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http://www.france.fsfeurope.org

RMS (Zagreb on March 9th 2006): "... Many people suggest a two stage solution. They say, first, let's teach people to use Free Software, and then, once they're using it, we'll teach people to appreciate the freedom.

Well, this two stage solution might work well, if it were properly tried, but when people propose this, almost always they go and work on stage one. In fact, I've come to recognise that this two stage solution idea is really an excuse to work on stage one and ignore stage two. Stage two is what I work on. So if you really believe in a two stage solution, come join me and work on stage two because the problem is that so much of our community has focussed on stage one, and so much of our community has talked about practical benefits while ignoring freedom, that in fact, at this point, if you start using the GNU/Linux system, you may not hear anyone talk about freedom for years. In other words, our community has not just begun to forget about the goal of freedom, it has almost completely forgotten. With the result that now it is a struggle to teach people in our own community about the freedom which is the reason why we built this community.

Of all the operating systems in history, all except one were developed for commercial reasons or technical reasons. GNU was developed for the sake of freedom. The users need to know this. And I would like to ask you to join in helping to teach them this. This is why I dedicate myself now to spreading these ideas of freedom. There are more than a million contributors to Free Software now. The community doesn't need me that much as a programmer, and besides, I'm getting older, I probably can't do it as well as I used to. But there are not a million people teaching the users to appreciate the value of freedom and the value of specifically the freedom to cooperate in a community. This is where we urgently need more people..."

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Created by can.axis 14 years 22 weeks ago – Made popular 14 years 22 weeks ago
Category: Philosophy   Tags:
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14 years 22 weeks 5 days 6 hours ago

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First Understand Why Subjugation is Evil

Software subjugation is evil as the user and the community are divided from helping each other.

Software is a set of instructions designed to perform a task. Not all software will be completely adequate for the user as the user will always find something that will need some change in the program. The evil part of this happens when a software distributor shares a program but denies the user access to the code behind that program or denies the user the right to share the program or improvements made to the code.

The user should have the right to help himself by allowing him to tinker with code. The community should have the right to help each other by allowing them to share programs and improvements made to the programs.

The way to help fix the mess of user subjugation is to advocate and contribute to the development and improvement of free software and debate the reason why non-free software should not be tolerated.

My friends and associates know me as "the computer guy" and often approach me for help or advice. Because of my belief of the evils of non-free software, I often reject their request and lecture to them about the finer points of software liberty. It is basically telling them about the definition of free software and telling them that I do not deal with non-free software because of my moral indigence towards them. This solves two problems for me personally as 1)I am free from having to help them fix their malware ridden boxes and 2)They learn about the concept of free software.

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