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Free Software, Free Society
What's between the covers Free Software, Free Society is divided into four sections:
- One: The GNU Project and Free Software (10 chapters)
- Two: Copyright, Copyleft, and Patents (6 chapters)
- Three: Freedom, Society and Software (5 chapters)
- Four: The Licenses
The book starts off on a good note. Key to understanding nearly everything in the book is a basic understanding of what source code is. Since Stallman's usual audiences don't need to have this explained, Richard E. Buckman and book editor Joshua Gay provide a three-page introduction ("A Note on Software") which is as good and concise an explanation as I've ever seen of the meaning of "source code," "compiler," "assembler," "machine code" and "operating system." Without quibbling over details that space has made them gloss over, this section is a good mental boot camp for anyone reading the book with no programming knowledge at all.
This note is followed by a topic guide which walks a prospective reader through the contents of the book better than a table of contents can, pointing out what concepts are dealt with in the book's chapters, a sort of micro-index. (And in a book this brief, it helps make up for the lack of a more thorough index.)
Lawrence Lessig's introduction largely repeats what Lessig has said in the past about the openness of software. One paragraph in particular sums up one of my favorite analogies when it comes to Free software, and one which I think translates well to those familiar with other fields, like art and architecture:
"... Law firms have enough incentive to produce great briefs even though the stuff they build can be taken and copied by someone else. The lawyer is a craftsman; his or her product is public. Yet the crafting is not charity. Lawyers get paid; the public doesn't demand such work without price. Instead this economy flourishes, with later work added to the earlier."
Old hat, new hat.
Those familiar with Richard Stallman will no doubt recognize at least some of these essays, or at least their cores, because of the persistence with which Stallman has spread the word of the origins and underlying philosophies of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation. The first chapters of the book may bore readers who have heard dozens of times the story of Stallman's experiences with the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) in the MIT AI lab, the dissolution of the software-sharing society there, and how it directly led to his quest for a complete Free operating system. Stallman is an engaging writer, though, and I found myself enjoying it even though I have heard the story several times before.
The chapter in this section most likely to trouble those set in conventional thinking when it comes to software is Chapter 4, "Why Software Should Not Have Owners."
Despite the title, the book does not consist entirely of essays; it also includes a transcript of Stallman's speech at NYU in May of 2001, which shows how consistent Stallman's speaking is with his writing style. Some people have derided Stallman (and the FSF) as too academic, removed from the realities of normal computer users and the business world which right now implicitly favors non-Free software, so it's interesting to note the context of that speech -- it was a direct, welcome reaction to the prodding of Microsoft Vice President Craig Mundie's speech on the same campus earlier the same month, in which Mundie casually referred to the "viral aspect" of the GPL, and declared that Free software "puts at risk the continued vitality of the independent software sector."
There's also Stallman's short story "The Right to Read" and even (Chapter 10) the text and score of the Free Software Song. 'The Right to Read" may be the part of the book most appropriate for reprinting in tract form to leave around public libraries: this is a story, not quite hypothetical enough, about a future where every time a book is read, it must be unlocked with a password and authorized by those who hold the strings of copyright -- and sharing books is prohibited. Replace "books" with "e-books" and the story becomes less an allegory as a description of current reality.
Just as current are Chapters 12 ("Misinterpreting Copyright -- A Series of Errors") and 16 ("The Danger of Software Patents"). Stallman's arguments here, despite his protests that practicality is secondary to ethical interests, are eminently practical and should be read by everyone whose work touches either copyright or patents. And contrary to disparagement sometimes heaped on the Free software movement, he does not dismiss either of these in toto -- he simply points out forcefully ways in which these protections can be dangerously perverted.
Some of Free Software, Free Society's contents may strike readers (whatever their level of interest) as needlessly pedantic. I'm thinking here specifically of Chapter 21, "Words to Avoid," which lists 14 words and phrases Stallman discourages in the context of Free software as he defines it. On second glance, I think even this chapter is well suited to the book, since the reasoning presented for his objections to each word on this list (a paragraph or two apiece) will be most informative to people not already steeped in the lore and leanings of the Free Software movement. Some of these (I'll tease by saying that the entry for "content" is my favorite) squeeze in some humor as well.
Stallman's philosophy is what drives his attachment to Free software, but this book is not just a collection of harangues -- there's a great deal of practical advice as well.
Chapter 8, "Selling Free Software" is an essay found in earlier form on the GNU website, which in a few hundred words obliterates a persistent myth about Free software -- that it can't be sold or can't make its sellers a profit. Stallman emphasizes the differences that the GPL has on distribution terms, but lays out the terms clearly:
"Except for one special situation*, The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy."
Helpfully, that older chapter is preceded by one written earlier this year, "Releasing Free Software if You Work at a University." This is a particularly short chapter -- it takes up only two pages -- but the brevity is to Stallman's credit. I would like to see many more case studies beyond the single example presented (a GNU Ada compiler developed at NYU with Air Force funding, with a contract that specified its source code would be donated to the FSF) but these would probably be better in a book with a narrower scope. By not dwelling on unneeded specifics, Stallman has saved space to explain arguments and tactics which may be useful in persuading your school to endorse a Free software license. I also learned in this chapter that "The University of Texas has a policy that, by default, all software developed there is released as free software under the GNU General Public License." (Can anyone tell me more schools where this is true?)
The practical upshot of a philosophical book. Free Software, Free Society is not a book for casual reading, and has no thrills, cliffhangers or suspense -- unless you apply the thoughts within to current, real situations, in which case you can probably find more excitement than you might care for. When Stallman wrote "The Right to Read," no one had yet been arrested for making eBooks accessible or copyable. This book is intentionally didactic and persuasive.
Your library (local or school) should carry a copy of this book because it is distillation of ideas that are philosophically important but by no means abstract. And if the libraries available to you don't carry it, I suggest filling out a book request form -- which you may be able to do right from your computer. (Here are two online examples from Yale and New York City's branch libraries.) Likewise for (as appropriate) your school's computer science department, law school and business school. It would also make a nice gift to your Congressional representatives, since many of them seem to have forgotten that preserving a free society supposed to be their highest aim.
This is a book worth buying, reading, and passing on.
* That exception is when source code is not physically included with binaries; the source code must then be available upon request from the binaries' provider.
You can purchase Free Software, Free Society directly from the GNU Press site. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
..the online or downloadable version of this book?
there is too much of RMS-bashing these days, here on slashdot and on a lot of other places. Sure, whatever his faults, he has contributed significantly to the software community in general. How many people here can say that? It pays to remeber that even the greatest of minds (Edison, Newton, etc) were often on the wrong side; that doesn't detract from their acheivements.
I find Stallman instead to be one of the most persistently, relentlessly reasonable people whose thoughts I've ever encountered. Stallman may be a dogmatist,
Almost by definition, a dogmatist can't be reasonable, since dogma itself, as a tenet, is not subject to reason.
I looked around the GNU site, but was unable to find a link where I could download a copy of the book for free. Is it available for free download?
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
I looked around the GNU site, but was unable to find a link where I could download a copy of the book for free. Is it available for free download?
The poster has a completely valid point. If someone could explain to me the fundamental reason why software should be Free but a book should not be available in the same form, please respond.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
What's the big deal with Free Software? Why can't he broaden his focus to other area's of engineering and intellectual property? Why is software the only profession that has a foundation (FSF) to make it free.
My theory is that other professions have a much larger barrier of entry then software development. It's easy as a software developer to cheapen the value of the time it takes to write code, whereas with an airplane you can't cheapen the value of raw materials. It's sad to see that the most valuable aspect of any product - the time put in by people - is the least valued by RMS (from my perspective).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
The parent post is not a troll!
He may be a smartass, but he makes a legitmate point.
I'll post this as myself - I'm not going to hide.
I respect Stallman's right to earn money off of his works. But I've seen a lot of posts here that say "where is the on-line version" of his book. Why are they being modded down? It's an opinion that directly relates to the article.
Slashdot minds want to know!
"Ye can Mod me doon, but ye cannae take awey me Karma!"
Wait, actually, you can...
the people who don't give a damn about the bits being free or recognize MSFT as evil are probably not gonna be the ones who'll buy the book, so this is pretty unlikely to change any minds.
On the other hand, Wal-Mart is selling a PC with Linux for $200, showing how the most expensive part is the Windows tax. Now THAT will do a LOT of good as it'll get middle America gets comfortable with Linux.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
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And if the best of the K-12 teachers that taught the programers that recreated the free software (and the doctors and scientists...) were compensated for thier contribution to society we wouldn't have problems finding teachers.
/. but don't give programers more credit than they are do.
I know we're on
RMS is intolerant of perspectives that differ from his own.
I believe you're stretching the meaning of tolerance a little too far here. Tolerance is useful when we are describing the ability of individuals to get along without significantly interacting. It is a stepping stone from hatred to understanding; i.e., if you can't accept or sympathize with homosexuals, you should at least tolerate them since they don't do you any harm.
But RMS gets very angry at people who try to harm his ability to create software by closing off avenues of inquiry through abuse of the idea ownership system. They are harming him, and they are harming his ability to contribute to the software community.
If there were no relationship between what he gets angry about and his contributions to computing, you would be right that the issues are distinct. But they have everything to do with one another.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Why would it suck? You (the figurative you, not you in particular), have released this code freely, you have no interest in trying to profit from it. Someone else uses that code, and is able to implement it in a commercial application, and they can make money selling it. How has that harmed you? The free software you released is still out there for anyone else to use in any manner in which they see fit.
' You cannot "compile" a book into an unreadable format'
Sure I can, it's called PGP.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The same thing has been done with Linux in general (Red Hat)
Actually, I think that you picked a very poor example in that one. Red Hat realizes the value that core developers brought to Linux. A thousand or so of the major contributors -- who did it for love, not for any hope of future profit -- were given rights to buy RHAT stock at the IPO, making them all quite a boodle of cash if they were smart enough about it. Not only that, but Red Hat pays the salaries of people who used to just do linux development because they wanted to, but because Red Hat is able to make money off of it, they feed them as well.
Very rarely do the engineers and scientists and researchers grab the profits from their inventions. But businesses exist for profit, and that's how the world works: they make the money off of things invented by individuals.
Linux/open-source businesses in particular have been fairly conscious about remembering to reward those who worked to bring about that which they're profitting off of. Goodness knows, it's certainly in their best interests to do so.
There is no real measurement of how free something is, as there is no 1 dimensional axis.
To the software user - the GPL is free-er because it requires the distributors of software to that user to release the source. It even allows him to make secret changes not as GPL, as long as he doesn't distribute them.
To the software creator - the GPL is less free, and also in regard to a specific GPL'd source, it is less free.
I prefer the freedom for software users, as the "freedom" of software creators/distributors is not at all valuable, and not to be confused with other things meant to give software distributors an incentive to create work.
Congratulations, you have your ideal world, and you didn't have to do any work to achieve it! Your ideal world, in which there is a mix of MIT, BSD licenses, the GPL, and the licenses of Microsoft, Sun, Sony, and so on, is the world we live in now.
The proponents and owners of the "fascist" licenses are now trying to enlist the governments of the world to help them maintain a stranglehold on the market and people's freedoms to use computers to their full potential. The DMCA is a product of your ideal world.
Your freedom (as in, your freedom to think what you want, read what you want, spend your money as you want, work and live where you wish, maintain your privacy as you wish) is becoming inextricably linked to your freedom to control computers and software. Repeat: IF YOU CANNOT CONTROL COMPUTERS AND THE SOFTWARE THEY RUN, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FREEDOM. Put another way, severe restrictions can and will be put on how you are allowed to live your life.
Your "ideal world" is the vision of a lazy person who thinks (or hopes) that everything will work out for the best. RMS is not such a person, which is perhaps why you do not seem to understand what the FSF is about.
What doesn't the ACLU worry about rainforest decimation? Why doesn't the EFF broaden their focus to workers compensation?
An organziation needs a focus. If you broaden your focus too much, you dilute your message and risk alienating potential supporters who agree with part of your message but not all of it. And if you're a small organization (and compared to say the ACLU, the FSF is microscopic), you only have so much time and energy to spend. By focusing they increase their chances of doing good.
Furthermore, software has a certain special place in copyright law shared with few other areas. Software is both functional and expressive. Without the source, it's functionally impossible for an end user to modify it. I'd be hard pressed to modify my copy of Microsoft Office, but I can pretty easily modify my car or a book I've purchased.
This has nothing to do with the cheapening of developer time. Remember that RMS comes from a developer background. Many Free Software supporters (like myself) are professional programmers. He highly values the time put in by people, and so do I. But the person who built my car also put in alot of time, but I'm free to modify it, install off-brand parts, and general do as I will with it. Why does the personal who wrote my software get to control how I use it?
Let's look at an idealized "perfect Stallman world" in which he gets everything he wants (as near as I can tell). It becomes hard to sell software, because once one copy is sold it will be copied and resold for increasingly smaller prices until it has a zero price. Does this mean no software will be written and software developers will starve? Certainly not. First, more software is written strictly for in-company use. There was never a goal to sell it. If the company is concerned that there are valuable secrets in their in-company software, they can use "trade secret" law to protect it from being spread just fine. This leaves the much smaller segment of software for sale. Will the market shrink? Perhaps. However, much of the value of purchased software has always been support and warrantee. (Well, that's the theory. In practice much commericial software has useless support and disclaims any warrantees, but anyway...). So there opens a market for selling support and warrantees, and who best can support and warrantee the product besides the authors? Also, if software is open, there opens a large market for developers who will assemble existing products to create customized solutions for particular clients. Ultimately, the software is needed. The people who write the software need to make money. Something will be worked out, be it the Street Performer Protocol, tips, sponsorship by a company providing support and warrantee (essentially what RedHat and many other distributors do now), or something else.
I'm a software engineer and I support Free Software, and I'm not worried in the slightest about Free Software destroying my career. I may need to remain flexible, especially when I take jobs writing software for sale, but the work will remain.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Obviously, you don't see this a value, but what the GPL is trying to accomplish is ensure that everyone the software is passed to has the same rights you do.
Ah! I get it now! The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman are NOT for freedom. They are for equality.
I like equality, but I won't trade my liberty for it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Absurd. Freedom does not mean the power to do whatever you will. That's anarchy.
The FSF thinks that free software should be a right -- perhaps derived from the right to free speech. Thus, they've engineered the GPL to prevent corporations from taking free code and using it as the base on which to build code that is not freem, thus violating what the FSF considers to be a right.
Its very simple: the FSF wants to give the user and developer freedom, but not the power to take away other people's freedomrights...and the FSF considers free software a right; they also consider proprietary software a violation of that right. Thus, they don't want to aid in the creation of proprietary software.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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"Except for one special situation*, The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy."
Yes, but the first person who buys it from me can turn around and sell it for N - 1 dollars (where N is what I charged for it), thus undercutting me.
I feed and clothe my family with the money I make writing commercial software. I write desktop software which ships in the millions of copies, and no, in general consumers are not willing to pay for consulting services, support, or documentation like they do in the corporate IT world.
Free software works best when the software itself is of secondary importance and tied in with something else (service/support, hardware, etc.) that people actually buy. When there is nothing to tie in with, then there is no way to make a living doing it. In other words, in RMS' opinion, software has zero value. Thanks, but I choose to believe that the time I and my co-authors invest in our software is worth compensation.
When Richard Stallman's screeds start acknowledging and accomodating my way of life, get back to me. Until then, he has no relevance to me.
Regarding taxpayer money, why should industry get to close off avenues of inquiry that stem from it? Then only they benefit. The largest possible number of taxpayers should benefit from government software and from derivatives thereof. The best way to do that is GPL, since nobody can take away everyone's right to a particular improvement to the software.
Let's say that a govt. department, like the DoE write some code, and release the source to version 1.0 in the public domain. Organization A, which is itself a taxpayer, and whose shareholders and employees are taxpayers, take this code, and with their own time, money and equipment develop it into version 2.0, a commercial product. That in no way restricts the right of the public at large to version 1.0 source code, yet it means that A also see a tangible benefit to all the tax they pay.
This is freedom; restricting the right of A to benefit is not. Stallman's idea that you can charge what you want for GPL products is ridiculous, A would sell precisely one copy in that model, and would be highly unlikely to be able to recoup their investment if their product was aimed at the mass market.
GPL is anti-freedom therefore when it is applied to anything that is not developed entirely with private money. Stuff that is developed entirely privately can be released under whatever license the original owners prefer.