The University of Pavia, in Italy, recently awarded Richard Stallman with an honorary degree. Stallman gave a short speech, his "lectio doctoralis", on the ethical imperative to use free software, focussing on individuals and schools. The speech has been transcribed by Alessandro Rubini, with checking by Dora Scillipoti and Luca Andreucci. The transcript text, with translations, will later be re-published in a more permanent location. I will add a link to the permanent location when I know it. Many more transcripts are available at: http://fsfe.org/transcripts.
Richard Stallman: Innovation can create riches and once in a while, those
riches can lead to general economic prosperity, especially if you
don't have neo-liberal economics to impede the result.
But innovation affects things much more important than riches or
even economic prosperity. Democracy was an innovation, fascism was an
innovation. Today, in Italy, we see the innovation of placing criminal
charges against fishermen for saving people from drowning in the sea.
Innovations can directly affect our freedom, which is more important
than anything else. Innovation can affect social solidarity, for good
or for ill.
So when we consider technical progress in computers or in software,
the most important question to ask is: "How does this affect our
freedom? How does this affect our social solidarity?". Technically
speaking it's progress, but is it really progress in social and
ethical terms, or is it the opposite?
During my carrier in programming, as computers developed from something
used by a few specialists and enthusiasts into something that most people
use, there has been tremendous technical progress and it was accompanied
by ghastly social and ethical regression. In fact, nearly everyone
who uses computers began using them under a social system that can only
be described as dictatorship.
The developer of the program controls
what it does. If you use it, the developer controls what you can do,
and what you can't do. And controls what it does to you.
So that the software that you think is yours, is not there to serve you.
It is there to control you. Companies such as Microsoft and Apple
designed the software specifically to restrict you.
Windows Vista is primarily an advance in how to restrict the user.
Which is why we have the badvista.org campaign. And when
this is over, outside the building I will offer you stickers from that
campaign, if you wish to help teach people why they shouldn't
downgrade to Vista.
Apple designs software specifically to restrict the users. It's known
as "Digital Restriction Management", or DRM. We have helped protests
against Apple just as we helped protests against Microsoft.
See the site defectivebydesign.org for more information
and for how to participate.
Google designs software specifically
to restrict the user. That's the nature of the Google Earth client:
it is made the way it is specifically to restrict the people who use it.
Obviously, it's not Free Software, because Free Software develops under
the democratic control of its users. With the four freedoms: the freedom
to run the program as you wish, to study the source code and change it so
the program does what you wish, the freedom to distribute exact copies
to others (which is the freedom to help your neighbour) and the freedom
to distribute copies of your modified version (which is the freedom
to contribute to your community). With these four freedoms the users,
individually and collectively, are in charge.
And therefore Free Software cannot be designed to restrict the users.
To design to restrict the user is only possible when there is a dictator,
when someone has power to control what the program will do and what it
won't do. When the users have the control, when they can control their
own computing, then nobody has the kind of power that would enable him
to impose malicious features to restrict users or spy on users or attack
users. If you use MacOS or Windows Vista, you are completely at the mercy
of that system's developer. Those developers have the power to forcibly
change your software in any way they like, whenever the machine is
connected to the network. The user no longer has even the chance to say
yes or no. The system is one big backdoor.
But with Free Software, you are in charge of what the
computer will do. So it will serve you, instead of subjugating you.
The question of Free Software is therefore not a technical question,
it's an ethical, social, and political question. It's a question of the
human rights that the users of software ought to have.
Proprietary software developers say "no rights, we are in control,
we should be in control, we demand total power over what your computer
does; we will implement certain features and let you use them, but
meanwhile we may spy on you as you use them and we can take them away
at any time". But Free Software developers respect your freedom, and
this is the ethical obligation of every software developer: to respect
the freedom of the users of that software. Making proprietary,
user-subjugating software sometimes is profitable, but it is never
ethical, and it should never happen.
But it will be up to you to make that be true. I alone can say
these things, but I alone cannot make them reality. We must all work
together to establish freedom and democracy for the users of software.
And this freedom and democracy is now essential to enjoy freedom and
democracy in other aspects of life. Right now, some of the biggest
Internet service providers in the United States are carrying out
political censorship of email. A major organisation called "truth
out", whose website you may have seen, truthout.org, is
being blocked from sending mail to their subscribers by Yahoo and
Hotmail and WebTV. And they have done this for more than a week,
despite the complaints from many of the users of those companies.
Apparently they think they have gone beyond the point where they have
to care what anyone says about them.
All the forms of freedom that we hold dear are transformed when we
carry out the relevant activities through computers. We must
re-found these freedoms in such a way that we can depend on them
while we use digital technology. An essential part of this
re-foundation is insisting that the software we use be under our
control.
Not everyone wants to be a programmer, not everyone will learn
personally how to study the source code and change it. But, in a
world where your software is free you can, if you feel it necessary,
hire someone else to change it for you. You can persuade your cousin
programmer to change it for you if you say it's really important. You
can join together with other users and pool your funds to hire a
programmer. And the simple fact that there are millions of
programmers who can study and change the software will mean that if
the software is malicious, almost certainly somebody else, who has the
requisite skills, will find that and correct it, and you will get the
corrected version without any special effort of your own. So we all
benefit, programmers and non-programmers alike, from the freedoms that
free software grants to us. The freedom to cooperate and the freedom
to control our own lives personally. They go together because both of
them are the opposite of being under the power of the dictatorial
software developer that unilaterally make decisions that nobody else
can change.
Free Software has an especially important connection with Universities, and
indeed all schools of all levels. Because Free Software supports
education; proprietary software forbids education. There is no
compatibility between education and proprietary software, not at the
ethical level.
The source code and the methods of Free Software are part of human
knowledge. The mission of every school is to disseminate human
knowledge. Proprietary software is not part of human knowledge. It's
secret, restricted knowledge, which schools are not allowed to
disseminate. Schools that recognise this exclude proprietary software
from their grounds. And this is what every school should do. Not
only to save money, which is an obvious advantage that will appeal
immediately to many school administrators, but for ethical reasons as
well. For instance, why do many proprietary software developers offer
discounts, or even gratis copies of their non-free software to schools
and students.
I'm told that Microsoft offered a discount on those who wish to
accept the shiny new chains of Windows Vista to the employees of this
University. Why would they do such a thing? Is it because they wish
to contribute to education? Obviously not. Rather, Microsoft and
other similar companies wish to convert the University into an
instrument for imposing the dependency on the user-subjugating
software on society as a whole. They figured that if they get their
software into schools, then students will learn to use it, and become
dependent on it. They will develop a dependency. And thus after they
graduate you can be sure that Microsoft and these other companies
would no longer offer them discounted copies. And especially, the
companies that this former students go to work for, will not be
offered discounted copies. So, the software developers push on the
schools, then push on arresting society and push it deep into a pit.
This is not something schools should do. This is the opposite of the
mission of the school, which is to build a strong, capable,
independent and free society. Schools should teach their students to
be citizens of a strong, capable, independent and free society. And
this means teaching them to use Free Software, not proprietary
software. So none of the classes in this University should teach
proprietary software.
For those who will be great programmers, there is another
reason why their schools must teach and use Free Software. Because
when they get to the age of 13 or so, they are fascinated with software
and they want to learn everything about how their computer and their
system are functioning. So they will ask the teacher "how does this work?",
and if this is proprietary software, the teacher has to say "I'm sorry,
it's a secret, you can't find out". So there is no room for education.
But if it's Free Software the teacher can explain the basic subject
and then say "here is the source code, read this and you'll understand
everything". And those programmers will read the whole source code
because they are fascinated, and this way they will learn something very
important: how to write software well. They don't need to be thought how
to program, because for them programming is obvious, but writing good
code is a different story. You have to learn that by reading
lots of code and writing lots of code. Only Free Software provides
that opportunity.
But there is a particular reason, for the sake of education in good
citizenship. You see, schools must teach not just facts, not just
skills but above all the spirit of good will, the habit of helping
your neighbour. So every class, at every level should have this rule:
"students, if you bring software to class, you may not keep it for
yourself, you must share copies with the rest of the class".
However, the school has to practice its own role: it has to set a
good example. So every school should bring only Free Software to
class, and set an example with its software of the practice of
disseminating human knowledge while building a strong, capable,
independent and free society. And encouraging the spirit of good
will, of helping other people. Every school must migrate to Free
Software, and I call on you, those of you who are faculty, or staff,
or students of this University, to work together to bring about the
migration of this University to Free Software, completely to Free
Software, within a few years. It can be done in a few years: it
requires taking a substantial step each year. Other Universities are
doing this or have done it: you can do it too. You only have to reject
social inertia as a valid reason for going deeper and deeper into the
pit.
For those of you who are interested, after we leave this hall and
this ceremony, outside I will have various things from the Free
Software Foundation that you might be interested in. And you can
support the Free Software Foundation by going to fsf.org
and become an associate member. For more information about the Free
Software movement and the GNU operating system, and for where to find
the entirely free distributions of the GNU/Linux operating system
please look at gnu.org.
Thank you.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
--
Ciarán O'Riordan,
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