From the Inside Flap
"Richard Stallman is the prophet of the free software movement. He understood the dangers of software patents years ago. Now that this has become a crucial issue in the world, buy this book and read what he said." Tim Berners-Lee - inventor of the World Wide Web.
"Richard Stallman is the philosopher king of software. He single-handedly ignited what has become a world-wide movement to create software that is Free, with a capital F. He has toiled for years at a project that many once considered a fool's errand, and now widely see as inevitable'."
Simson L. Garfinkel - computer science author and columnist.
"By his hugely successful efforts to establish the idea of 'free software' Stallman has made a massive contribution to the human condition. His contribution combines elements that have technical, social, political, and economic consequences."
Gerald Jay Sussman - Matsushita Professor of Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"'Free as in free speech, not as in free beer.' RMS is the leading philosopher of software. You may dislike some of his attitudes, but you cannot avoid his ideas. This slim volume will make those ideas readily accessible to those who are confused by the buzzwords of rampant commercialism. This book needs to be widely circulated and widely read."
Peter H. Salus - computer science writer, book reviewer, and UNIX historian.
Richard is the leading force of the free software movement. This book is very important to spread the key concepts of free software world-wide, so everyone can understand it. Free software gives people freedom to use their creativity."
Masayuki Ida - Professor, Graduate School of International Management, Aoyama Gakuin University.
About the Author
Richard M. Stallman is internationally recognized as the creator of the Free Software movement - a progressive worldwide movement to make software code freely available so as to improve its development and accessibility. He has received a host of computer science honors ranging from a 1990 MacArthur "Genius Grant" to his election into the American National Academy of Engineering in 2002.
In 1984 Stallman resigned from his job as a researcher at MIT's AI Lab in protest of its increasingly restrictive copyright policy. He countered by+starting the GNU Project, a revolutionary concept at that time, and by writing the General Public License. GNU with the LINUX kernel is the first freely distributable operating system available with source code and protected by the GPL.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Editor's Note - By Joshua Gay The waning days of the 20th century seemed like an Orwellian nightmare: laws preventing publication of scientific research on software; laws preventing sharing software; an overabundance of software patents preventing development; and end-user license agreements that strip the user of all freedoms---including ownership, privacy, sharing, and understanding how their software works. This collection of essays and speeches by Richard M. Stallman addresses many of these issues. Above all, Stallman discusses the philosophy underlying the free software movement. This movement combats the oppression of federal laws and evil end-user license agreements in hopes of spreading the idea of software freedom.
With the force of hundreds of thousands of developers working to create GNU software and the GNU/Linux operating system, free software has secured a spot on the servers that control the Internet, and---as it moves into the desktop computer market---is a threat to Microsoft and other proprietary software companies.
These essays cater to a wide audience; you do not need a computer science background to understand the philosophy and ideas herein. However, there is a ``Note on Software,'' to help the less technically inclined reader become familiar with some common computer science jargon and concepts, as well as footnotes throughout.
Many of these essays have been updated and revised from their originally published version. Each essay carries permission to redistribute verbatim copies.
The ordering of the essays is fairly arbitrary, in that there is no required order to read the essays in, for they were written independently of each other over a period of 18 years. The first section, ``The GNU Project and Free Software,'' is intended to familiarize you with the history and philosophy of free software and the GNU project. Furthermore, it provides a road map for developers, educators, and business people to pragmatically incorporate free software into society, business, and life.
The second section, ``Copyright, Copyleft, and Patents,'' discusses the philosophical and political groundings of the copyright and patent system and how it has changed over the past couple of hundred years. Also, it discusses how the current laws and regulations for patents and copyrights are not in the best interest of the consumer and end user of software, music, movies, and other media. Instead, this section discusses how laws are geared towards helping business and government crush your freedoms.
The third section, ``Freedom, Society, and Software'' continues the discussion of freedom and rights, and how they are being threatened by proprietary software, copyright law, globalization, ``trusted computing,'' and other socially harmful rules, regulations, and policies. One way that industry and government are attempting to persuade people to give up certain rights and freedoms is by using terminology that implies that sharing information, ideas, and software is bad; therefore, we have included an essay explaining certain words that are confusing and should probably be avoided.
The fourth section, ``The Licenses,'' contains the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, and the GNU Free Documentation License; the cornerstones of the GNU project.
