gnu

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they will compete in other areas, while benefiting 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.(5)

     "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 can fire one shot").  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.

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1)  The wording here was careless.  The intention was that nobody
would have to pay for *permission* to use the GNU system.  But the
words don't make this clear, and people often interpret them as saying
that copies of GNU should always be distributed at little or no charge.
That was never the intent; later on, the manifesto mentions the
possibility of companies providing the service of distribution for a
profit.  Subsequently I have learned to distinguish carefully between
"free" in the sense of freedom and "free" in the sense of price.  Free
software is software that users have the freedom to distribute and
change.  Some users may obtain copies at no charge, while others pay to
obtain copies--and if the funds help support improving the software, so
much the better.  The important thing is that everyone who has a copy
has the freedom to cooperate with others in using it.

   (2)  This is another place I failed to distinguish carefully between
the two different meanings of "free".  The statement as it stands is
not false--you can get copies of GNU software at no charge, from your
friends or over the net.  But it does suggest the wrong idea.

   (3)  Several such companies now exist.

   (4)  The Free Software Foundation raises most of its funds from a
distribution service, although it is a charity rather than a company.
If *no one* chooses to obtain copies by ordering from the FSF, it
will be unable to do its work.  But this does not mean that proprietary
restrictions are justified to force every user to pay.  If a small
fraction of all the users order copies from the FSF, that is sufficient
to keep the FSF afloat.  So we ask users to choose to support us in
this way.  Have you done your part?

   (5)  A group of computer companies recently pooled funds to support
maintenance of the GNU C Compiler.