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.
- What is Free Software?
- Why Software Should Not Have Owners
- Why Software Should Be Free (This is an older and longer essay about the same topic as the previous one)
- Why Free Software Needs Free Documentation
- Selling Free Software is OK!
- Categories of Free and Non-Free Software
- Free Software is More Reliable!
- Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software
- Linux, GNU, and Freedom
- Regarding Gnutella
- Why Schools Should Use Exclusively Free Software
- MyDoom and You
- 15 Years of Free Software
- Free Software movement
- Your Freedom Needs Free Software
- Guidelines for Free System Distributions
About the GNU Operating System
- Initial announcement of the GNU Operating System
- The GNU Manifesto
- Brief history of the GNU Project
- The GNU Project, a longer and more complete description of the project and its history.
- What is the Free Software Foundation?
- Why GNU/Linux?
Licensing Free Software
- General information on licensing and copyleft
- A list of specific free software licenses
- Frequently Asked Questions About the GNU Licenses
- Why You Shouldn't Use the Lesser GPL for Your Next Library
- Copyleft
- Why Copyleft?
- Releasing Free Software if You Work at a University
- Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism
- Censorship envy and licensing
- The X Window System Trap
- The Problems of the Apple License
- The BSD License Problem
- The Netscape Public License Has Serious Problems
- The Free Software Movement and UDI
- It's not the Gates, it's the bars
- Is Microsoft the Great Satan?
- The Microsoft Antitrust Trial and Free Software
- On the Microsoft Verdict
- Microsoft's New Monopoly
- The Problems of the Plan 9 License
- The New Motif License
- Using the GNU FDL
- The GNU GPL and the American Way
- The GNU GPL and the American Dream
- Enforcing the GNU GPL
- Freedom or Power?
- We Can Put an End to Word Attachments
- Free But Shackled - The Java Trap (Although as of December 2006 Sun is in the middle of rereleasing its Java platform under GNU GPL, the issue described in this article still remains important)
- Fighting Software Patents - Singly and Together
- Software Patents and Literary Patents, by Richard M. Stallman, speaking of patenting artistic techniques, US patent (6,935,954) covers making game characters start to hallucinate when (according to the game) they are being driven insane. That is getting pretty close to the hypothetical examples cited in this article.
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
- Confusing Words which You Might Want to Avoid
- Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software
- “Open Source Software” or “Free Software”? (This is an older essay about the same topic as the previous one.)
- Richard Stallman wrote letter to the editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal in June which further explains the distinction between the Free Software and Open Source movements.
- Categories of Free and Non-Free Software
- Translations of the term “free software” into various languages
Upholding Software Freedom
- The Free Software Community After 20 Years, With great but incomplete success, what now?
- Thank You, Larry McVoy by Richard M. Stallman
- Overcoming Social Inertia, by Richard M. Stallman
GIFs
- Why there are no GIF files on GNU web pages, While this story is a historical illustration of the danger of software patents, these particular patents are now no longer a concern. For details of our website policies regarding GIFs, see our web web guidelines.
Motivation
Philosophical humor
- Philosophy Humor. We don't have to be serious all the time.