Free as in 'Freedom'.
Sorry if this is old news to some, I just want to win some hearts and
minds. This is in the reply to the requests for positive argument.
Who are we ? and why do we fight DRM etc ?
We are the people can or have written software, this is not
comprehensive, or exclusive (not everyone are programming, and
non-software people are involved).
We are the people who don't need to be told that 'Code is Law' we
experience it.
We know that it is an inflexible law, without argument or right of appeal.
If you have the source code you can read and modify the behaviour of the
code, the only requirement is the knowledge, skill and motivation to do so.
If you have the object code, then you cannot modify the behaviour of the
code (IDA's aside).
So writing and using software, makes you acutely aware, of the
difference, between the freedom, of the first (source code) and the
limits of the second (object code).
This is especially true if you worked in the early days of computing
where supplying the source code was standard practice, and companies
increasingly stopped supplying the source code, cutting programmers out
of the loop.
I am of course talking about the Free Software Foundation.
We may not be members, or even subscribe to the newsletter, we may or
may not like or agree with Richard Stallman, but we do understand the
philosophy of the FSF.
We subscribe to the freedoms represented by the FSF, the EFF and FFII
etc (and European branches, the FFII is European).
http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
http://www.eff.org/work
http://www.ffii.org
http://www.fsfeurope.org/
"The FSF campaigns for free software adoption and against proprietary
software. Threats to free software include Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM), Software Patents and Treacherous Computing."
I do not post as a member, representative or affiliate of any group. I
just support the ends of the FSF.
What Free and Open Source Software does is operate in a de facto
copyright free environment.
I am prepared to make detailed posts on copyright in the future. This is
just background.
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