"Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. The simplest way to make a program free software is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their improvements, if they are so minded.

RMS: « The father of free software philosophy spoke to RT on evil developers, spying social networks, the almost-legitimacy of Anonymous hacks and the condition under which he would take a proprietary program and a million dollars. Stallman is the man behind the concept that every computer program must be free for users to study and modify as they want.

When explaining why Free Software is important, one question that often comes up is: “do I really need the software freedom?”

There's been a whitepaper making the rounds recently which discusses how a vendor can use virtualization to comply with GPLv3's anti-tivoization requirements, while keeping separate proprietary software locked down. Unfortunately, the headlines have had their usual sensationalist slant: "Can hypervisors circumvent GPLv3's 'anti-tivoization' clause?" they ask.

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EuroparlTV seems to work only for users of either Adobe’s proprietary Flash player (via the proprietary Adobe Flash file format) or users of Microsoft’s Windows Media Player (via the proprietary WMV file format).

What this means to an open web, that is usable for everyone should be clear.

RMS: «The EFF is fighting an attempt to twist copyright law to give the software developer total power over execution of the program. Victory in this case will not eliminate the practice of restricting how users run proprietary programs. It will only limit the developers to using contracts as the means. This will not make users free.

The new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, Windows 7, has the same problem that Vista, XP, and all previous versions have had -- it's proprietary software. Users are not permitted to share or modify the Windows software, or examine how it works inside.

There are lots of evil things that proprietary software companies might do. Companies put their own profit above the rights and freedoms of their users, and to that end, much that can be done that subjugates users.

"...Free software does not have the ability to cause catastrophic damage to the software industry. Proprietary software that spies on and restricts the freedoms of users will be eliminated, but such a change is for the better. More jobs will be created for programmers by companies who want specific changes made to their software.