Philosophy of the GNU Project
A series of articles describing 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.
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.
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.
About the GNU Operating System
Licensing Free Software
Laws and Issues
- The root
of this problem is software controlled by its developer, by
Richard M. Stallman.
- Computing
“progress”: good and bad, by Richard M. Stallman.
- Why Audio
Format matters by Karl Fogel
- Don't Let
“Intellectual Property” Twist Your Ethos, by
Richard M. Stallman.
- The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time,
by Richard M. Stallman.
- Opposing Digital Rights Mismanagement,
by Richard M. Stallman, answers a few common questions about DRM.
-
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 in
The 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 that
appeared in the
Nature Webdebates in 2001, 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.
- U.S. Congress Threatens to
Establish a New Kind of Monopoly, an attempt of the Congress to
create a private monopoly over repeating publicly known
information.
- 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
- Censoring My
Software, by Richard
Stallman
- Protect Postal
Privacy, a campaign to resist the proposed rule by the United
States Postal Service to collect private information from
customers.
- 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
- Freedom-Or
Copyright?, an older version of the essay.
- 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
- Free Software and
(e-)Government - an article from The Guardian, by Richard
Stallman (originally published under the title “Second Sight”).
-
Free Software and Sustainable Development - A short article by
Richard Stallman regarding the use of proprietary software in
cultural development.
-
Soft sell. An article by Richard M. Stallman published in
The Guardian.
-
Patent absurdity, an article by Richard M. Stallman published in
The Guardian.
- The Anatomy of a Trivial Patent,
by Richard M. Stallman.
Terminology and Definitions
Upholding Software Freedom
GIFs
Motivation
Philosophical humor
More philosophy articles
Translations of this page