"Defenselessness is not the American Way. In the land of the free and the brave, developers defend their freedom with the GNU General Public License [...] The Free Software Movement was founded in 1984, but its inspiration comes from the ideals of 1776: freedom, community, and voluntary cooperation. This is what leads to free enterprise, to free speech, and to free software. "
Read more »The GNU GPL and the American Way - Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project - February 28, 2001
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A free software conference or an open source conference?
"...The free software movement is primarily concerned with building and defending software freedom—the freedom to run, share, and modify published computer software. This is an ethical consideration borne out of considering how we ought to treat one another using computers and software [...] Calling attention to the name "GNU" helps draw attention to the cause of freedom and cooperation..."
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Lest CodePlex perplex - by Richard M. Stallman
"...The first thing we see is that the organization ducks the issue of users' freedom; it uses the term "open source" and does not speak of "free software". These two terms stand for different philosophies which are based on different values: free software's values are freedom and social solidarity, whereas open source cites only practical convenience values such as powerful, reliable software..."
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Patents, Protests, Plebiscites, and Protecting your freedom
"When he attended a rally in Munich this month, Richard Stallman took time out of his busy schedule to talk with our News Editor, Britta Wülfing. The conversation covered everything from Software as a Service, to patents, protests, international politics, and protecting your freedom...
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Stallman discusses Free Software and GPLv3
"On June 29, 2007 the Free Software Foundation released the GNU General Public License, version 3. What happened since then? I had the opportunity to discuss many subjects with FSF's founder and president Richard Stallman..."
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Why “open source” misses the point of Free Software
"25 years after Stallman first set the GNU project in motion, what have these ideals achieved, and what can we do to ensure the future of free software? Linux Format spoke to him to find out..."
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Transcript of an interview with RMS for Radio New Zealand, conducted by Kim Hill on August 9, 2008
"...They base it on practical values only and they take for granted that proprietary software subjugating users is legitimate; whereas I say, and we in the Free Software movement say, that users are entitled to freedom and that proprietary software is a social problem and we're aiming to correct that problem, put an end to that problem..."
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RMS: « Free Software Means 'Freedom' »
"As the founder of the free software movement and author of the GNU General Public License, I am writing to correct a misleading characterisation of free software presented in William Venema's article about open source. National Law Journal, Oct. 20. I do not wish to defend open source, which I have never supported.
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Q&A: Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation
"In an exclusive interview with vnunet.com, Stallman discusses his views on free versus proprietary and open source software, social networking sites and privacy issues..."
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Where open source philosophy goes wrong software freedom keeps us free to share and modify
"Risto H. Kurppa recently posted about a bad experience with a free software hacker when Kurppa tried to get access to the most recent revisions of an unpublished program’s source code.
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RMS to talk computing freedom at U or why “open source” misses the point of Free Software
"Stallman makes a clear distinction between the free software and open source movements. The free software movement is based on values of freedom and social solidarity, he said, while the open source movement is thinking about practical benefits only, and forgets what’s most important..."
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Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software (last updated $Date: 2008/10/07 06:48:57 $)
RMS: «When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes [...] As the advocates of open source draw new users into our community, we free software activists have to work even more to bring the issue of freedom to those new users' attention.
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Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software
“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --
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Free Software leader slams NZ copyright
"..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.
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What’s in a name? GNU, Linux, or GNU/Linux?
One of the worst arguments for why you should use "open source" and "Linux" as names over "free software" and "GNU/Linux" I've heard yet.
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