gnu

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On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and such
companies don't succeed, this will show that advertising was not really
necessary to spread GNU.  Why is it that free market advocates don't want
to let the free market decide this?

  "My company needs a proprietary operating system
   to get a competitive edge."

GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition.
You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your
competitors be able to get an edge over you.  You and they will compete in
other areas, while benefitting mutually in this one.  If your business is
selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on
you.  If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being
pushed into the expensive business of selling operating systems.

I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many
manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.

  "Don't programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?"

If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution.  Creativity can
be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the
results.  If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative
programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict
the use of these programs.

  "Shouldn't a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his creativity?"

There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize
one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive.  But
the means customary in the field of software today are based on
destruction.

Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is
destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that
the program can be used.  This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity
derives from the program.  When there is a deliberate choice to restrict,
the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.

The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become
wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the
mutual destructiveness.  This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule.
Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards
information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so.
Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not
justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

  "Won't programmers starve?"

I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer.  Most of us cannot
manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces.  But
we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the
street making faces, and starving.  We do something else.

But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's implicit
assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly
be paid a cent.  Supposedly it is all or nothing.

The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be
possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as
now.

Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software.  It is
the most common basis because it brings in the most money.  If it were
prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to
other bases of organization which are now used less often.  There are
always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.

Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is
now.  But that is not an argument against the change.  It is not considered
an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do.  If
programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either.  (In
practice they would still make considerably more than that.)

  "Don't people have a right to control how their creativity is used?"

"Control over the use of one's ideas" really constitutes control over other
people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights carefully
(such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual
property.  The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the
government recognizes were created by specific acts of legislation for
specific purposes.

For example, the patent system was established to encourage inventors to
disclose the details of their inventions.  Its purpose was to help society
rather than to help inventors.  At the time, the life span of 17 years for
a patent was short compared with the rate of advance of the state of the
art.  Since patents are an issue only among manufacturers, for whom the
cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting up
production, the patents often do not do much harm.  They do not obstruct
most individuals who use patented products.

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors
frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction.  This
practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived
even in part.  The copyright system was created expressly for the purpose
of encouraging authorship.  In the domain for which it was invented--books,
which could be copied economically only on a printing press--it did little
harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.

All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society
because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would
benefit by granting them.  But in any particular situation, we have to ask:
are we really better off granting such license?  What kind of act are we
licensing a person to do?

The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred
years ago.  The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one
neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and
object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather
than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a person who
enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and
spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the
law enables him to.

  "Competition makes things get done better."

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we
encourage everyone to run faster.  When capitalism really works this way,
it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works
this way.  If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become
intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies--such as,
attacking other runners.  If the runners get into a fist fight, they will
all finish late.

Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners in a
fist fight.  Sad to say, the only referee we've got does not seem to
object to fights; he just regulates them ("For every ten yards you run, you
are allowed one kick.").  He really ought to break them up, and penalize
runners for even trying to fight.

  "Won't everyone stop programming without a monetary incentive?"

Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive.
Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the
people who are best at it.  There is no shortage of professional musicians
who keep at it even though they have no hope of making a living that way.

But really this question, though commonly asked, is not appropriate to the
situation.  Pay for programmers will not disappear, only become less.  So
the right question is, will anyone program with a reduced monetary
incentive?  My experience shows that they will.

For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the
Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had
anywhere else.  They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and
appreciation, for example.  And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.

Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting
work for a lot of money.

What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than
riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will
come to expect and demand it.  Low-paying organizations do poorly in
competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the
high-paying ones are banned.

  "We need the programmers desperately.  If they demand that we
   stop helping our neighbors, we have to obey."

You're never so desperate that you have to obey this sort of demand.
Remember: millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute!

  "Programmers need to make a living somehow."

In the short run, this is true.  However, there are plenty of ways that
programmers could make a living without selling the right to use a program.
This way is customary now because it brings programmers and businessmen the
most money, not because it is the only way to make a living.  It is easy to
find other ways if you want to find them.  Here are a number of examples.

A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of
operating systems onto the new hardware.

The sale of teaching, hand-holding and maintenance services could also
employ programmers.

People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware, asking for
donations from satisfied users, or selling hand-holding services.  I have
met people who are already working this way successfully.

Users with related needs can form users' groups, and pay dues.  A group
would contract with programming companies to write programs that the
group's members would like to use.

All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax:

 Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay x percent of
 the price as a software tax.  The government gives this to
 an agency like the NSF to spend on software development.

 But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development
 himself, he can take a credit against the tax.  He can donate to
 the project of his own choosing--often, chosen because he hopes to
 use the results when it is done.  He can take a credit for any amount
 of donation up to the total tax he had to pay.

 The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of
 the tax, weighted according to the amount they will be taxed on.

 The consequences:
 * the computer-using community supports software development.
 * this community decides what level of support is needed.
 * users who care which projects their share is spent on
  can choose this for themselves.

In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity
world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living.
People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun,
such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week
on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot
repair and asteroid prospecting.  There will be no need to be able
to make a living from programming.

We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole
society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this
has translated itself into leisure for workers because much
nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity.
The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles
against competition.  Free software will greatly reduce these
drains in the area of software production.  We must do this,
in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into
less work for us.

Copyright (C) 1985 Richard M. Stallman

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