>>42229993>open sourceFree software is software respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity.
Most people have never heard of the ethical reasons for which the GNU system was developed and the free software community built, because nowadays those are more often spoken of as “open source”, attributing them to a different philosophy in which these freedoms are hardly mentioned.
In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source”, which became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement. Most discussion of “open source” pays no attention to right and wrong, only to popularity and success.
By contrast, for the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect.
The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Sometimes proprietary software developers produce a program that is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom.
A pure open source enthusiast will say, “I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?” This attitude rewards schemes that take away our freedom.
The free software activist will say, “Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement.” If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.
