"Software licenses and patents aren't the only ways proprietary software vendors can restrict the freedoms of computer users. A key component of our overall campaign for software freedom is making sure that the hardware we buy is not an obstacle to the exercise of our freedoms.

"Few people had access to computers back when Richard Matthew Stallman realized the then-nascent software industry was adopting a business model based on denying software users their four essential freedoms, and that he could do something about it.

"One of the founding fathers of "free software" and an esteemed elder of the hacking community, Richard Stallman has made defending people's freedoms his life's work. That usually means supplying hackers with software and attacking copyright law.

I'm damn fed up with the FSF being the "protector of freedoms", and also feeling that they can define what those freedoms mean.

The GPLv2 is a *legal*license*. And no, the FSF doesn't get to define what the words mean to suit their agenda.

Rick, you miss one point: free software is about freedom, not price. Hackers insist on freedom even when it is inconvenient...

My mission today is to teach you to value these freedoms... Please, try to learn this philosophy. Free Software is a movement that one day you will rejoin ;)

Freedom is worth a sacrifice - (RMS)

christophe

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

"Preserving software freedom in the era of Web applications -- You’ve read the GPL’s preamble, you can name the Four Freedoms, and you do your best to keep proprietary bits off our computers. But what’s the future of free software in the era of Flickr, Google Apps, and Facebook? ..."

"For the past twenty-two years the Free Software Foundation has had the mission to promote, preserve, and protect the freedoms to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute modified computer software, and to defend the rights of all free software users..."

"The intersection of ethics, law, business and computer software is the subject of these essays and speeches by MacArthur Foundation Grant winner, Richard M. Stallman.

"This article is about free software as used in the sociopolitical free software movement...Free software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions only to ensure that end users have the same freedoms as the original authors..."