Why free software

We should refuse to use them even briefly, even on someone else's computer. Public agencies exist for the people, not for themselves. When they do computing, they do it for the people.

They have a duty to maintain full control over that computing so that they can assure it is done properly for the people. This constitutes the computational sovereignty of the state. They must never allow control over the state's computing to fall into private hands. To maintain control of the people's computing, public agencies must not do it with proprietary software software under the control of an entity other than the state.

And they must not entrust it to a service programmed and run by an entity other than the state, since this would be SaaSS. Proprietary software has no security at all in one crucial case—against its developer. And the developer may help others attack. We do not know whether Apple does likewise, but it is under the same government pressure as Microsoft.

If the government of any other country uses such software, it endangers national security. Do you want the NSA to break into your government's computers? See our suggested policies for governments to promote free software.

Schools and this includes all educational activities influence the future of society through what they teach. They should teach exclusively free software, so as to use their influence for the good. To teach a proprietary program is to implant dependence, which goes against the mission of education. By training in use of free software, schools will direct society's future towards freedom, and help talented programmers master the craft. They will also teach students the habit of cooperating, helping other people.

If you bring software to class, you may not keep it for yourself. Rather, you must share copies with the rest of the class—including the program's source code, in case someone else wants to learn. Therefore, bringing proprietary software to class is not permitted except to reverse engineer it. Proprietary developers would have us punish students who are good enough at heart to share software and thwart those curious enough to want to change it.

This means a bad education. See more discussion about the use of free software in schools. Life without freedom is oppression, and that applies to computing as well as every other activity in our lives.

Non-free software still makes the users surrender control over their computing to someone else, but now there is another way to lose it: Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, which means letting someone else's server do your own computing activities. Both non-free software and SaaSS can spy on the user, shackle the user, and even attack the user. Malware is common in services and proprietary software products because the users don't have control over them. That's the fundamental issue: while non-free software and SaaSS are controlled by some other entity typically a corporation or a state , free software is controlled by its users.

Why does this control matter? Because freedom means having control over your own life. If you use a program to carry out activities in your life, your freedom depends on your having control over the program. You deserve to have control over the programs you use, and all the more so when you use them for something important in your life.

Stallman also founded the League for Programming Freedom, which campaigned against legal threats to programming including patents. Your control over the program requires four essential freedoms. If any of them is missing or inadequate, the program is proprietary or "non-free" :.

Programs are written by programmers in a programming language -- like English combined with algebra -- and that form of the program is the "source code". Anyone who knows programming, and has the program in source code form, can read the source code, understand its functioning, and change it too. When all you get is the executable form, a series of numbers that are efficient for the computer to run but extremely hard for a human being to understand, understanding and changing the program in that form are forbiddingly hard.

It is not an obligation; doing this is your choice. If the program is free, that doesn't mean someone has an obligation to offer you a copy, or that you have an obligation to offer him a copy. Distributing a program to users without freedom mistreats them; however, choosing not to distribute the program -- using it privately -- does not mistreat anyone. The first two freedoms mean each user has individual control over the program. With the other two freedoms, any group of users can together exercise collective control over the program.

The result is that the users control the program. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the "owner" of the program, that controls the program -- and through it, exercises power over its users. Skip to content , sitemap or skip to search. To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others.

Free software has become the foundation of a learning society where we share our knowledge in a way that others can build upon and enjoy. Currently, many people use proprietary software that denies users these freedoms and benefits. If we make a copy and give it to a friend, if we try to figure out how the program works, if we put a copy on more than one of our own computers in our own home, we could be caught and fined or put in jail.

Its users have no way of knowing what is going on behind the scenes which makes the free software movement an ethical one. Pokitomik fuses the Holy Trinity of food. Clark holds its first-ever Senior Sunset. Why alternative music is the best music, objectively. Teenagers have become attached to their mobile devices.

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