(For more information about the GNU project and free software,look at the files `GNU', `COPYING', and `DISTRIB', in the samedirectory as this file.) Why Software Should Be Free by Richard Stallman (Version of April 24, 1992) Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, Free Software Foundation, Inc. Verbatim copying and redistribution is permitted without royalty; alteration is not permitted.Introduction************ The existence of software inevitably raises the question of howdecisions about its use should be made. For example, suppose oneindividual who has a copy of a program meets another who would like acopy. It is possible for them to copy the program; who should decidewhether this is done? The individuals involved? Or another party,called the "owner"? Software developers typically consider these questions on theassumption that the criterion for the answer is to maximize developers'profits. The political power of business has led to the governmentadoption of both this criterion and the answer proposed by thedevelopers: that the program has an owner, typically a corporationassociated with its development. I would like to consider the same question using a differentcriterion: the prosperity and freedom of the public in general. This answer cannot be decided by current law--the law should conformto ethics, not the other way around. Nor does current practice decidethis question, although it may suggest possible answers. The only wayto judge is to see who is helped and who is hurt by recognizing ownersof software, why, and how much. In other words, we should perform acost-benefit analysis on behalf of society as a whole, taking account ofindividual freedom as well as production of material goods. In this essay, I will describe the effects of having owners, and showthat the results are detrimental. My conclusion is that programmershave the duty to encourage others to share, redistribute, study andimprove the software we write: in other words, to write "free"software.(1)How Owners Justify Their Power****************************** Those who benefit from the current system where programs are propertyoffer two arguments in support of their claims to own programs: theemotional argument and the economic argument. The emotional argument goes like this: "I put my sweat, my heart, mysoul into this program. It comes from *me*, it's *mine*!" This argument does not require serious refutation. The feeling ofattachment is one that programmers can cultivate when it suits them; itis not inevitable. Consider, for example, how willingly the sameprogrammers usually sign over all rights to a large corporation for asalary; the emotional attachment mysteriously vanishes. By contrast,consider the great artists and artisans of medieval times, who didn'teven sign their names to their work. To them, the name of the artistwas not important. What mattered was that the work was done--and thepurpose it would serve. This view prevailed for hundreds of years. The economic argument goes like this: "I want to get rich (usuallydescribed inaccurately as `making a living'), and if you don't allow meto get rich by programming, then I won't program. Everyone else is likeme, so nobody will ever program. And then you'll be stuck with noprograms at all!" This threat is usually veiled as friendly advicefrom the wise. I'll explain later why this threat is a bluff. First I want toaddress an implicit assumption that is more visible in anotherformulation of the argument. This formulation starts by comparing the social utility of aproprietary program with that of no program, and then concludes thatproprietary software development is, on the whole, beneficial, andshould be encouraged. The fallacy here is in comparing only twooutcomes--proprietary software vs. no software--and assuming there areno other possibilities. Given a system of intellectual property, software development isusually linked with the existence of an owner who controls thesoftware's use. As long as this linkage exists, we are often facedwith the choice of proprietary software or none. However, this linkageis not inherent or inevitable; it is a consequence of the specificsocial/legal policy decision that we are questioning: the decision tohave owners. To formulate the choice as between proprietary softwarevs. no software is begging the question.The Argument against Having Owners********************************** The question at hand is, "Should development of software be linkedwith having owners to restrict the use of it?" In order to decide this, we have to judge the effect on society ofeach of those two activities *independently*: the effect of developingthe software (regardless of its terms of distribution), and the effectof restricting its use (assuming the software has been developed). Ifone of these activities is helpful and the other is harmful, we would bebetter off dropping the linkage and doing only the helpful one. To put it another way, if restricting the distribution of a programalready developed is harmful to society overall, then an ethicalsoftware developer will reject the option of doing so. To determine the effect of restricting sharing, we need to comparethe value to society of a restricted (i.e., proprietary) program withthat of the same program, available to everyone. This means comparingtwo possible worlds. This analysis also addresses the simple counterargument sometimesmade that "the benefit to the neighbor of giving him or her a copy of aprogram is cancelled by the harm done to the owner." Thiscounterargument assumes that the harm and the benefit are equal inmagnitude. The analysis involves comparing these magnitudes, and showsthat the benefit is much greater. To elucidate this argument, let's apply it in another area: roadconstruction. It would be possible to fund the construction of all roads withtolls. This would entail having toll booths at all street corners.Such a system would provide a great incentive to improve roads. Itwould also have the virtue of causing the users of any given road topay for that road. However, a toll booth is an artificial obstructionto smooth driving--artificial, because it is not a consequence of howroads or cars work. Comparing free roads and toll roads by their usefulness, we find that(all else being equal) roads without toll booths are cheaper toconstruct, cheaper to run, safer, and more efficient to use.(2) In apoor country, tolls may make the roads unavailable to many citizens.The roads without toll booths thus offer more benefit to society atless cost; they are preferable for society. Therefore, society shouldchoose to fund roads in another way, not by means of toll booths. Useof roads, once built, should be free. When the advocates of toll booths propose them as *merely* a way ofraising funds, they distort the choice that is available. Toll boothsdo raise funds, but they do something else as well: in effect, theydegrade the road. The toll road is not as good as the free road; givingus more or technically superior roads may not be an improvement if thismeans substituting toll roads for free roads. Of course, the construction of a free road does cost money, which thepublic must somehow pay. However, this does not imply the inevitabilityof toll booths. We who must in either case pay will get more value forour money by buying a free road. I am not saying that a toll road is worse than no road at all. Thatwould be true if the toll were so great that hardly anyone used theroad--but this is an unlikely policy for a toll collector. However, aslong as the toll booths cause significant waste and inconvenience, it isbetter to raise the funds in a less obstructive fashion. To apply the same argument to software development, I will now showthat having "toll booths" for useful software programs costs societydearly: it makes the programs more expensive to construct, moreexpensive to distribute, and less satisfying and efficient to use. Itwill follow that program construction should be encouraged in some otherway. Then I will go on to explain other methods of encouraging and (tothe extent actually necessary) funding software development.The Harm Done by Obstructing Software===================================== Consider for a moment that a program has been developed, and anynecessary payments for its development have been made; now society mustchoose either to make it proprietary or allow free sharing and use.Assume that the existence of the program and its availability is adesirable thing.(3) Restrictions on the distribution and modification of the programcannot facilitate its use. They can only interfere. So the effect canonly be negative. But how much? And what kind? Three different levels of material harm come from such obstruction: * Fewer people use the program. * None of the users can adapt or fix the program. * Other developers cannot learn from the program, or base new work on it. Each level of material harm has a concomitant form of psychosocialharm. This refers to the effect that people's decisions have on theirsubsequent feelings, attitudes and predispositions. These changes inpeople's ways of thinking will then have a further effect on theirrelationships with their fellow citizens, and can have materialconsequences. The three levels of material harm waste part of the value that theprogram could contribute, but they cannot reduce it to zero. If theywaste nearly all the value of the program, then writing the programharms society by at most the effort that went into writing the program.Arguably a program that is profitable to sell must provide some netdirect material benefit. However, taking account of the concomitant psychosocial harm, thereis no limit to the harm that proprietary software development can do.Obstructing Use of Programs=========================== The first level of harm impedes the simple use of a program. A copyof a program has nearly zero marginal cost (and you can pay this cost bydoing the work yourself), so in a free market, it would have nearly zeroprice. A license fee is a significant disincentive to use the program.If a widely-useful program is proprietary, far fewer people will use it. It is easy to show that the total contribution of a program tosociety is reduced by assigning an owner to it. Each potential user ofthe program, faced with the need to pay to use it, may choose to pay,or may forego use of the program. When a user chooses to pay, this is azero-sum transfer of wealth between two parties. But each time someonechooses to forego use of the program, this harms that person withoutbenefiting anyone. The sum of negative numbers and zeros must benegative. But this does not reduce the amount of work it takes to *develop*the program. As a result, the efficiency of the whole process, indelivered user satisfaction per hour of work, is reduced. This reflects a crucial difference between copies of programs andcars, chairs, or sandwiches. There is no copying machine for materialobjects outside of science fiction. But programs are easy to copy;anyone can produce as many copies as are wanted, with very littleeffort. This isn't true for material objects because matter isconserved: each new copy has to be built from raw materials in the sameway that the first copy was built. With material objects, a disincentive to use them makes sense,because fewer objects bought means less raw materials and work neededto make them. It's true that there is usually also a startup cost, adevelopment cost, which is spread over the production run. But as longas the marginal cost of production is significant, adding a share of thedevelopment cost does not make a qualitative difference. And it doesnot require restrictions on the freedom of ordinary users. However, imposing a price on something that would otherwise be freeis a qualitative change. A centrally-imposed fee for softwaredistribution becomes a powerful disincentive. What's more, central production as now practiced is inefficient evenas a means of delivering copies of software. This system involvesenclosing physical disks or tapes in superfluous packaging, shippinglarge numbers of them around the world, and storing them for sale. Thiscost is presented as an expense of doing business; in truth, it is partof the waste caused by having owners.Damaging Social Cohesion======================== Suppose that both you and your neighbor would find it useful to run acertain program. In ethical concern for your neighbor, you should feelthat proper handling of the situation will enable both of you to use it.A proposal to permit only one of you to use the program, whilerestraining the other, is divisive; neither you nor your neighbor shouldfind it acceptable. Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying yourneighbor: "I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so that Ican have a copy for myself." People who make such choices feelinternal psychological pressure to justify them, by downgrading theimportance of helping one's neighbors--thus public spirit suffers.This is psychosocial harm associated with the material harm ofdiscouraging use of the program. Many users unconsciously recognize the wrong of refusing to share, sothey decide to ignore the licenses and laws, and share programs anyway.But they often feel guilty about doing so. They know that they mustbreak the laws in order to be good neighbors, but they still considerthe laws authoritative, and they conclude that being a good neighbor(which they are) is naughty or shameful. That is also a kind ofpsychosocial harm, but one can escape it by deciding that these licensesand laws have no moral force. Programmers also suffer psychosocial harm knowing that many userswill not be allowed to use their work. This leads to an attitude ofcynicism or denial. A programmer may describe enthusiastically thework that he finds technically exciting; then when asked, "Will I bepermitted to use it?", his face falls, and he admits the answer is no.To avoid feeling discouraged, he either ignores this fact most of thetime or adopts a cynical stance designed to minimize the importance ofit. Since the age of Reagan, the greatest scarcity in the United Statesis not technical innovation, but rather the willingness to work togetherfor the public good. It makes no sense to encourage the former at theexpense of the latter.Obstructing Custom Adaptation of Programs========================================= The second level of material harm is the inability to adapt programs.The ease of modification of software is one of its great advantages overolder technology. But most commercially available software isn'tavailable for modification, even after you buy it. It's available foryou to take it or leave it, as a black box--that is all. A program that you can run consists of a series of numbers whosemeaning is obscure. No one, not even a good programmer, can easilychange the numbers to make the program do something different. Programmers normally work with the "source code" for a program, whichis written in a programming language such as Fortran or C. It usesnames to designate the data being used and the parts of the program, andit represents operations with symbols such as `+' for addition and `-'for subtraction. It is designed to help programmers read and changeprograms. Here is an example; a program to calculate the distancebetween two points in a plane: float distance (p0, p1) struct point p0, p1; { float xdist = p1.x - p0.x; float ydist = p1.y - p0.y; return sqrt (xdist * xdist + ydist * ydist); } Here is the same program in executable form, on the computer Inormally use: 1314258944 -232267772 -231844864 1634862 1411907592 -231844736 2159150 1420296208 -234880989 -234879837 -234879966 -232295424 1644167167 -3214848 1090581031 1962942495 572518958 -803143692 1314803317 Source code is useful (at least potentially) to every user of aprogram. But most users are not allowed to have copies of the sourcecode. Usually the source code for a proprietary program is kept secretby the owner, lest anybody else learn something from it. Users receiveonly the files of incomprehensible numbers that the computer willexecute. This means that only the program's owner can change theprogram. A friend once told me of working as a programmer in a bank for aboutsix months, writing a program similar to something that was commerciallyavailable. She believed that if she could have gotten source code forthat commercially available program, it could easily have been adaptedto their needs. The bank was willing to pay for this, but was notpermitted to--the source code was a secret. So she had to do sixmonths of make-work, work that counts in the GNP but was actually waste. The MIT Artificial Intelligence lab (AI lab) received a graphicsprinter as a gift from Xerox around 1977. It was run by free softwareto which we added many convenient features. For example, the softwarewould notify a user immediately on completion of a print job. Wheneverthe printer had trouble, such as a paper jam or running out of paper,the software would immediately notify all users who had print jobsqueued. These features facilitated smooth operation. Later Xerox gave the AI lab a newer, faster printer, one of the firstlaser printers. It was driven by proprietary software that ran in aseparate dedicated computer, so we couldn't add any of our favoritefeatures. We could arrange to send a notification when a print job wassent to the dedicated computer, but not when the job was actuallyprinted (and the delay was usually considerable). There was no way tofind out when the job was actually printed; you could only guess. Andno one was informed when there was a paper jam, so the printer oftenwent for an hour without being fixed. The system programmers at the AI lab were capable of fixing suchproblems, probably as capable as the original authors of the program.Xerox was uninterested in fixing them, and chose to prevent us, so wewere forced to accept the problems. They were never fixed. Most good programmers have experienced this frustration. The bankcould afford to solve the problem by writing a new program fromscratch, but a typical user, no matter how skilled, can only give up. Giving up causes psychosocial harm--to the spirit of self-reliance.It is demoralizing to live in a house that you cannot rearrange to suityour needs. It leads to resignation and discouragement, which canspread to affect other aspects of one's life. People who feel this wayare unhappy and do not do good work. Imagine what it would be like if recipes were hoarded in the samefashion as software. You might say, "How do I change this recipe totake out the salt?", and the great chef would respond, "How dare youinsult my recipe, the child of my brain and my palate, by trying totamper with it? You don't have the judgment to change my recipe andmake it work right!" "But my doctor says I'm not supposed to eat salt! What can I do?Will you take out the salt for me?" "I would be glad to do that; my fee is only $50,000." Since theowner has a monopoly on changes, the fee tends to be large. "However,right now I don't have time. I am busy with a commission to design anew recipe for ship's biscuit for the Navy Department. I might getaround to you in about two years."Obstructing Software Development================================ The third level of material harm affects software development.Software development used to be an evolutionary process, where a personwould take an existing program and rewrite parts of it for one newfeature, and then another person would rewrite parts to add anotherfeature; in some cases, this continued over a period of twenty years.Meanwhile, parts of the program would be "cannibalized" to form thebeginnings of other programs. The existence of owners prevents this kind of evolution, making itnecessary to start from scratch when developing a program. It alsoprevents new practitioners from studying existing programs to learnuseful techniques or even how large programs can be structured. Owners also obstruct education. I have met bright students incomputer science who have never seen the source code of a largeprogram. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can'tbegin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can'tsee how others have done it. In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standingon the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed inthe software field--you can only stand on the shoulders of the otherpeople *in your own company*. The associated psychosocial harm affects the spirit of scientificcooperation, which used to be so strong that scientists would cooperateeven when their countries were at war. In this spirit, Japaneseoceanographers abandoning their lab on an island in the Pacificcarefully preserved their work for the invading U.S. Marines, and left anote asking them to take good care of it. Conflict for profit has destroyed what international conflict spared.Nowadays scientists in many fields don't publish enough in their papersto enable others to replicate the experiment. They publish only enoughto let readers marvel at how much they were able to do. This iscertainly true in computer science, where the source code for theprograms reported on is usually secret.It Does Not Matter How Sharing Is Restricted============================================ I have been discussing the effects of preventing people from copying,changing and building on a program. I have not specified how thisobstruction is carried out, because that doesn't affect the conclusion.Whether it is done by copy protection, or copyright, or licenses, orencryption, or ROM cards, or hardware serial numbers, if it *succeeds*in preventing use, it does harm. Users do consider some of these methods more obnoxious than others.I suggest that the methods most hated are those that accomplish theirobjective.Software Should be Free======================= I have shown how ownership of a program--the power to restrictchanging or copying it--is obstructive. Its negative effects arewidespread and important. It follows that society shouldn't haveowners for programs. Another way to understand this is that what society needs is freesoftware, and proprietary software is a poor substitute. Encouragingthe substitute is not a rational way to get what we need. Vaclav Havel has advised us to "Work for something because it isgood, not just because it stands a chance to succeed." A businessmaking proprietary software stands a chance of success in its own narrowterms, but it is not what is good for society.Why People Will Develop Software******************************** If we eliminate intellectual property as a means of encouragingpeople to develop software, at first less software will be developed,but that software will be more useful. It is not clear whether theoverall delivered user satisfaction will be less; but if it is, or ifwe wish to increase it anyway, there are other ways to encouragedevelopment, just as there are ways besides toll booths to raise moneyfor streets. Before I talk about how that can be done, first I want toquestion how much artificial encouragement is truly necessary.Programming is Fun================== There are some lines of work that few will enter except for money;road construction, for example. There are other fields of study andart in which there is little chance to become rich, which people enterfor their fascination or their perceived value to society. Examplesinclude mathematical logic, classical music, and archaeology; andpolitical organizing among working people. People compete, more sadlythan bitterly, for the few funded positions available, none of which isfunded very well. They may even pay for the chance to work in thefield, if they can afford to. Such a field can transform itself overnight if it begins to offer thepossibility of getting rich. When one worker gets rich, others demandthe same opportunity. Soon all may demand large sums of money for doingwhat they used to do for pleasure. When another couple of years go by,everyone connected with the field will deride the idea that work wouldbe done in the field without large financial returns. They will advisesocial planners to ensure that these returns are possible, prescribingspecial privileges, powers and monopolies as necessary to do so. This change happened in the field of computer programming in the pastdecade. Fifteen years ago, there were articles on "computeraddiction": users were "onlining" and had hundred-dollar-a-week habits.It was generally understood that people frequently loved programmingenough to break up their marriages. Today, it is generally understoodthat no one would program except for a high rate of pay. People haveforgotten what they knew fifteen years ago. When it is true at a given time that most people will work in acertain field only for high pay, it need not remain true. The dynamicof change can run in reverse, if society provides an impetus. If wetake away the possibility of great wealth, then after a while, when thepeople have readjusted their attitudes, they will once again be eagerto work in the field for the joy of accomplishment. The question, "How can we pay programmers?", becomes an easierquestion when we realize that it's not a matter of paying them afortune. A mere living is easier to raise.Funding Free Software===================== Institutions that pay programmers do not have to be software houses.Many other institutions already exist which can do this. Hardware manufacturers find it essential to support softwaredevelopment even if they cannot control the use of the software. In1970, much of their software was free because they did not considerrestricting it. Today, their increasing willingness to joinconsortiums shows their realization that owning the software is notwhat is really important for them. Universities conduct many programming projects. Today, they oftensell the results, but in the 1970s, they did not. Is there any doubtthat universities would develop free software if they were not allowedto sell software? These projects could be supported by the samegovernment contracts and grants which now support proprietary softwaredevelopment. It is common today for university researchers to get grants todevelop a system, develop it nearly to the point of completion and callthat "finished", and then start companies where they really finish theproject and make it usable. Sometimes they declare the unfinishedversion "free"; if they are thoroughly corrupt, they instead get anexclusive license from the university. This is not a secret; it isopenly admitted by everyone concerned. Yet if the researchers were notexposed to the temptation to do these things, they would still do theirresearch. Programmers writing free software can make their living by sellingservices related to the software. I have been hired to port the GNU Ccompiler to new hardware, and to make user-interface extensions to GNUEmacs. (I offer these improvements to the public once they are done.)I also teach classes for which I am paid. I am not alone in working this way; there is now a successful,growing corporation which does no other kind of work. Several othercompanies also provide commercial support for the free software of theGNU system. This is the beginning of the independent software supportindustry-an industry that could become quite large if free softwarebecomes prevalent. It provides users with an option generallyunavailable for proprietary software, except to the very wealthy. New institutions such as the Free Software Foundation can also fundprogrammers. Most of the foundation's funds come from users buyingtapes through the mail. The software on the tapes is free, which meansthat every user has the freedom to copy it and change it, but manynonetheless pay to get copies. (Recall that "free software" refers tofreedom, not to price.) Some users order tapes who already have a copy,as a way of making a contribution they feel we deserve. The Foundationalso receives sizable donations from computer manufacturers. The Free Software Foundation is a charity, and its income is spent onhiring as many programmers as possible. If it had been set up as abusiness, distributing the same free software to the public for the samefee, it would now provide a very good living for its founder. Because the Foundation is a charity, programmers often work for theFoundation for half of what they could make elsewhere. They do thisbecause we are free of bureaucracy, and because they feel satisfactionin knowing that their work will not be obstructed from use. Most ofall, they do it because programming is fun. In addition, volunteershave written many useful programs for us. (Recently even technicalwriters have begun to volunteer.) This confirms that programming is among the most fascinating of allfields, along with music and art. We don't have to fear that no onewill want to program.What Do Users Owe to Developers?================================ There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moralobligation to contribute to its support. Developers of free softwareare contributing to the users' activities, and it is both fair and inthe long term interest of the users to give them funds to continue. However, this does not apply to proprietary software developers,since obstructionism deserves a punishment rather than a reward. We thus have a paradox: the developer of useful software is entitledto the support of the users, but any attempt to turn this moralobligation into a requirement destroys the basis for the obligation. Adeveloper can either deserve a reward or demand it, but not both. I believe that an ethical developer faced with this paradox must actso as to deserve the reward, but should also entreat the users forvoluntary donations. Eventually the users will learn to supportdevelopers without coercion, just as they have learned to support publicradio and television stations.What Is Software Productivity?****************************** If software were free, there would still be programmers, but perhapsfewer of them. Would this be bad for society? Not necessarily. Today the advanced nations have fewer farmers thanin 1900, but we do not think this is bad for society, because the fewdeliver more food to the consumers than the many used to do. We callthis improved productivity. Free software would require far fewerprogrammers to satisfy the demand, because of increased softwareproductivity at all levels: * Wider use of each program that is developed. * The ability to adapt existing programs for customization instead of starting from scratch. * Better education of programmers. * The elimination of duplicate development effort. Those who object to cooperation because it would result in theemployment of fewer programmers, are actually objecting to increasedproductivity. Yet these people usually accept the widely-held beliefthat the software industry needs increased productivity. How is this? "Software productivity" can mean two different things: the overallproductivity of all software development, or the productivity ofindividual projects. Overall productivity is what society would like toimprove, and the most straightforward way to do this is to eliminate theartificial obstacles to cooperation which reduce it. But researcherswho study the field of "software productivity" focus only on thesecond, limited, sense of the term, where improvement requires difficulttechnological advances.Is Competition Inevitable?************************** Is it inevitable that people will try to compete, to surpass theirrivals in society? Perhaps it is. But competition itself is notharmful; the harmful thing is *combat*. There are many ways to compete. Competition can consist of trying toachieve ever more, to outdo what others have done. For example, in theold days, there was competition among programming wizards--competitionfor who could make the computer do the most amazing thing, or for whocould make the shortest or fastest program for a given task. This kindof competition can benefit everyone, *as long as* the spirit of goodsportsmanship is maintained. Constructive competition is enough competition to motivate people togreat efforts. A number of people are competing to be the first to havevisited all the countries on Earth; some even spend fortunes trying todo this. But they do not bribe ship captains to strand their rivals ondesert islands. They are content to let the best person win. Competition becomes combat when the competitors begin trying toimpede each other instead of advancing themselves--when "Let the bestperson win" gives way to "Let me win, best or not." Proprietarysoftware is harmful, not because it is a form of competition, butbecause it is a form of combat among the citizens of our society. Competition in business is not necessarily combat. For example, whentwo grocery stores compete, their entire effort is to improve their ownoperations, not to sabotage the rival. But this does not demonstrate aspecial commitment to business ethics; rather, there is little scope forcombat in this line of business short of physical violence. Not allareas of business share this characteristic. Withholding informationthat could help everyone advance is a form of combat. Business ideology does not prepare people to resist the temptation tocombat the competition. Some forms of combat have been made banned withanti-trust laws, truth in advertising laws, and so on, but rather thangeneralizing this to a principled rejection of combat in general,executives invent other forms of combat which are not specificallyprohibited. Society's resources are squandered on the economicequivalent of factional civil war."Why Don't You Move to Russia?"******************************* In the United States, any advocate of other than the most extremeform of laissez-faire selfishness has often heard this accusation. Forexample, it is leveled against the supporters of a national health caresystem, such as is found in all the other industrialized nations of thefree world. It is leveled against the advocates of public support forthe arts, also universal in advanced nations. The idea that citizenshave any obligation to the public good is identified in America withCommunism. But how similar are these ideas? Communism as was practiced in the Soviet Union was a system ofcentral control where all activity was regimented, supposedly for thecommon good, but actually for the sake of the members of the Communistparty. And where copying equipment was closely guarded to preventillegal copying. The American system of intellectual property exercises centralcontrol over distribution of a program, and guards copying equipmentwith automatic copying protection schemes to prevent illegal copying. By contrast, I am working to build a system where people are free todecide their own actions; in particular, free to help their neighbors,and free to alter and improve the tools which they use in their dailylives. A system based on voluntary cooperation, and decentralization. Thus, if we are to judge views by their resemblance to RussianCommunism, it is the software owners who are the Communists.The Question of Premises************************ I make the assumption in this paper that a user of software is noless important than an author, or even an author's employer. In otherwords, their interests and needs have equal weight, when we decidewhich course of action is best. This premise is not universally accepted. Many maintain that anauthor's employer is fundamentally more important than anyone else.They say, for example, that the purpose of having owners of software isto give the author's employer the advantage he deserves--regardless ofhow this may affect the public. It is no use trying to prove or disprove these premises. Proofrequires shared premises. So most of what I have to say is addressedonly to those who share the premises I use, or at least are interestedin what their consequences are. For those who believe that the ownersare more important than everyone else, this paper is simply irrelevant. But why would a large number of Americans accept a premise whichelevates certain people in importance above everyone else? Partlybecause of the belief that this premise is part of the legal traditionsof American society. Some people feel that doubting the premise meanschallenging the basis of society. It is important for these people to know that this premise is notpart of our legal tradition. It never has been. Thus, the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright is to"promote the progress of science and the useful arts." The SupremeCourt has elaborated on this, stating in `Fox Film vs. Doyal' that "Thesole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferringthe [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by thepublic from the labors of authors." We are not required to agree with the Constitution or the SupremeCourt. (At one time, they both condoned slavery.) So their positionsdo not disprove the owner supremacy premise. But I hope that theawareness that this is a radical right-wing assumption rather than atraditionally recognized one will weaken its appeal.Conclusion********** We like to think that our society encourages helping your neighbor;but each time we reward someone for obstructionism, or admire them forthe wealth they have gained in this way, we are sending the oppositemessage. Software hoarding is one form of our general willingness to disregardthe welfare of society for personal gain. We can trace this disregardfrom Ronald Reagan to Jim Bakker, from Ivan Boesky to Exxon, fromfailing banks to failing schools. We can measure it with the size ofthe homeless population and the prison population. The antisocialspirit feeds on itself, because the more we see that other people willnot help us, the more it seems futile to help them. Thus society decaysinto a jungle. If we don't want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes.We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one whocooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking fromothers. I hope that the free software movement will contribute tothis: at least in one area, we will replace the jungle with a moreefficient system which encourages and runs on voluntary cooperation. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) The word "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not toprice; the price paid for a copy of a free program may be zero, orsmall, or (rarely) quite large. (2) The issues of pollution and traffic congestion do not alterthis conclusion. If we wish to make driving more expensive todiscourage driving in general, it is disadvantageous to do this usingtoll booths, which contribute to both pollution and congestion. A taxon gasoline is much better. Likewise, a desire to enhance safety bylimiting maximum speed is not relevant; a free access road enhances theaverage speed by avoiding stops and delays, for any given speed limit. (3) One might regard a particular computer program as a harmfulthing that should not be available at all, like the Lotus Marketplacedatabase of personal information, which was withdrawn from sale due topublic disapproval. Most of what I say does not apply to this case,but it makes little sense to argue for having an owner on the groundsthat the owner will make the program less available. The owner willnot make it *completely* unavailable, as one would wish in the case ofa program whose use is considered destructive.