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1 | (For more information about the GNU project and free software, |
2 | look at the files `GNU', `COPYING', and `DISTRIB', in the same | |
3 | directory as this file.) | |
4 | ||
5 | ||
6 | Why Software Should Be Free | |
7 | ||
8 | by Richard Stallman | |
9 | ||
10 | (Version of April 24, 1992) | |
11 | ||
12 | Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, Free Software Foundation, Inc. | |
13 | Verbatim copying and redistribution is permitted | |
14 | without royalty; alteration is not permitted. | |
15 | ||
16 | Introduction | |
17 | ************ | |
18 | ||
19 | The existence of software inevitably raises the question of how | |
20 | decisions about its use should be made. For example, suppose one | |
21 | individual who has a copy of a program meets another who would like a | |
22 | copy. It is possible for them to copy the program; who should decide | |
23 | whether this is done? The individuals involved? Or another party, | |
24 | called the "owner"? | |
25 | ||
26 | Software developers typically consider these questions on the | |
27 | assumption that the criterion for the answer is to maximize developers' | |
28 | profits. The political power of business has led to the government | |
29 | adoption of both this criterion and the answer proposed by the | |
30 | developers: that the program has an owner, typically a corporation | |
31 | associated with its development. | |
32 | ||
33 | I would like to consider the same question using a different | |
34 | criterion: the prosperity and freedom of the public in general. | |
35 | ||
36 | This answer cannot be decided by current law--the law should conform | |
37 | to ethics, not the other way around. Nor does current practice decide | |
38 | this question, although it may suggest possible answers. The only way | |
39 | to judge is to see who is helped and who is hurt by recognizing owners | |
40 | of software, why, and how much. In other words, we should perform a | |
41 | cost-benefit analysis on behalf of society as a whole, taking account of | |
42 | individual freedom as well as production of material goods. | |
43 | ||
44 | In this essay, I will describe the effects of having owners, and show | |
45 | that the results are detrimental. My conclusion is that programmers | |
46 | have the duty to encourage others to share, redistribute, study and | |
47 | improve the software we write: in other words, to write "free" | |
48 | software.(1) | |
49 | ||
50 | How Owners Justify Their Power | |
51 | ****************************** | |
52 | ||
53 | Those who benefit from the current system where programs are property | |
54 | offer two arguments in support of their claims to own programs: the | |
55 | emotional argument and the economic argument. | |
56 | ||
57 | The emotional argument goes like this: "I put my sweat, my heart, my | |
58 | soul into this program. It comes from *me*, it's *mine*!" | |
59 | ||
60 | This argument does not require serious refutation. The feeling of | |
61 | attachment is one that programmers can cultivate when it suits them; it | |
62 | is not inevitable. Consider, for example, how willingly the same | |
63 | programmers usually sign over all rights to a large corporation for a | |
64 | salary; the emotional attachment mysteriously vanishes. By contrast, | |
65 | consider the great artists and artisans of medieval times, who didn't | |
66 | even sign their names to their work. To them, the name of the artist | |
67 | was not important. What mattered was that the work was done--and the | |
68 | purpose it would serve. This view prevailed for hundreds of years. | |
69 | ||
70 | The economic argument goes like this: "I want to get rich (usually | |
71 | described inaccurately as `making a living'), and if you don't allow me | |
72 | to get rich by programming, then I won't program. Everyone else is like | |
73 | me, so nobody will ever program. And then you'll be stuck with no | |
74 | programs at all!" This threat is usually veiled as friendly advice | |
75 | from the wise. | |
76 | ||
77 | I'll explain later why this threat is a bluff. First I want to | |
78 | address an implicit assumption that is more visible in another | |
79 | formulation of the argument. | |
80 | ||
81 | This formulation starts by comparing the social utility of a | |
82 | proprietary program with that of no program, and then concludes that | |
83 | proprietary software development is, on the whole, beneficial, and | |
84 | should be encouraged. The fallacy here is in comparing only two | |
85 | outcomes--proprietary software vs. no software--and assuming there are | |
86 | no other possibilities. | |
87 | ||
88 | Given a system of intellectual property, software development is | |
89 | usually linked with the existence of an owner who controls the | |
90 | software's use. As long as this linkage exists, we are often faced | |
91 | with the choice of proprietary software or none. However, this linkage | |
92 | is not inherent or inevitable; it is a consequence of the specific | |
93 | social/legal policy decision that we are questioning: the decision to | |
94 | have owners. To formulate the choice as between proprietary software | |
95 | vs. no software is begging the question. | |
96 | ||
97 | The Argument against Having Owners | |
98 | ********************************** | |
99 | ||
100 | The question at hand is, "Should development of software be linked | |
101 | with having owners to restrict the use of it?" | |
102 | ||
103 | In order to decide this, we have to judge the effect on society of | |
104 | each of those two activities *independently*: the effect of developing | |
105 | the software (regardless of its terms of distribution), and the effect | |
106 | of restricting its use (assuming the software has been developed). If | |
107 | one of these activities is helpful and the other is harmful, we would be | |
108 | better off dropping the linkage and doing only the helpful one. | |
109 | ||
110 | To put it another way, if restricting the distribution of a program | |
111 | already developed is harmful to society overall, then an ethical | |
112 | software developer will reject the option of doing so. | |
113 | ||
114 | To determine the effect of restricting sharing, we need to compare | |
115 | the value to society of a restricted (i.e., proprietary) program with | |
116 | that of the same program, available to everyone. This means comparing | |
117 | two possible worlds. | |
118 | ||
119 | This analysis also addresses the simple counterargument sometimes | |
120 | made that "the benefit to the neighbor of giving him or her a copy of a | |
121 | program is cancelled by the harm done to the owner." This | |
122 | counterargument assumes that the harm and the benefit are equal in | |
123 | magnitude. The analysis involves comparing these magnitudes, and shows | |
124 | that the benefit is much greater. | |
125 | ||
126 | To elucidate this argument, let's apply it in another area: road | |
127 | construction. | |
128 | ||
129 | It would be possible to fund the construction of all roads with | |
130 | tolls. This would entail having toll booths at all street corners. | |
131 | Such a system would provide a great incentive to improve roads. It | |
132 | would also have the virtue of causing the users of any given road to | |
133 | pay for that road. However, a toll booth is an artificial obstruction | |
134 | to smooth driving--artificial, because it is not a consequence of how | |
135 | roads or cars work. | |
136 | ||
137 | Comparing free roads and toll roads by their usefulness, we find that | |
138 | (all else being equal) roads without toll booths are cheaper to | |
139 | construct, cheaper to run, safer, and more efficient to use.(2) In a | |
140 | poor country, tolls may make the roads unavailable to many citizens. | |
141 | The roads without toll booths thus offer more benefit to society at | |
142 | less cost; they are preferable for society. Therefore, society should | |
143 | choose to fund roads in another way, not by means of toll booths. Use | |
144 | of roads, once built, should be free. | |
145 | ||
146 | When the advocates of toll booths propose them as *merely* a way of | |
147 | raising funds, they distort the choice that is available. Toll booths | |
148 | do raise funds, but they do something else as well: in effect, they | |
149 | degrade the road. The toll road is not as good as the free road; giving | |
150 | us more or technically superior roads may not be an improvement if this | |
151 | means substituting toll roads for free roads. | |
152 | ||
153 | Of course, the construction of a free road does cost money, which the | |
154 | public must somehow pay. However, this does not imply the inevitability | |
155 | of toll booths. We who must in either case pay will get more value for | |
156 | our money by buying a free road. | |
157 | ||
158 | I am not saying that a toll road is worse than no road at all. That | |
159 | would be true if the toll were so great that hardly anyone used the | |
160 | road--but this is an unlikely policy for a toll collector. However, as | |
161 | long as the toll booths cause significant waste and inconvenience, it is | |
162 | better to raise the funds in a less obstructive fashion. | |
163 | ||
164 | To apply the same argument to software development, I will now show | |
165 | that having "toll booths" for useful software programs costs society | |
166 | dearly: it makes the programs more expensive to construct, more | |
167 | expensive to distribute, and less satisfying and efficient to use. It | |
168 | will follow that program construction should be encouraged in some other | |
169 | way. Then I will go on to explain other methods of encouraging and (to | |
170 | the extent actually necessary) funding software development. | |
171 | ||
172 | The Harm Done by Obstructing Software | |
173 | ===================================== | |
174 | ||
175 | Consider for a moment that a program has been developed, and any | |
176 | necessary payments for its development have been made; now society must | |
177 | choose either to make it proprietary or allow free sharing and use. | |
178 | Assume that the existence of the program and its availability is a | |
179 | desirable thing.(3) | |
180 | ||
181 | Restrictions on the distribution and modification of the program | |
182 | cannot facilitate its use. They can only interfere. So the effect can | |
183 | only be negative. But how much? And what kind? | |
184 | ||
185 | Three different levels of material harm come from such obstruction: | |
186 | ||
187 | * Fewer people use the program. | |
188 | ||
189 | * None of the users can adapt or fix the program. | |
190 | ||
191 | * Other developers cannot learn from the program, or base new work | |
192 | on it. | |
193 | ||
194 | Each level of material harm has a concomitant form of psychosocial | |
195 | harm. This refers to the effect that people's decisions have on their | |
196 | subsequent feelings, attitudes and predispositions. These changes in | |
197 | people's ways of thinking will then have a further effect on their | |
198 | relationships with their fellow citizens, and can have material | |
199 | consequences. | |
200 | ||
201 | The three levels of material harm waste part of the value that the | |
202 | program could contribute, but they cannot reduce it to zero. If they | |
203 | waste nearly all the value of the program, then writing the program | |
204 | harms society by at most the effort that went into writing the program. | |
205 | Arguably a program that is profitable to sell must provide some net | |
206 | direct material benefit. | |
207 | ||
208 | However, taking account of the concomitant psychosocial harm, there | |
209 | is no limit to the harm that proprietary software development can do. | |
210 | ||
211 | Obstructing Use of Programs | |
212 | =========================== | |
213 | ||
214 | The first level of harm impedes the simple use of a program. A copy | |
215 | of a program has nearly zero marginal cost (and you can pay this cost by | |
216 | doing the work yourself), so in a free market, it would have nearly zero | |
217 | price. A license fee is a significant disincentive to use the program. | |
218 | If a widely-useful program is proprietary, far fewer people will use it. | |
219 | ||
220 | It is easy to show that the total contribution of a program to | |
221 | society is reduced by assigning an owner to it. Each potential user of | |
222 | the program, faced with the need to pay to use it, may choose to pay, | |
223 | or may forego use of the program. When a user chooses to pay, this is a | |
224 | zero-sum transfer of wealth between two parties. But each time someone | |
225 | chooses to forego use of the program, this harms that person without | |
226 | benefiting anyone. The sum of negative numbers and zeros must be | |
227 | negative. | |
228 | ||
229 | But this does not reduce the amount of work it takes to *develop* | |
230 | the program. As a result, the efficiency of the whole process, in | |
231 | delivered user satisfaction per hour of work, is reduced. | |
232 | ||
233 | This reflects a crucial difference between copies of programs and | |
234 | cars, chairs, or sandwiches. There is no copying machine for material | |
235 | objects outside of science fiction. But programs are easy to copy; | |
236 | anyone can produce as many copies as are wanted, with very little | |
237 | effort. This isn't true for material objects because matter is | |
238 | conserved: each new copy has to be built from raw materials in the same | |
239 | way that the first copy was built. | |
240 | ||
241 | With material objects, a disincentive to use them makes sense, | |
242 | because fewer objects bought means less raw materials and work needed | |
243 | to make them. It's true that there is usually also a startup cost, a | |
244 | development cost, which is spread over the production run. But as long | |
245 | as the marginal cost of production is significant, adding a share of the | |
246 | development cost does not make a qualitative difference. And it does | |
247 | not require restrictions on the freedom of ordinary users. | |
248 | ||
249 | However, imposing a price on something that would otherwise be free | |
250 | is a qualitative change. A centrally-imposed fee for software | |
251 | distribution becomes a powerful disincentive. | |
252 | ||
253 | What's more, central production as now practiced is inefficient even | |
254 | as a means of delivering copies of software. This system involves | |
255 | enclosing physical disks or tapes in superfluous packaging, shipping | |
256 | large numbers of them around the world, and storing them for sale. This | |
257 | cost is presented as an expense of doing business; in truth, it is part | |
258 | of the waste caused by having owners. | |
259 | ||
260 | Damaging Social Cohesion | |
261 | ======================== | |
262 | ||
263 | Suppose that both you and your neighbor would find it useful to run a | |
264 | certain program. In ethical concern for your neighbor, you should feel | |
265 | that proper handling of the situation will enable both of you to use it. | |
266 | A proposal to permit only one of you to use the program, while | |
267 | restraining the other, is divisive; neither you nor your neighbor should | |
268 | find it acceptable. | |
269 | ||
270 | Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying your | |
271 | neighbor: "I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so that I | |
272 | can have a copy for myself." People who make such choices feel | |
273 | internal psychological pressure to justify them, by downgrading the | |
274 | importance of helping one's neighbors--thus public spirit suffers. | |
275 | This is psychosocial harm associated with the material harm of | |
276 | discouraging use of the program. | |
277 | ||
278 | Many users unconsciously recognize the wrong of refusing to share, so | |
279 | they decide to ignore the licenses and laws, and share programs anyway. | |
280 | But they often feel guilty about doing so. They know that they must | |
281 | break the laws in order to be good neighbors, but they still consider | |
282 | the laws authoritative, and they conclude that being a good neighbor | |
283 | (which they are) is naughty or shameful. That is also a kind of | |
284 | psychosocial harm, but one can escape it by deciding that these licenses | |
285 | and laws have no moral force. | |
286 | ||
287 | Programmers also suffer psychosocial harm knowing that many users | |
288 | will not be allowed to use their work. This leads to an attitude of | |
289 | cynicism or denial. A programmer may describe enthusiastically the | |
290 | work that he finds technically exciting; then when asked, "Will I be | |
291 | permitted to use it?", his face falls, and he admits the answer is no. | |
292 | To avoid feeling discouraged, he either ignores this fact most of the | |
293 | time or adopts a cynical stance designed to minimize the importance of | |
294 | it. | |
295 | ||
296 | Since the age of Reagan, the greatest scarcity in the United States | |
297 | is not technical innovation, but rather the willingness to work together | |
298 | for the public good. It makes no sense to encourage the former at the | |
299 | expense of the latter. | |
300 | ||
301 | Obstructing Custom Adaptation of Programs | |
302 | ========================================= | |
303 | ||
304 | The second level of material harm is the inability to adapt programs. | |
305 | The ease of modification of software is one of its great advantages over | |
306 | older technology. But most commercially available software isn't | |
307 | available for modification, even after you buy it. It's available for | |
308 | you to take it or leave it, as a black box--that is all. | |
309 | ||
310 | A program that you can run consists of a series of numbers whose | |
311 | meaning is obscure. No one, not even a good programmer, can easily | |
312 | change the numbers to make the program do something different. | |
313 | ||
314 | Programmers normally work with the "source code" for a program, which | |
315 | is written in a programming language such as Fortran or C. It uses | |
316 | names to designate the data being used and the parts of the program, and | |
317 | it represents operations with symbols such as `+' for addition and `-' | |
318 | for subtraction. It is designed to help programmers read and change | |
319 | programs. Here is an example; a program to calculate the distance | |
320 | between two points in a plane: | |
321 | ||
322 | float | |
323 | distance (p0, p1) | |
324 | struct point p0, p1; | |
325 | { | |
326 | float xdist = p1.x - p0.x; | |
327 | float ydist = p1.y - p0.y; | |
328 | return sqrt (xdist * xdist + ydist * ydist); | |
329 | } | |
330 | ||
331 | Here is the same program in executable form, on the computer I | |
332 | normally use: | |
333 | ||
334 | 1314258944 -232267772 -231844864 1634862 | |
335 | 1411907592 -231844736 2159150 1420296208 | |
336 | -234880989 -234879837 -234879966 -232295424 | |
337 | 1644167167 -3214848 1090581031 1962942495 | |
338 | 572518958 -803143692 1314803317 | |
339 | ||
340 | Source code is useful (at least potentially) to every user of a | |
341 | program. But most users are not allowed to have copies of the source | |
342 | code. Usually the source code for a proprietary program is kept secret | |
343 | by the owner, lest anybody else learn something from it. Users receive | |
344 | only the files of incomprehensible numbers that the computer will | |
345 | execute. This means that only the program's owner can change the | |
346 | program. | |
347 | ||
348 | A friend once told me of working as a programmer in a bank for about | |
349 | six months, writing a program similar to something that was commercially | |
350 | available. She believed that if she could have gotten source code for | |
351 | that commercially available program, it could easily have been adapted | |
352 | to their needs. The bank was willing to pay for this, but was not | |
353 | permitted to--the source code was a secret. So she had to do six | |
354 | months of make-work, work that counts in the GNP but was actually waste. | |
355 | ||
356 | The MIT Artificial Intelligence lab (AI lab) received a graphics | |
357 | printer as a gift from Xerox around 1977. It was run by free software | |
358 | to which we added many convenient features. For example, the software | |
359 | would notify a user immediately on completion of a print job. Whenever | |
360 | the printer had trouble, such as a paper jam or running out of paper, | |
361 | the software would immediately notify all users who had print jobs | |
362 | queued. These features facilitated smooth operation. | |
363 | ||
364 | Later Xerox gave the AI lab a newer, faster printer, one of the first | |
365 | laser printers. It was driven by proprietary software that ran in a | |
366 | separate dedicated computer, so we couldn't add any of our favorite | |
367 | features. We could arrange to send a notification when a print job was | |
368 | sent to the dedicated computer, but not when the job was actually | |
369 | printed (and the delay was usually considerable). There was no way to | |
370 | find out when the job was actually printed; you could only guess. And | |
371 | no one was informed when there was a paper jam, so the printer often | |
372 | went for an hour without being fixed. | |
373 | ||
374 | The system programmers at the AI lab were capable of fixing such | |
375 | problems, probably as capable as the original authors of the program. | |
376 | Xerox was uninterested in fixing them, and chose to prevent us, so we | |
377 | were forced to accept the problems. They were never fixed. | |
378 | ||
379 | Most good programmers have experienced this frustration. The bank | |
380 | could afford to solve the problem by writing a new program from | |
381 | scratch, but a typical user, no matter how skilled, can only give up. | |
382 | ||
383 | Giving up causes psychosocial harm--to the spirit of self-reliance. | |
384 | It is demoralizing to live in a house that you cannot rearrange to suit | |
385 | your needs. It leads to resignation and discouragement, which can | |
386 | spread to affect other aspects of one's life. People who feel this way | |
387 | are unhappy and do not do good work. | |
388 | ||
389 | Imagine what it would be like if recipes were hoarded in the same | |
390 | fashion as software. You might say, "How do I change this recipe to | |
391 | take out the salt?", and the great chef would respond, "How dare you | |
392 | insult my recipe, the child of my brain and my palate, by trying to | |
393 | tamper with it? You don't have the judgment to change my recipe and | |
394 | make it work right!" | |
395 | ||
396 | "But my doctor says I'm not supposed to eat salt! What can I do? | |
397 | Will you take out the salt for me?" | |
398 | ||
399 | "I would be glad to do that; my fee is only $50,000." Since the | |
400 | owner has a monopoly on changes, the fee tends to be large. "However, | |
401 | right now I don't have time. I am busy with a commission to design a | |
402 | new recipe for ship's biscuit for the Navy Department. I might get | |
403 | around to you in about two years." | |
404 | ||
405 | Obstructing Software Development | |
406 | ================================ | |
407 | ||
408 | The third level of material harm affects software development. | |
409 | Software development used to be an evolutionary process, where a person | |
410 | would take an existing program and rewrite parts of it for one new | |
411 | feature, and then another person would rewrite parts to add another | |
412 | feature; in some cases, this continued over a period of twenty years. | |
413 | Meanwhile, parts of the program would be "cannibalized" to form the | |
414 | beginnings of other programs. | |
415 | ||
416 | The existence of owners prevents this kind of evolution, making it | |
417 | necessary to start from scratch when developing a program. It also | |
418 | prevents new practitioners from studying existing programs to learn | |
419 | useful techniques or even how large programs can be structured. | |
420 | ||
421 | Owners also obstruct education. I have met bright students in | |
422 | computer science who have never seen the source code of a large | |
423 | program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't | |
424 | begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't | |
425 | see how others have done it. | |
426 | ||
427 | In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing | |
428 | on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in | |
429 | the software field--you can only stand on the shoulders of the other | |
430 | people *in your own company*. | |
431 | ||
432 | The associated psychosocial harm affects the spirit of scientific | |
433 | cooperation, which used to be so strong that scientists would cooperate | |
434 | even when their countries were at war. In this spirit, Japanese | |
435 | oceanographers abandoning their lab on an island in the Pacific | |
436 | carefully preserved their work for the invading U.S. Marines, and left a | |
437 | note asking them to take good care of it. | |
438 | ||
439 | Conflict for profit has destroyed what international conflict spared. | |
440 | Nowadays scientists in many fields don't publish enough in their papers | |
441 | to enable others to replicate the experiment. They publish only enough | |
442 | to let readers marvel at how much they were able to do. This is | |
443 | certainly true in computer science, where the source code for the | |
444 | programs reported on is usually secret. | |
445 | ||
446 | It Does Not Matter How Sharing Is Restricted | |
447 | ============================================ | |
448 | ||
449 | I have been discussing the effects of preventing people from copying, | |
450 | changing and building on a program. I have not specified how this | |
451 | obstruction is carried out, because that doesn't affect the conclusion. | |
452 | Whether it is done by copy protection, or copyright, or licenses, or | |
453 | encryption, or ROM cards, or hardware serial numbers, if it *succeeds* | |
454 | in preventing use, it does harm. | |
455 | ||
456 | Users do consider some of these methods more obnoxious than others. | |
457 | I suggest that the methods most hated are those that accomplish their | |
458 | objective. | |
459 | ||
460 | Software Should be Free | |
461 | ======================= | |
462 | ||
463 | I have shown how ownership of a program--the power to restrict | |
464 | changing or copying it--is obstructive. Its negative effects are | |
465 | widespread and important. It follows that society shouldn't have | |
466 | owners for programs. | |
467 | ||
468 | Another way to understand this is that what society needs is free | |
469 | software, and proprietary software is a poor substitute. Encouraging | |
470 | the substitute is not a rational way to get what we need. | |
471 | ||
472 | Vaclav Havel has advised us to "Work for something because it is | |
473 | good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed." A business | |
474 | making proprietary software stands a chance of success in its own narrow | |
475 | terms, but it is not what is good for society. | |
476 | ||
477 | Why People Will Develop Software | |
478 | ******************************** | |
479 | ||
480 | If we eliminate intellectual property as a means of encouraging | |
481 | people to develop software, at first less software will be developed, | |
482 | but that software will be more useful. It is not clear whether the | |
483 | overall delivered user satisfaction will be less; but if it is, or if | |
484 | we wish to increase it anyway, there are other ways to encourage | |
485 | development, just as there are ways besides toll booths to raise money | |
486 | for streets. Before I talk about how that can be done, first I want to | |
487 | question how much artificial encouragement is truly necessary. | |
488 | ||
489 | Programming is Fun | |
490 | ================== | |
491 | ||
492 | There are some lines of work that few will enter except for money; | |
493 | road construction, for example. There are other fields of study and | |
494 | art in which there is little chance to become rich, which people enter | |
495 | for their fascination or their perceived value to society. Examples | |
496 | include mathematical logic, classical music, and archaeology; and | |
497 | political organizing among working people. People compete, more sadly | |
498 | than bitterly, for the few funded positions available, none of which is | |
499 | funded very well. They may even pay for the chance to work in the | |
500 | field, if they can afford to. | |
501 | ||
502 | Such a field can transform itself overnight if it begins to offer the | |
503 | possibility of getting rich. When one worker gets rich, others demand | |
504 | the same opportunity. Soon all may demand large sums of money for doing | |
505 | what they used to do for pleasure. When another couple of years go by, | |
506 | everyone connected with the field will deride the idea that work would | |
507 | be done in the field without large financial returns. They will advise | |
508 | social planners to ensure that these returns are possible, prescribing | |
509 | special privileges, powers and monopolies as necessary to do so. | |
510 | ||
511 | This change happened in the field of computer programming in the past | |
512 | decade. Fifteen years ago, there were articles on "computer | |
513 | addiction": users were "onlining" and had hundred-dollar-a-week habits. | |
514 | It was generally understood that people frequently loved programming | |
515 | enough to break up their marriages. Today, it is generally understood | |
516 | that no one would program except for a high rate of pay. People have | |
517 | forgotten what they knew fifteen years ago. | |
518 | ||
519 | When it is true at a given time that most people will work in a | |
520 | certain field only for high pay, it need not remain true. The dynamic | |
521 | of change can run in reverse, if society provides an impetus. If we | |
522 | take away the possibility of great wealth, then after a while, when the | |
523 | people have readjusted their attitudes, they will once again be eager | |
524 | to work in the field for the joy of accomplishment. | |
525 | ||
526 | The question, "How can we pay programmers?", becomes an easier | |
527 | question when we realize that it's not a matter of paying them a | |
528 | fortune. A mere living is easier to raise. | |
529 | ||
530 | Funding Free Software | |
531 | ===================== | |
532 | ||
533 | Institutions that pay programmers do not have to be software houses. | |
534 | Many other institutions already exist which can do this. | |
535 | ||
536 | Hardware manufacturers find it essential to support software | |
537 | development even if they cannot control the use of the software. In | |
538 | 1970, much of their software was free because they did not consider | |
539 | restricting it. Today, their increasing willingness to join | |
540 | consortiums shows their realization that owning the software is not | |
541 | what is really important for them. | |
542 | ||
543 | Universities conduct many programming projects. Today, they often | |
544 | sell the results, but in the 1970s, they did not. Is there any doubt | |
545 | that universities would develop free software if they were not allowed | |
546 | to sell software? These projects could be supported by the same | |
547 | government contracts and grants which now support proprietary software | |
548 | development. | |
549 | ||
550 | It is common today for university researchers to get grants to | |
551 | develop a system, develop it nearly to the point of completion and call | |
552 | that "finished", and then start companies where they really finish the | |
553 | project and make it usable. Sometimes they declare the unfinished | |
554 | version "free"; if they are thoroughly corrupt, they instead get an | |
555 | exclusive license from the university. This is not a secret; it is | |
556 | openly admitted by everyone concerned. Yet if the researchers were not | |
557 | exposed to the temptation to do these things, they would still do their | |
558 | research. | |
559 | ||
560 | Programmers writing free software can make their living by selling | |
561 | services related to the software. I have been hired to port the GNU C | |
562 | compiler to new hardware, and to make user-interface extensions to GNU | |
563 | Emacs. (I offer these improvements to the public once they are done.) | |
564 | I also teach classes for which I am paid. | |
565 | ||
566 | I am not alone in working this way; there is now a successful, | |
567 | growing corporation which does no other kind of work. Several other | |
568 | companies also provide commercial support for the free software of the | |
569 | GNU system. This is the beginning of the independent software support | |
570 | industry-an industry that could become quite large if free software | |
571 | becomes prevalent. It provides users with an option generally | |
572 | unavailable for proprietary software, except to the very wealthy. | |
573 | ||
574 | New institutions such as the Free Software Foundation can also fund | |
575 | programmers. Most of the foundation's funds come from users buying | |
576 | tapes through the mail. The software on the tapes is free, which means | |
577 | that every user has the freedom to copy it and change it, but many | |
578 | nonetheless pay to get copies. (Recall that "free software" refers to | |
579 | freedom, not to price.) Some users order tapes who already have a copy, | |
580 | as a way of making a contribution they feel we deserve. The Foundation | |
581 | also receives sizable donations from computer manufacturers. | |
582 | ||
583 | The Free Software Foundation is a charity, and its income is spent on | |
584 | hiring as many programmers as possible. If it had been set up as a | |
585 | business, distributing the same free software to the public for the same | |
586 | fee, it would now provide a very good living for its founder. | |
587 | ||
588 | Because the Foundation is a charity, programmers often work for the | |
589 | Foundation for half of what they could make elsewhere. They do this | |
590 | because we are free of bureaucracy, and because they feel satisfaction | |
591 | in knowing that their work will not be obstructed from use. Most of | |
592 | all, they do it because programming is fun. In addition, volunteers | |
593 | have written many useful programs for us. (Recently even technical | |
594 | writers have begun to volunteer.) | |
595 | ||
596 | This confirms that programming is among the most fascinating of all | |
597 | fields, along with music and art. We don't have to fear that no one | |
598 | will want to program. | |
599 | ||
600 | What Do Users Owe to Developers? | |
601 | ================================ | |
602 | ||
603 | There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moral | |
604 | obligation to contribute to its support. Developers of free software | |
605 | are contributing to the users' activities, and it is both fair and in | |
606 | the long term interest of the users to give them funds to continue. | |
607 | ||
608 | However, this does not apply to proprietary software developers, | |
609 | since obstructionism deserves a punishment rather than a reward. | |
610 | ||
611 | We thus have a paradox: the developer of useful software is entitled | |
612 | to the support of the users, but any attempt to turn this moral | |
613 | obligation into a requirement destroys the basis for the obligation. A | |
614 | developer can either deserve a reward or demand it, but not both. | |
615 | ||
616 | I believe that an ethical developer faced with this paradox must act | |
617 | so as to deserve the reward, but should also entreat the users for | |
618 | voluntary donations. Eventually the users will learn to support | |
619 | developers without coercion, just as they have learned to support public | |
620 | radio and television stations. | |
621 | ||
622 | What Is Software Productivity? | |
623 | ****************************** | |
624 | ||
625 | If software were free, there would still be programmers, but perhaps | |
626 | fewer of them. Would this be bad for society? | |
627 | ||
628 | Not necessarily. Today the advanced nations have fewer farmers than | |
629 | in 1900, but we do not think this is bad for society, because the few | |
630 | deliver more food to the consumers than the many used to do. We call | |
631 | this improved productivity. Free software would require far fewer | |
632 | programmers to satisfy the demand, because of increased software | |
633 | productivity at all levels: | |
634 | ||
635 | * Wider use of each program that is developed. | |
636 | ||
637 | * The ability to adapt existing programs for customization instead | |
638 | of starting from scratch. | |
639 | ||
640 | * Better education of programmers. | |
641 | ||
642 | * The elimination of duplicate development effort. | |
643 | ||
644 | Those who object to cooperation because it would result in the | |
645 | employment of fewer programmers, are actually objecting to increased | |
646 | productivity. Yet these people usually accept the widely-held belief | |
647 | that the software industry needs increased productivity. How is this? | |
648 | ||
649 | "Software productivity" can mean two different things: the overall | |
650 | productivity of all software development, or the productivity of | |
651 | individual projects. Overall productivity is what society would like to | |
652 | improve, and the most straightforward way to do this is to eliminate the | |
653 | artificial obstacles to cooperation which reduce it. But researchers | |
654 | who study the field of "software productivity" focus only on the | |
655 | second, limited, sense of the term, where improvement requires difficult | |
656 | technological advances. | |
657 | ||
658 | Is Competition Inevitable? | |
659 | ************************** | |
660 | ||
661 | Is it inevitable that people will try to compete, to surpass their | |
662 | rivals in society? Perhaps it is. But competition itself is not | |
663 | harmful; the harmful thing is *combat*. | |
664 | ||
665 | There are many ways to compete. Competition can consist of trying to | |
666 | achieve ever more, to outdo what others have done. For example, in the | |
667 | old days, there was competition among programming wizards--competition | |
668 | for who could make the computer do the most amazing thing, or for who | |
669 | could make the shortest or fastest program for a given task. This kind | |
670 | of competition can benefit everyone, *as long as* the spirit of good | |
671 | sportsmanship is maintained. | |
672 | ||
673 | Constructive competition is enough competition to motivate people to | |
674 | great efforts. A number of people are competing to be the first to have | |
675 | visited all the countries on Earth; some even spend fortunes trying to | |
676 | do this. But they do not bribe ship captains to strand their rivals on | |
677 | desert islands. They are content to let the best person win. | |
678 | ||
679 | Competition becomes combat when the competitors begin trying to | |
680 | impede each other instead of advancing themselves--when "Let the best | |
681 | person win" gives way to "Let me win, best or not." Proprietary | |
682 | software is harmful, not because it is a form of competition, but | |
683 | because it is a form of combat among the citizens of our society. | |
684 | ||
685 | Competition in business is not necessarily combat. For example, when | |
686 | two grocery stores compete, their entire effort is to improve their own | |
687 | operations, not to sabotage the rival. But this does not demonstrate a | |
688 | special commitment to business ethics; rather, there is little scope for | |
689 | combat in this line of business short of physical violence. Not all | |
690 | areas of business share this characteristic. Withholding information | |
691 | that could help everyone advance is a form of combat. | |
692 | ||
693 | Business ideology does not prepare people to resist the temptation to | |
694 | combat the competition. Some forms of combat have been made banned with | |
695 | anti-trust laws, truth in advertising laws, and so on, but rather than | |
696 | generalizing this to a principled rejection of combat in general, | |
697 | executives invent other forms of combat which are not specifically | |
698 | prohibited. Society's resources are squandered on the economic | |
699 | equivalent of factional civil war. | |
700 | ||
701 | "Why Don't You Move to Russia?" | |
702 | ******************************* | |
703 | ||
704 | In the United States, any advocate of other than the most extreme | |
705 | form of laissez-faire selfishness has often heard this accusation. For | |
706 | example, it is leveled against the supporters of a national health care | |
707 | system, such as is found in all the other industrialized nations of the | |
708 | free world. It is leveled against the advocates of public support for | |
709 | the arts, also universal in advanced nations. The idea that citizens | |
710 | have any obligation to the public good is identified in America with | |
711 | Communism. But how similar are these ideas? | |
712 | ||
713 | Communism as was practiced in the Soviet Union was a system of | |
714 | central control where all activity was regimented, supposedly for the | |
715 | common good, but actually for the sake of the members of the Communist | |
716 | party. And where copying equipment was closely guarded to prevent | |
717 | illegal copying. | |
718 | ||
719 | The American system of intellectual property exercises central | |
720 | control over distribution of a program, and guards copying equipment | |
721 | with automatic copying protection schemes to prevent illegal copying. | |
722 | ||
723 | By contrast, I am working to build a system where people are free to | |
724 | decide their own actions; in particular, free to help their neighbors, | |
725 | and free to alter and improve the tools which they use in their daily | |
726 | lives. A system based on voluntary cooperation, and decentralization. | |
727 | ||
728 | Thus, if we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian | |
729 | Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists. | |
730 | ||
731 | The Question of Premises | |
732 | ************************ | |
733 | ||
734 | I make the assumption in this paper that a user of software is no | |
735 | less important than an author, or even an author's employer. In other | |
736 | words, their interests and needs have equal weight, when we decide | |
737 | which course of action is best. | |
738 | ||
739 | This premise is not universally accepted. Many maintain that an | |
740 | author's employer is fundamentally more important than anyone else. | |
741 | They say, for example, that the purpose of having owners of software is | |
742 | to give the author's employer the advantage he deserves--regardless of | |
743 | how this may affect the public. | |
744 | ||
745 | It is no use trying to prove or disprove these premises. Proof | |
746 | requires shared premises. So most of what I have to say is addressed | |
747 | only to those who share the premises I use, or at least are interested | |
748 | in what their consequences are. For those who believe that the owners | |
749 | are more important than everyone else, this paper is simply irrelevant. | |
750 | ||
751 | But why would a large number of Americans accept a premise which | |
752 | elevates certain people in importance above everyone else? Partly | |
753 | because of the belief that this premise is part of the legal traditions | |
754 | of American society. Some people feel that doubting the premise means | |
755 | challenging the basis of society. | |
756 | ||
757 | It is important for these people to know that this premise is not | |
758 | part of our legal tradition. It never has been. | |
759 | ||
760 | Thus, the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright is to | |
761 | "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." The Supreme | |
762 | Court has elaborated on this, stating in `Fox Film vs. Doyal' that "The | |
763 | sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring | |
764 | the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the | |
765 | public from the labors of authors." | |
766 | ||
767 | We are not required to agree with the Constitution or the Supreme | |
768 | Court. (At one time, they both condoned slavery.) So their positions | |
769 | do not disprove the owner supremacy premise. But I hope that the | |
770 | awareness that this is a radical right-wing assumption rather than a | |
771 | traditionally recognized one will weaken its appeal. | |
772 | ||
773 | Conclusion | |
774 | ********** | |
775 | ||
776 | We like to think that our society encourages helping your neighbor; | |
777 | but each time we reward someone for obstructionism, or admire them for | |
778 | the wealth they have gained in this way, we are sending the opposite | |
779 | message. | |
780 | ||
781 | Software hoarding is one form of our general willingness to disregard | |
782 | the welfare of society for personal gain. We can trace this disregard | |
783 | from Ronald Reagan to Jim Bakker, from Ivan Boesky to Exxon, from | |
784 | failing banks to failing schools. We can measure it with the size of | |
785 | the homeless population and the prison population. The antisocial | |
786 | spirit feeds on itself, because the more we see that other people will | |
787 | not help us, the more it seems futile to help them. Thus society decays | |
788 | into a jungle. | |
789 | ||
790 | If we don't want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. | |
791 | We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who | |
792 | cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from | |
793 | others. I hope that the free software movement will contribute to | |
794 | this: at least in one area, we will replace the jungle with a more | |
795 | efficient system which encourages and runs on voluntary cooperation. | |
796 | ||
797 | ---------- Footnotes ---------- | |
798 | ||
799 | (1) The word "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not to | |
800 | price; the price paid for a copy of a free program may be zero, or | |
801 | small, or (rarely) quite large. | |
802 | ||
803 | (2) The issues of pollution and traffic congestion do not alter | |
804 | this conclusion. If we wish to make driving more expensive to | |
805 | discourage driving in general, it is disadvantageous to do this using | |
806 | toll booths, which contribute to both pollution and congestion. A tax | |
807 | on gasoline is much better. Likewise, a desire to enhance safety by | |
808 | limiting maximum speed is not relevant; a free access road enhances the | |
809 | average speed by avoiding stops and delays, for any given speed limit. | |
810 | ||
811 | (3) One might regard a particular computer program as a harmful | |
812 | thing that should not be available at all, like the Lotus Marketplace | |
813 | database of personal information, which was withdrawn from sale due to | |
814 | public disapproval. Most of what I say does not apply to this case, | |
815 | but it makes little sense to argue for having an owner on the grounds | |
816 | that the owner will make the program less available. The owner will | |
817 | not make it *completely* unavailable, as one would wish in the case of | |
818 | a program whose use is considered destructive. | |
819 |