"..RMS’s other mission here is to promote the Free Software Movement. The creator of the GPL...is at pains to correct misunderstandings of what the term free software means and to draw a distinction between it and the open source movement.

"People are ignorant, but we already know that. As usual, I’ve read something really stupid on Twitter this morning. It said: I hope Apple will develop for everyone [every OS]. I think it would be one of the worst things to ever happen. Why do people want to install non-free software on free systems?

The free software community understands that free software gives the user more freedom than proprietary software. Proprietary software confines its users, prohibits them from making changes that would allow everyone to benefit, etc. Free software advocates (myself included) have a habit of claiming that using free (libre) software means the same thing as having freedom.

The stories of Echelon, Wikileaks, Snowden and the NSA scandal lead the information society to question the notions of information privacy, transparency, common sense, and the use of personal data for commercial purposes. To be “free”, is it simply the freedom to enjoy without restraint? Freedom of speech? Freedom of opinion or free will? Freedom to use gratis everything we find on the Net?

"...copyleft is a tool designed to spread freedom in software, at any cost. The FSF, which wrote the GNU and Affero licenses, has the goal to make all software free as in freedom. Companies are ‘free’ to join the revolution, or to look somewhere else for their needs.

– ## Why I agree with RMS on convenience vs. freedom: --
* RMS: «We cater to them (people who don't care about software freedom) to the extent it doesn't interfere with more important goals, such as establishing a free society.»

Free software is software you can study, modify and share without restriction. But unlike proprietary software, there is no big budget marketing campaign behind it. Rather, people discover it and come to value the freedom it provides. What are these people's motivations for working on free software? Why is community and sharing so important? Why should everyone be using free software?

The free software movement is one the most successful social movements to emerge in the past 25 years, driven by a worldwide community of ethical programmers dedicated to the cause of freedom and sharing. But the ultimate success of the free software movement depends upon teaching our friends, neighbors and work colleagues about the danger of not having software freedom, about the danger of a society losing control over its computing.

"This is an interesting interview with a professor involved in the Cuban free software movement. He makes an interesting argument which is that the free as in price argument is not a compelling argument for Cuba to switch to free software. Because of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, in the past, their government and universities have used pirated, unlicensed proprietary software by default.