Free software means control over the programmers and forced redistribution. That's another point from RMS latest talk, that the redistribution is optional but IF it is done then the recipients of the redistributed software retain the same rights as the original authors. It is not like that in non-reciprocal licenses."

We've therefore decided to reproduce bits from the RMS latest talk (weeks ago), repeating portions of the complete transcript.

Here are the relevant bits from the opening remarks:

I'd like to point out that Free Software is a morally stronger idea and Open Source was an attempt later to co-opt the ... work of the community and de-politicize the philosophy. So that's why I have never supported Open Source in any way. I still support the Free Software Movement, that software should respect users' freedom. So, first of all, I'd like to say more about the difference between Free Software and open source because it's a topic of great confusion. I founded the Free Software movement in 1983 with the announcement. The term Open Source was coined fourteen years later in 1998 when Free Software was becoming widely used and starting to be something people knew about. But not everyone who worked on or used or promoted Free Software agreed with the philosophy of freedom behind it. And the people who didn't agree wanted to get out of connection with it by and many of them were working for businesses or with businesses that didn't care about freedom at all. So, they found a new term, Open Source, which they defined differently but it overlapped a lot. Most Free programs are Open Source. At the time it seemed all Free programs were open source, and most open source programs were Free. So, it is easy to get confused and think of these two as identical, but they are not. But the biggest difference is that the term Open Source has never had any implications about right and wrong. It was, that idea was launched that way by people who didn't see it as a matter of right and wrong. So that's why I decided I would not start using that term. They asked me to and I said, "no". Because Freedom, in my view, is what it's all about and I want the idea of Freedom to reach everybody who comes in contact with it. So what this means to you is that you have a choice. If you talk about Free/Libre software you will be saying I'm talking about Freedom. Freedom is what this is about.

And if you use that term consistently you will spread that message. If you use the term Open Source you'll spread a different message. Well, what you say is up to you. But if you care about Freedom, please find opportunities to show that you care because we are competing with a different idea which has a lot of businesses promoting it. In order for use to keep the idea of Free Software alive, it helps if we work at it. So that's why you'll never hear me use the term Open Source. I mention it in order to criticize it, but I don't describe software that way.

And from Q & A session bits:

[Reading audience question] Can't we just call it Free and Open Software? [Responding to it] Well, if that's what you want to say, I can't stop you but I think it's misleading. First of all do you mean the set that includes free programs and open source programs. Or does it mean programs that are at once both free and open source. You can see one of these is a conjunction one of these is a disjunction. Free or you could take that as meaning Free is synonymous with open source but they are not synonymous. They're very different. I recommend reading gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html which explains thoroughly every aspect of the relationship between Free Software and Open Source Software.

These remarks are more relevant than ever. Openwashing has become highly problematic. Here are examples from this morning.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 11/10/2024: Discord Still Blocked in Turkey, Google Might be Split
Links for the day
LinuxSecurity (Guardian Digital, Inc) Sloppy With Its 'Linux' Slop
This kind of stuff is killing the World Wide Web and ruins human knowledge
Loss of Technical Merit(ocracy)
"buzzword diplomas"
 
Going Almost 4.5 Decades Back to Find 'Dirt' on a Person
That incident was 42.5 years ago. Is that how far some people would go in an effort to discredit a person?
XBox is Dead. This is Just the Beginning.
the main reason Microsoft bought Activision/Blizzard was to hide the growing losses and failure of XBox
The Risk to the "Linux" Brand
Brands that are not guarded from misuse/abuse will inevitably lose their original meaning and their value
Gemini Links 11/10/2024: Deploying Common Lisp Programs and Examining FreeBSD
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 10, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, October 10, 2024
[Meme] Chin-dropping and Jaw-dropping (Considerable Drop in Patent Validity and Quality)
This drop is very much intentional
Gemini Links 10/10/2024: Untruth, SSH, Gopher, and More
Links for the day
Geminispace Beyond 4,100 Capsules
4,000 was less than 8 weeks ago
Links 10/10/2024: TikTok's Legal Problems, WeblogPoMo Challenges
Links for the day
[Meme] European Patent Convention and Vienna Convention Became Only Fictions (Laws and Constitutions Are Now Works of Fiction in Europe)
A political crisis and blunder
Almost a Thousand EPO Staff Protesting to EPO Member States That the Office Illegally Grants Software Patents and Other Invalid European Patents
"The outcome confirms that the concerns about the EPO’s ability to grant legally sound patents remain"
Junk Science
science is being compromised for business purposes
[Meme] Dismantling .io (Stick a Fork, the Hype is Done)
NVIDIA is an excellent new example of hype driving up fictional "value"
UNIX is 55 This Year, It is 6 Years Older Than Microsoft
It should be noted that the surviving co-creator of UNIX, Ken Thompson, 'moved' to GNU/Linux (Debian) in recent years
This Year, for the First Time Since August 2019 (Bill Gates MIT Scandal, Jeffrey Epstein Bribes), libreplanet-discuss Was Inactive an Entire Month
The MIT injustice remains and recent "libreplanet" events were held in a venue that's not MIT and far less prestigious than MIT (the "Wentworth" imitation)
[Meme] Different Ending for Jurassic Park
UNIX in old movies
Evolution of Hype
Passing fads and rebranding
Groklaw Will Hopefully Come Back
Sites should be able to run for decades with hardly any human role/interaction, but that's not where we are...
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 09, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 09, 2024
World Wide Web: Only Criminals Would Want Real Security and Vouch for Themselves When They Use Encryption
In "modern" browsers, the podlock icon probably does not mean what users might think it means
[Meme] OSI Digging Its Very Own Grave (With Microsoft)
The very latest blog post from OSI is a hoot
Gemini Links 09/10/2024: YouTube Woes, Post-Truth Slop
Links for the day
Geminispace is More Trustworthy (and Private) Than the World Wide Web
Unlike the Web, Geminispace does not route the lion's share of traffic through a collective of spying companies
Nothing Will Be Secure and Robust to Failure Until Microsoft Windows is Eradicated and/or Disconnected From the Internet
Every system has limited capacity, Windows botnets push things to their limits
GNU/Linux Took Off at the BSDs' Expense (Amid Telecom Lawsuit) and the Rivalry Persists Because Microsoft is Negligible in the Server Space
UNIX or POSIX is the future
Links 09/10/2024: Samsung's Fall, Tensions Growing Near China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2024: Retroware and gmlgcd 2.0
Links for the day
Links 09/10/2024: Microsoft's Surface Duo 2 Officially Dead, X/Twitter Shutdown in Brazil, and "OpenAI Is A Bad Business"
Links for the day
Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part III
By Dr. Andy Farnell
[Meme] Bill Gates With a Side of "Linux"
Linux Foundation is trolling us with Bill Gates
Once Again Linux Foundation Makes It Clear It's Being 'Absorbed' by Bill Gates
Linux Foundation devotes about 2% of its budget to Linux
Links 08/10/2024: Australian Fines for Twitter (X), Fake Patent Courts Still Not Scuttled
Links for the day
World Wide Slop
If it quacks like a duck...
IBM is a Boys' Club
If IBM collapsed, the Red Hat engineers who work on GNU and Linux would simply work elsewhere (on the same projects)
The Miserable State of GAFAM
Looking for government handouts
Microsoft is Acting Like a Company That's Running Out of Money (But Still Pretends to be Wealthy in Order to Attract or Retain Shareholders)
Azure has had mass layoffs every year since 2020, yet Microsoft keeps telling shareholders that "clown computing" is growing
Dr. Andy Farnell's Article on Societal Disorganised Attachment and the Role of Social Control Media
The article is quite long and typos were still being fixed as recently as last night
Smear Alert: Linus Torvalds Asking for Better Commit Messages Makes Linus a (Grammar) Nazi
Maybe the "mainstream media" is looking for clickbait or maybe it's actively looking to make a scandal - a phony controversy with which to make the job of coordinating Linux unpleasant
Gemini Links 09/10/2024: Climate Doom and Clagrange
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 08, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 08, 2024