The free software movement is a social and political movement [1] with the aim of guaranteeing four basic freedoms for software users: the freedom to run their software, to study and modify their software, and to distribute copies with or without modification them. Despite the emergence of traditions and philosophies among members of the hacker culture of the 1970s, Richard Stallman formally founded the movement in 1983 with the launch of the GNU project . [2]
The free software philosophy underlying this movement, among other sources, originated on the essence and random elements of what was called the hacker culture of many computer users in the 1970s.
Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the movement.
Content
Philosophy
The philosophy of this movement is that the use of computers should not lead people to the fact that they are forbidden to cooperate with each other. In practice, this means giving up “ proprietary software ”, which imposes such restrictions, and promoting free software [3] with the ultimate goal of freeing everyone “in cyberspace” [4] , that is, every computer user. Stallman notes that this action will contribute, not hinder the progress of technology, because “it means that there will not be many wasteful efforts to program duplication of system functions. These efforts may instead go towards advancing a state of excellence. ” [five]
Members of the free software movement believe that all software users should have the freedoms listed in the Free Software Definition . Many of them believe that it is immoral to prohibit or prevent people from exercising these freedoms and that these freedoms are required to create a humane society where software users can help each other and have control over their computers. [6]
Some proponents of the STR movement do not believe that proprietary software is strictly immoral. [7] They argue that freedom is valuable (both socially and pragmatically) as a property of software in itself, separate from technical quality in the narrow sense.
The STR Foundation also believes that all software needs free documentation , in particular because conscientious programmers should be able to update manuals to reflect the changes they made in the software, but consider freedom of modification less important for other types of written works. [eight]
Actions
Writing and Distributing Free Software
The main work of the free software movement is focused on software development. The movement also rejects proprietary (patented) software, refusing to use such software. According to Stallman: "In the field of software, there is only one thing worse than unauthorized copying - this is a certified copy of a proprietary program." According to him, it does the same harm to the entire user community, and in addition, the developer, the culprit in this situation, also makes a profit [9] .
Raising Awareness and Understanding
Ethical Equality
Legislation
Much lobbying work has been done against software patents and the expansion of copyright laws. Other lobbying focuses directly on the use of free software by government agencies and state-funded projects.
Subgroups and Splits
Like many social movements, the STR movement is in constant internal conflict between proponents of compromise and proponents of strict adherence to values.
Open source
Stallman and Torvalds
The two most famous people associated with the movement are Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, who can be seen as representatives of value and apolitical philosophies, as well as competing programming styles of Gnu and Linux. Paradoxical as it may seem, the symbiosis of their activity probably created a full-fledged operating system , known as GNU / Linux or just Linux . In the GNU / Linux naming dispute, the FSF stands for the term GNU / Linux because GNU was a lengthy project to develop a free operating system for which the kernel was the last missing item. [ten]
See also
- Free software community
- GNU manifest
- Free Software History
- Using Linux
- Open source movement
- Free culture movement
- Open Society Foundation
- Open source initiative
- Public Views on Intellectual Property
Notes
- ↑ Richard Stallman on the nature of the Free software movement in 2008 on emacs-devel mailing list.
- ↑ Announcement of the GNU project . Archived August 21, 2011.
- ↑ Use Free Software . gnu.org. Archived on September 19, 2012.
- ↑ Stallman interviewed by Sean Daly . Groklaw (June 23, 2006).
- ↑ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader . Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
- ↑ Why free software? . gnu.org. Archived on September 19, 2012.
- ↑ Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism . gnu.org. Archived on September 19, 2012.
- ↑ Free Software and Free Manuals . gnu.org. Archived on September 19, 2012.
- ↑ The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom, 2006 .
- ↑ Linux and GNU - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Literature
- David M. Berry, Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source , Pluto Press, 2008, ISBN 0-7453-2414-2
- Johan Soderberg, Hacking Capitalism: The Free and Open Source Software Movement , Routledge, 2007, ISBN 0-415-95543-2
- Richard Stallman. The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom . - Zagreb, 2006.
Links
- GNU Project Philosophy
- Free Software Philosophy
- Philosophy of freedom
- What is free software? - Essay by Karl Fogel .
- The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom , a 2006 lecture by Richard Stallman
- Free Software Movement intro by FSF
- The GNU Project Philosophy Directory , containing many defining documents of the free software movement
- An interview with Stallman, "Free Software as a social movement"
- Christian Imhorst, Anarchy and Source Code - What does the Free Software Movement have to do with Anarchism? , (license: GFDL ), 2005
- An anti-DRM campaign - by Bill Xu and Richard Stallman
- The Codebreakers - a freely redistributable movie
- Stallman's free software song