113-739: The Adaptive Public License ( APL ) is an open-source license from the University of Victoria . It is a weak copyleft , adaptable template license that has been approved by the Open Source Initiative . The Initial Contributor for a project sets up the license conditions for that project by choosing their specific options from the license template. Choices include: Open-source license Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict
226-408: A big step backward with respect to paper books by being less easy to use, copy, lend to others or sell, also mentioning that Amazon e-books cannot be bought anonymously. His short story " The Right to Read " provides a picture of a dystopian future if the right to share books is impeded. He objects to many of the terms within typical end-user license agreements that accompany e-books. He discourages
339-400: A cell phone due to the lack of phones running entirely on free software. He also avoids using a key card to enter his office building since key card systems track each location and time that someone enters the building using a card. He usually does not browse the web directly from his personal computer. Instead, he uses GNU Womb's grab-url-from-mail utility, an email-based proxy which downloads
452-421: A copyleft base must come with the source code, and the source code must be available under the same or a similar license. This offers protection against proprietary software consuming code without giving back. Richard Stallman stated that "the central idea of copyleft is to use copyright law, but flip it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, [copyright] becomes
565-450: A digital equivalent where the user must click to accept. Open-source software has an additional acceptance mechanism. Without permission from the copyright holder, the law prohibits redistribution. Therefore, courts treat redistribution as acceptance of the license terms. These can include attribution provisions or source code provisions for copyleft licenses. Developers typically achieve compliance without lawsuits. Social pressures, like
678-518: A doctorate in physics for one year, but left the program to focus on his programming at the MIT AI Laboratory . While working (starting in 1975) as a research assistant at MIT under Gerry Sussman , Stallman published a paper (with Sussman) in 1977 on an AI truth maintenance system , called dependency-directed backtracking . The paper was an early work on the problem of intelligent backtracking in constraint satisfaction problems . As of 2009 ,
791-449: A fellow AI Lab hacker, founded Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) to market Lisp machines , which he and Tom Knight designed at the lab. Greenblatt rejected outside investment, believing that the proceeds from the construction and sale of a few machines could be profitably reinvested in the growth of the company. In contrast, the other hackers felt that the venture capital -funded approach was better. As no agreement could be reached, hackers from
904-593: A file-based definition, the CPL and EPL use a module-based definition, and the FSF's own LGPL refers to software libraries. License compatibility determines how code with different licenses can be distributed together. The goal of open-source licensing is to make the work freely available, but this becomes complicated when working with multiple terminologies imposing different requirements. There are many uncommonly used licenses and some projects write their own bespoke agreements. As
1017-700: A judge would ask whether it was "really" one program, rather than how the parts were labeled. Therefore, Stallman sent a message back to Jobs which said they believed Jobs' plan was not allowed by the GPL, which resulted in NeXT releasing the Objective-C front end under GPL. For a period of time, Stallman used a notebook from the One Laptop per Child program. Stallman's computer is a refurbished ThinkPad X200 with Libreboot (a free BIOS replacement), and Trisquel GNU/Linux . Before
1130-459: A license covers free and open-source software. There is significant diversity among individual licenses but little difference between the rival definitions. The three definitions each require that people receiving covered software must be able to use, modify, and redistribute the covered work. Eric S. Raymond was a proponent of the term " open source " over "free software". He viewed open source as more appealing to businesses and more reflective of
1243-436: A means of keeping software free." Free software licenses are also open-source software licenses. The separate terms free software and open-source software reflect different values rather than a legal difference. Both movements and their formal definitions require the covered work to be made available with source code and with permission for modification and redistribution. There are occasional edge cases where only one of
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#17328770022741356-405: A modified GCC in two parts, one part under GPL and the other part, an Objective-C preprocessor under a proprietary license. Stallman initially thought this would be legal, but since he also thought it would be "very undesirable for free software", he asked a lawyer for advice. The response he got was that judges would consider such schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them, and
1469-565: A more specific and objective standard for the FOSS that Debian would host in their repositories. The OSI adopted the DSFG and used them as the basis for their Open Source Definition. The Free Software Foundation maintains a rival set of criteria, the Free Software Definition. Historically, these three organizations and their sets of criteria have been the notable authorities in determining whether
1582-453: A password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password, with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to re-enable anonymous access to the systems. Around 20 percent of the users followed his advice at the time, although passwords ultimately prevailed. Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward. In
1695-424: A patent retaliation clause. Patent retaliation, or patent suspension, clauses take effect if a licensee initiates patent infringement litigation on covered code. In that situation, the patent grants are revoked. These clauses protect against patent trolling . Copyleft licenses require source code to be distributed with software and require the source code to be made available under a similar license. Like
1808-400: A result, this causes more confusion than other legal aspects. When releasing a collection of applications, each license can be considered separately. However, when attempting to combine software, code from another project can only be in-licensed if the project uses compatible terms and conditions. When combining code bases, the original licenses can be maintained for separate components, and
1921-602: A similar license. Since the mid-2000s, courts in multiple countries have upheld the terms of both types of license. Software developers have filed cases as copyright infringement and as breaches of contract. Intellectual property (IP) is a legal category that treats creative output as property, comparable to private property . Legal systems grant the owner of an IP the right to restrict access in many ways. Owners can sell, lease, gift, or license their properties. Multiple types of IP law cover software including trademarks , patents , and copyrights . Most countries, including
2034-489: A summer camp, he read manuals for the IBM 7094 . From 1967 to 1969, Stallman attended a Columbia University Saturday program for high school students. He was also a volunteer laboratory assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University . Although he was interested in mathematics and physics , his supervising professor at Rockefeller thought he showed promise as a biologist. His first experience with actual computers
2147-592: A text editor in APL and a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM System/360 . As a first-year student at Harvard University in fall 1970, Stallman was known for his strong performance in Math 55 . He was happy, "For the first time in my life, I felt I had found a home at Harvard." In 1971, near the end of his first year at Harvard, he became a programmer at
2260-404: A user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use. Richard Greenblatt ,
2373-452: A world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. In 2018, Stallman instituted "Kind Communication Guidelines" for the GNU project to help its mailing list discussions remain constructive while avoiding explicitly promoting diversity. In October 2019, a public statement signed by 33 maintainers of the GNU project asserted that Stallman's behaviour had "undermined a core value of
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#17328770022742486-658: Is a crime, not the issue of charging for software. Stallman's texinfo is a GPL replacement, loosely based on Scribe; the original version was finished in 1986. In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer , the Xerox 9700 . Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged
2599-616: Is a design that identifies the distinct source of a product. Because they distinguish products, the same designs can be used in different fields where there is no risk of confusing similar sources. To give up control of a trademark would result in the loss of that trademark. Therefore, no open-source license freely offers the use of a trademark. Trademark restrictions can overlap copyrights and affect material otherwise freely available. The US Supreme Court described using trademark law to restrict public domain content as "mutant copyright". In Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. ,
2712-552: Is a development model." Thus, he believes that the use of the term will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom. Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are software libre and unfettered software , but free software is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term proprietary software or non-free software rather than closed-source software , when referring to software that
2825-452: Is a set of conditions under which actions otherwise restricted by IP laws are permitted. Under the bare license interpretation, advocated by the FSF, a case is brought to court by the copyright holder as copyright infringement . Under the contract interpretation, a case can be brought to court by an involved party as a breach of contract . US and French courts have tried cases under both interpretations. Non-profit organizations like FSF and
2938-426: Is also covered by other forms of IP. Major open-source licenses written since the late 1990s contain patent grants. These open-source patent grants cover the patents held by the developers. Software patents cover ideas and, rather than a specific implementation, cover any implementation of a claim . Patent claims give the holder the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing products based on
3051-694: Is an American free software movement activist and programmer . He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software which ensures these freedoms is termed free software . Stallman launched the GNU Project , founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs , and wrote all versions of
3164-453: Is associated with proponents of strong copyright), or a convenient anonymous micropayment system for people to support authors directly. He indicates that no form of non-commercial sharing of copies should be considered a copyright violation. He has advocated for civil disobedience in a comment on Ley Sinde . He has reportedly refused to autograph anything bearing a '©' symbol, in line with his views. Stallman has helped and supported
3277-515: Is best summed up by the FSF Defective by Design campaign. In the talks, he makes proposals for a "reduced copyright" and suggests a 10-year limit on copyright. He suggests that, instead of restrictions on sharing, authors be supported using a tax, with revenues distributed among them based on cubic roots of their popularity to ensure that "fairly successful non-stars" receive a greater share than they do now (compare with private copying levy which
3390-528: Is how they define derivative works covered by the reciprocal provisions. The GPL, and the Affero License (AGPL) based on it, use a broad scope to describe affected works. The AGPL extends the reciprocal obligation in the GPL to cover software made available over a network. They are called strong copyleft in contrast to the weaker copyleft licenses often used by corporations. Weak copyleft uses narrower, explicit definitions of derivative works. The MPL uses
3503-533: Is more comprehensive and explicit. The Apache Software Foundation wrote it for their Apache HTTP Server . Version 2, published in 2004, offers legal advantages over simple licenses and provides similar grants. While the BSD and MIT licenses offer an implicit patent grant, the Apache License includes a section on patents with an explicit grant from contributors. Additionally, it is one of the few permissive licenses with
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3616-473: Is not free software. Stallman asks that the term GNU/Linux , which he pronounces / ɡ n uː s l æ ʃ ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO SLASH LIN -əks , be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the kernel Linux. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer". He claims that the connection between
3729-453: Is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy. He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value , and not merely for pragmatic reasons such as possibly developing technically superior software. Eric S. Raymond , one of the creators of the open-source movement , argues that moral arguments, rather than pragmatic ones, alienate potential allies and hurt
3842-404: Is the continual process where developers can build on the derivative works of each other and combine their projects into collective works. Explicitly making covered code sublicensable provides a legal advantage when tracking the chain of authorship. The BSD and MIT are template licenses that can be adapted to any project. They are widely adapted and used by many FOSS projects. The Apache License
3955-498: Is triggered when covered code is hosted or distributed. Some developers have adopted the AGPL, and others have switched to proprietary licenses with features of open-source licensing. For example, open-core developer Elastic switched from the Apache license to the "source-available" Server Side Public License . Source-available software comes with source code as a reference. Since 2010,
4068-614: The Creative Commons CC0, provides a waiver of copyright claims into the public domain along with a permissive software license as a fallback. In jurisdictions that do not accept a public domain waiver, the permissive license takes effect. Public domain waivers share limitations with simple academic licenses. This creates the possibility that an outside party could attempt to control a public domain work via patent or trademark law. Public domain waivers handle warranties differently from any type of license. Even very permissive ones, like
4181-559: The European Court of Justice noted in the 2012 SAS Institute case that "ideas and principles which underlie [computer program] interfaces are not protected by copyright". In a similar 2021 case , the US Supreme Court permitted the recreation of an API in a transformative product under fair use . A long-debated subject within the FOSS community is whether open-source licenses are "bare licenses" or contracts . A bare license
4294-483: The GNU General Public License (GPL). Traditional, proprietary software licenses are written with the goal of increasing profit , but Stallman wrote the GPL to increase the body of available free software. His reciprocal licenses offer the rights to use, modify, and distribute the work on the condition that people must release derivative works under a license offering these same freedoms. Software built on
4407-589: The GNU General Public License . Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to write a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. With that he also launched the free software movement. He has been the GNU project's lead architect and organizer, and developed a number of pieces of widely used GNU software including among others, the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Debugger , and GNU Emacs text editor. Stallman pioneered
4520-521: The GNU Manifesto , which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix . The name GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix". Soon after, he started a nonprofit corporation called the Free Software Foundation to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman was
4633-574: The International Music Score Library Project get back online, after it had been taken down on October 19, 2007, following a cease and desist letter from Universal Edition . Stallman mentions the dangers some e-books bring compared to paper books, with the example of the Amazon Kindle e-reader that prevents the copying of e-books and allows Amazon to order automatic deletion of a book. He says that such e-books present
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4746-521: The Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal. Stallman remained head of the GNU Project, and in 2021 returned to the FSF board of directors and others. Stallman was born March 16, 1953 in New York City , to a family of Jewish heritage. He had a troublesome relationship with his parents and did not feel he had a proper home. He was interested in computers at a young age; when he was a pre-teen at
4859-646: The Lisp machine operating system (the CONS of 1974–1976 and the CADR of 1977–1979—this latter unit was commercialized by Symbolics and Lisp Machines , Inc. (LMI) starting around 1980). He became an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab, which at that time was funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ). When MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed
4972-580: The MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, RMS , which he used in his computer accounts. Stallman received a bachelor's degree in physics ( magna cum laude ) from Harvard in 1974. He considered staying on at Harvard, but instead decided to enroll as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He pursued
5085-521: The Software Freedom Conservancy offer to hold the rights to developers' projects to enforce compliance. When a copyright expires, the work enters the public domain , and is freely available to anyone. Some creative works are not covered by copyright and enter directly into the public domain. In the early history of computing, this applied to software. Early computer software was often given away with hardware. Developed initially at MIT,
5198-443: The US and German courts rejected these claims. They ruled that the defendants could not have legally distributed the software if the licenses were unenforceable. Courts have found that distributing software indicates acceptance of the license's terms. Physical software releases can obtain the consumer's assent with notices placed on shrinkwrap . Online distribution can use clickwrap ,
5311-433: The free software movement in response to the rise of proprietary software . The term "open source" was used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), founded by free software developers Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond . "Open source" emphasizes the strengths of the open development model rather than software freedoms. While the goals behind the terms are different, open-source licenses and free software licenses describe
5424-403: The 1980s, he started the GNU Project to create a free operating system, wrote essays on freedom, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and wrote several free software licenses. The FSF used existing intellectual property laws for the opposite of their intended goal of restriction. Instead of imposing restrictions, free software explicitly provided freedoms to the recipient. In the 90s,
5537-406: The 2004 Apache License offer explicit patent grants and limited protection from patent litigation. These patent retaliation clauses protect developers by terminating grants for any party who initiates a patent lawsuit regarding covered software. Trademarks are the only form of IP not shared by free and open-source software. Trademarks on FOSS function the same as any other trademark. A trademark
5650-434: The FSF call it GNU/Linux . This has been a longstanding naming controversy in the free software community. Stallman argues that not using GNU in the name of the operating system unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project and harms the sustainability of the free software movement by breaking the link between the software and the free software philosophy of the GNU project. Stallman's influences on hacker culture include
5763-561: The FSF or the OSI accept a license, but the popular free software licenses are open source, including the GPL . Practical benefits to copyleft licenses have attracted commercial developers. Corporations have used and written reciprocal licenses with a narrower scope than the GPL. For example, Netscape drafted their own copyleft terms after rejecting permissive licenses for the Mozilla project. The GPL remains
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#17328770022745876-438: The GNU project's philosophy and its software is broken when people refer to the combination as merely Linux. Starting around 2003, he began also using the term GNU+Linux , which he pronounces / ɡ n uː p l ʌ s ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO PLUS LIN -əks , to prevent others from pronouncing the phrase GNU/Linux as / ɡ n uː ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO LIN -əks , which would erroneously imply that
5989-469: The GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users" and called for "GNU maintainers to collectively decide about the organization of the project". The statement was published soon after Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his "visiting scientist" role at MIT in September 2019. In spite of that, Stallman remained head of the GNU project. Stallman has written many essays on software freedom, and has been an outspoken political campaigner for
6102-407: The GNU system had been completed. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor ( GNU Emacs ), compiler ( GCC ), debugger ( GNU Debugger ), and a build automator ( GNU make ). The notable omission was a kernel . In 1990, members of the GNU project began using Carnegie Mellon's Mach microkernel in a project called GNU Hurd , which has yet to achieve
6215-427: The GPL and are said to be GPL-compatible. GPL software can only be used under the GPL or AGPL. Permissive licenses are broadly compatible because they can cover separate parts of a project. Multiple licenses including the GPL and Apache License have been revised to enhance compatibility. Translation issues, ambiguity in licensing terms, and incompatibility of some licenses with the law in certain jurisdictions compound
6328-476: The MIT license, disclaim warranty and liability. Anyone using the free software must accept this disclaimer as a condition. Because public domain content is available to everyone, the copyright waiver cannot impose a disclaimer. Open-source licenses allow other businesses to commercialize covered software. Work released under a permissive license can be incorporated into proprietary software. Permissive licenses permit
6441-436: The OSI. Open-source licenses are categorized as copyleft or permissive . Copyleft licenses require derivative works to include source code under a similar license. Permissive licenses do not, and therefore the code can be used within proprietary software. Copyleft can be further divided into strong and weak depending on whether they define derivative works broadly or narrowly. Licenses focus on copyright law, but code
6554-680: The ThinkPad X200, Stallman used a Thinkpad T400s with Libreboot and Trisquel GNU/Linux. And before the T400s, Stallman used a ThinkPad X60, and even further back in time, a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor) which he chose because, like the X200, X60 and the T400s, it could run with free software at the BIOS level, stating "freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for
6667-569: The United States (US), have created copyright laws in line with the Berne Convention . These laws assign a copyright whenever a work is released in any fixed format. Under US copyright law, the initial release is considered an original work . The creator, or their employer, holds the copyright to this original work and therefore has the exclusive right to make copies, release modified versions, distribute copies, perform publicly, or display
6780-427: The United States government may encourage the use of software as a service because this would allow them to access users' data without needing a search warrant . He denies being an anarchist despite his wariness of some legislation and the fact that he has "advocated strongly for user privacy and his own view of software freedom". Stallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about
6893-505: The addition of new terms, including proprietary ones. Proprietary software has heavily integrated open-source code released under the Apache, BSD, and MIT licenses. Open core is a business model where developers release a core piece of software as open source and monetize a product containing it as proprietary software. The strong copyleft GPL is written to prevent distribution within proprietary software. Weak copyleft licenses impose specific requirements on derivative works that may allow
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#17328770022747006-509: The cloud model has grown in prominence. Developers have criticized cloud companies that profit from hosting open-source software without contributing money or code upstream, comparing the practice to strip mining . Cloud computing leader Amazon Web Services has stated they comply with licenses and act in their customers' best interests. Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( / ˈ s t ɔː l m ən / STAWL -mən ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms ,
7119-723: The concept of copyleft , which uses the principles of copyright law to preserve the right to use, modify, and distribute free software. He is the main author of free software licenses which describe those terms, most notably the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license. In 1989, he co-founded the League for Programming Freedom . Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents , digital rights management (which he refers to as digital restrictions management, calling
7232-741: The court "caution[ed] against misuse or over-extension of trademark" law without providing a firm decision on those mutant copyrights. Trademark overlap can leave open-source and free content projects vulnerable to a "hostile takeover" if outside parties file for trademarks on derivative works. Notably, Andrey Duskin applied for trademarks on the SCP Foundation , a collaborative writing project, when creating derivative works based on SCP stories. Permissive licenses , also known as academic licenses, allow recipients to use, modify, and distribute software with no obligation to provide source code. Institutions created these licenses to distribute their creations to
7345-439: The covered code to be distributed within proprietary software in certain circumstances. Cloud computing relies on free and open-source software and avoids the distribution that triggers most licenses. Cloud software is hosted rather than distributed. A vendor hosts the software online, and their end users do not have to download, access, or even know about the code in use. The copyleft GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)
7458-399: The covered software. The BSD licenses brought the concept of academic freedom of ideas to computing. Early academic software authors had shared code based on implied promises. Berkeley made these concepts explicit with clear disclaimers for liability and warranty along with conditions, or clauses , for redistribution. The original had four clauses, but subsequent versions have further reduced
7571-549: The end goal of removing code secrecy. In February 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983. Since then, he had remained affiliated with MIT as an unpaid "visiting scientist" in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Until "around 1998", he maintained an office at the Institute that doubled as his legal residence. Stallman announced
7684-523: The free software movement since the early 1990s. The speeches he has regularly given are titled The GNU Project and the Free Software Movement , The Dangers of Software Patents , and Copyright and Community in the Age of Computer Networks . In 2006 and 2007, during the eighteen month public consultation for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, he added a fourth topic explaining
7797-566: The government of the Indian State of Kerala , he persuaded officials to discard proprietary software, such as Microsoft's, at state-run schools. This has resulted in a landmark decision to switch all school computers in 12,500 high schools from Windows to a free software operating system. After personal meetings, Stallman obtained positive statements about the free software movement from the then-president of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam , French 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal , and
7910-576: The idea. Because patents grant the right to exclude rather than the right to create, it is possible to have a patent on an idea but still be unable to legally implement it if the invention relies on another patented idea. Thus, open-source patent grants can offer permission only from covered patents. They cannot guarantee that a third party has not patented any concepts embodied in the code. The older permissive licenses do not discuss patents directly and offer only implicit patent grants in their offers to use or sell covered material. Newer copyleft licenses and
8023-415: The importance of terminology, are a source of regular misunderstanding and friction with parts of the free software and open-source communities . After initially accepting the concept, Stallman rejects a common alternative term , open-source software , because it does not call to mind what Stallman sees as the value of the software: freedom . He wrote, "Free software is a political movement; open source
8136-420: The inaccurate wording. Minsky was not accused of "assault", and from the victims' testimonies it was not clear whether Minsky had committed "assault", and Stallman argued that "the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to conceal that from most of his associates". When challenged by other members of
8249-518: The kernel Linux is maintained by the GNU project. The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds , has publicly said that he objects to modification of the name and that the rename "is their [the FSF ] confusion not ours". Stallman professes admiration for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden . He has spoken against government and corporate surveillance on many occasions. He refers to mobile phones as "portable surveillance and tracking devices ", refusing to own
8362-588: The lab's community. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers. Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to share with their neighbors and be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He maintains that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are antisocial and unethical. The phrase "software wants to be free"
8475-425: The larger work released under a compatible license. This compatibility is often one-way. Public domain content can be used anywhere as there is no copyright claim, but code acquired under any almost any set of terms cannot be waved to the public domain. Permissive licenses can be used within copyleft works, but copyleft material cannot be released under a permissive license. Some weak copyleft licenses can be used under
8588-421: The late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture which Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become
8701-403: The latter camp founded Symbolics , with the aid of Russ Noftsker , an AI Lab administrator. Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper , who then left the AI Lab. Symbolics also forced Greenblatt to resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting
8814-480: The license, increasing the difficulties of compliance. Free and open-source software licenses have been successfully enforced in civil court since the mid-2000s. In a pair of early lawsuits— Jacobsen v. Katzer in the United States and Welte v. Sitecom in Germany—;defendants argued that open-source licenses were invalid. Sitecom and Katzer separately argued that the licenses were unenforceable. Both
8927-402: The maturity level required for full POSIX compliance. In 1991, Linus Torvalds , a Finnish student, used the GNU's development tools to produce the free monolithic Linux kernel . The existing programs from the GNU project were readily ported to run on the resultant platform. Most sources use the name Linux to refer to the general-purpose operating system thus formed, while Stallman and
9040-649: The means of inviting the public to contribute articles. The resulting GNUPedia was eventually retired in favour of the emerging Misplaced Pages , which had similar aims and was enjoying greater success. Stallman was on the Advisory Council of Latin American television station teleSUR from its launch but resigned in February 2011, criticizing pro-Gaddafi propaganda during the Arab Spring . In August 2006, at his meetings with
9153-419: The modern usage begins with Richard Stallman's efforts to create a free operating system. In 1984, programmer Don Hopkins mailed a manual to Stallman with a "Copyleft Ⓛ" sticker. Stallman, who was working on the GNU operating system, adopted the term. An early version of copyleft licensing was used for the 1985 release of GNU Emacs . The term became associated with the FSF's later reciprocal licenses, notably
9266-521: The modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code , modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition . After 1980, the United States began to treat software as a literary work covered by copyright law. Richard Stallman founded
9379-467: The more common term misleading), and other legal and technical systems which he sees as taking away users' freedoms. That includes software license agreements , non-disclosure agreements , activation keys , dongles , copy restriction , proprietary formats , and binary executables without source code . In September 2019, Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his visiting scientist role at MIT after making controversial comments about
9492-674: The most popular license of this type, but there are other significant examples. The FSF has crafted the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) for libraries . Mozilla uses the Mozilla Public License (MPL) for their releases, including Firefox . IBM drafted the Common Public License (CPL) and later adopted the Eclipse Public License (EPL). A difference between the GPL and other reciprocal licenses
9605-580: The name POSIX and the Emacs editor. On Unix systems, GNU Emacs's popularity rivaled that of another editor vi , spawning an editor war . Stallman's take on this was to canonize himself as St. IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs and acknowledge that "vi vi vi is the editor of the beast ", while "using a free version of vi is not a sin ; it is a penance ". In 1992, developers at Lucid Inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked
9718-555: The nonsalaried president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in Massachusetts . Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft , a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. It was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License, and in 1989 the first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of
9831-536: The norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software was a consequence triggered by the US Copyright Act of 1976 . When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in the Scribe markup language and word processing system to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity". During an interview in 2008, he clarified that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes
9944-461: The permissive licenses, most copyleft licenses require attribution. Most, including the GPL, disclaim implied warranties. Copyleft uses the restrictions of IP law—contrary to their usual purpose—to mandate that the code remain open. The term and it's related slogan, "All rights reversed", had been previously used in a playful manner by the Principia Discordia and Tiny BASIC ;
10057-557: The pioneering video game Spacewar! was used to market and test the PDP-1 computer. According to attorney Lawrence Rosen , copyright laws were not written with the expectation that creators would place their work into the public domain. Thus intellectual property laws lack clear paths to waive a copyright. Highly permissive licenses described as "public domain" may legally function as unilateral contracts that offer something but impose no terms. A public-domain-equivalent license , like
10170-532: The plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPANET mailing lists and USENET . He started the project on his own and describes: "As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job. So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it." In 1985, Stallman published
10283-418: The police being called. AMD has since acquired ATI and has taken steps to make their hardware documentation available for use by the free software community. Stallman has characterized Steve Jobs as having a "malign influence" on computing because of Jobs' leadership in guiding Apple to produce closed platforms . According to Stallman, while Jobs was at NeXT , Jobs asked Stallman if he could distribute
10396-919: The potential for community backlash, are often sufficient. Cease and desist letters are a common method to bring companies back into compliance, especially in Germany. A standard process has developed in the German legal system. FOSS developers present companies with a cease and desist letter. These letters outline how to come back into compliance from a violation. German judges can issue a court-mandated cease and desist order to unresponsive companies. Civil cases proceed if these first steps fail. The German procedural laws are clear and favorable to claimants. Uncertainties remain in how different courts will handle certain aspects of licensing. For software in general, there are debates about what can be patented and what can be copyrighted. Regarding an application programming interface (API),
10509-447: The president of Ecuador Rafael Correa . Stallman has participated in protests about software patents, digital rights management , and proprietary software . Protesting against proprietary software in April 2006, Stallman held a "Don't buy from ATI , enemy of your freedom" placard at an invited talk given by an ATI compiler architect in the building where Stallman worked, resulting in
10622-417: The problem of license compatibility. Downloading an open-source module is straightforward, but complying with the licensing terms can be more difficult. Because of the amount of software dependencies, engineers working on complex projects often rely on license management software to achieve compliance with the licensing terms of open-source components. Many open-source software files do not unambiguously state
10735-488: The proposed changes. Stallman's staunch advocacy for free software inspired the creation of the Virtual Richard M. Stallman ( vrms ), software that analyzes the packages currently installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and reports those that are from the non-free tree. Stallman disagrees with parts of Debian's definition of free software. In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free online encyclopedia through
10848-529: The proprietary model where small pools of secretive workers carried out this work with the development of Linux where the pool of testers included potentially the entire world. He summarized this strength as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." The OSI succeeded in bringing open-source development to corporate developers including Sun Microsystems, IBM , Netscape, Mozilla , Apache , Apple Inc., Microsoft, and Nokia. These companies released code under existing licenses and drafted their own to be approved by
10961-545: The public. Permissive licenses are usually short, often less than a page of text. They impose few conditions . Most include disclaimers of warranty and obligations to credit authors. A few include explicit provisions for patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property. The University of California, Berkeley created the first open-source license when they began distributing their Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) operating system. The BSD license and its later variations permit modification and distribution of
11074-412: The restrictions. As a result, it's common to specify if the covered software uses a 2-clause or 3-clause version. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created an academic license based on the BSD original. The MIT license clarified the conditions by making them more explicit. For example, the MIT license describes the right to sublicense . One of the strengths of open-source development
11187-460: The sake of a more convenient computer." Stallman's Lemote was stolen from him in 2012 while he was in Argentina. Before Trisquel, Stallman has used the gNewSense operating system. Stallman has regularly given a talk entitled "Copyright vs. Community" where he reviews the state of digital rights management (DRM) and names many of the products and corporations which he boycotts. His approach to DRM
11300-421: The same type of licenses. The two main categories of open-source licenses are permissive and copyleft . Both grant permission to change and distribute software. Typically, they require attribution and disclaim liability . Permissive licenses come from academia. Copyleft licenses come from the free software movement. Copyleft licenses require derivative works to be distributed with the source code and under
11413-495: The software into what would become XEmacs . The technology journalist Andrew Leonard has characterized what he sees as Stallman's uncompromising stubbornness as common among elite computer programmers: There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in
11526-528: The tangible advantages of FOSS development. One of Raymond's goals was to expand the existing hacker community to include large commercial developers. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar , Raymond compared open-source development to the bazaar , an open-air public market. He argued that aside from ethics, the open model provided advantages that proprietary software could not replicate. Raymond focused heavily on feedback , testing , and bug reports . He contrasted
11639-494: The technique Stallman and Sussman introduced is still the most general and powerful form of intelligent backtracking. The technique of constraint recording , wherein partial results of a search are recorded for later reuse, was also introduced in this paper. As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects like TECO and Emacs for the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS), as well as
11752-570: The term intellectual property is designed to confuse people, and is used to prevent intelligent discussion on the specifics of copyright , patent , trademark , and other areas of law by lumping together things that are more dissimilar than similar. He also argues that by referring to these laws as property laws, the term biases the discussion when thinking about how to treat these issues, writing: These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. Copyright law
11865-501: The term "open source" was coined as an alternative label for free software, and specific criteria were laid out to determine which licenses covered free and open-source software. Two active members of the free software community, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond , founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI). At Debian , Perens had proposed the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). The DFSG were drafted to provide
11978-531: The use of several storage technologies such as DVD or Blu-ray video discs because the content of such media is encrypted. He considers manufacturers' use of encryption on non-secret data ( to force the user to view certain promotional material ) as a conspiracy. Stallman recognized the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal to be a criminal act by Sony and supports a general boycott of Sony for its legal actions against George Hotz . Stallman has suggested that
12091-439: The webpage content and then emails it to the user. More recently, he said that he accesses all websites via Tor , except for Misplaced Pages (which generally disallows editing from Tor unless users have an IP block exemption ). In September 2019, it was learned that Jeffrey Epstein had made donations to MIT, and in the wake of this, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned. An internal MIT CSAIL listserv mailing list thread
12204-477: The work publicly. Modified versions of the original work are derivative works . When a creator modifies an existing work, they hold the copyright to their modifications. Unless the original work was in the public domain, a derivative work can only be distributed with the permission of every copyright holder. In 1980, the US government amended the law to treat software as a literary work. Software released after this point
12317-401: The world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He asks people to say free software and GNU/Linux , and to avoid the terms intellectual property and piracy (in relation to copying not approved by the publisher). One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agrees to use his terminology throughout the article. Stallman argues that
12430-495: Was restricted by IP laws. At that time, American activist and programmer Richard Stallman was working as a graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Stallman witnessed fragmentation among software developers. He blamed the spread of proprietary software and closed models of development. To push back against these trends, Stallman founded the free software movement . Throughout
12543-521: Was at the IBM New York Scientific Center when he was in high school. He was hired for the summer in 1970 after his senior year of high school, to write a numerical analysis program in Fortran . He completed the task after a couple of weeks ("I swore that I would never use FORTRAN again because I despised it as a language compared with other languages") and spent the rest of the summer writing
12656-490: Was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas–a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying. His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of
12769-560: Was started to protest the coverup of MIT's connections to Epstein. In the thread, discussion had turned to deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky , who was named by Virginia Giuffre as one of the people that Epstein had forced her to have sex with. Giuffre, a minor at the time, had been caught in Epstein's underage sex trafficking ring. In response to a comment saying that Minsky "is accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims", Stallman objected to
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