Philosophical Issues that Pertain to the GNU Project

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"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

- Samuel Adams

Table of Contents

• Articles that directly address the philosophy of the GNU project and free software.
• Articles that deal with related topics but are not directly about the GNU project.
• Articles that give other people's philosophical opinions in support of free software, or related issues.

• 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.)
• Selling Free Software Can Be OK!
• Categories of Free and Non-Free Software (18k characters)
• Free software is more reliable!
• What is the Free Software Foundation?
• What is Copyleft?
• Why Free Software Needs Free Documentation.
• Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism
• The X Windows Trap
• The BSD License Problem
• The Free Software Movement and UDI
• Confusing Words which You Might Want to Avoid
• "open source software" or "free software"?
• History of the GNU Project
• The GNU Manifesto (31k characters)
• Is Microsoft the Great Satan?
• Why there are no GIF files on GNU web pages
• Reevaluating Copyright: The Public must prevail

This second group of articles deal with related topics but are not directly about the GNU project. (Table of Contents)

• Encryption software volunteers needed in countries without export control.
• Netscape is considering making the Netscape browser free software.
• But the draft Netscape Public License has serious problems.
• How to Protect the Right to Write Software (independent of whether it's free or not)
• Where the Copyright System and Government Plans are Leading Us
• The Right Way to Tax DAT (22k characters)
• Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator
• A speech that Richard Stallman gave in 1986 at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden (Japanese translation)
• English translation of a speech that Georg Greve gave in 1998 at the GNU/Linux Cluster "CLOWN" in Germany (German original available here)
• How to Protect the Freedoms of Speech, Press, and Association on the Internet
• Transcription of a speech that Richard Stallman gave in 1998 at the University of Paris (in French).

This third group of articles give other people's philosophical opinions in support of free software, or related issues, and don't speak for the GNU project---but we more or less agree with them. (Table of Contents)

• UCLA discriminates against students using GNU/Linux. One part of their justification is supporting the power of software owners.
• Copyrighting fire
• The Hacker Anti-Defamation League
• Read Them And Weep, by Simson Garfinkel, talks about the pending bills that would give information owners sweeping new powers, and restrict the activities of users.
• Applying Copyleft To Non-Software Information, by Michael Stutz.
• Only the Free World Can Stand Up to Microsoft, by Tom Hull.
• Free Software for the Masses, by Gord Matzigkeit.
• The Free Music Philosophy, by Ram Samudrala.
• A primer on the ethics of ``Intellectual property'', by Ram Samudrala.
• Is Self-Interest Sufficient to Organize an Free Economy? by Loyd Fueston.
• The Free Science Campaign is a campaign for the freedom to distribute scientific work.
• Article in the Swiss paper Neue Zuercher Zeitung about the Netscape decision to release source code. (in German)

FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. Other ways to contact the FSF.

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Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

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Updated: 23 Dec 1998 greve