Why Software Should Not Have Owners
***********************************

This essay was originally published in 'Technos: Quarterly for Education
and Technology,' vol. 3, n. 2, pp. 24-26, Summer 1994.

This document is part of GNU philosophy, the GNU Project's exhaustive
collection of articles and essays about free software and related
matters.

   Copyright (C) 1994, 2009 Richard Stallman

     Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire document are
     permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this
     notice is preserved.

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Digital information technology contributes to the world by making it
easier to copy and modify information.  Computers promise to make this
easier for all of us.

   Not everyone wants it to be easier.  The system of copyright gives
software programs "owners," most of whom aim to withhold software's
potential benefit from the rest of the public.  They would like to be
the only ones who can copy and modify the software that we use.

   The copyright system grew up with printing--a technology for
mass-production copying.  Copyright fit in well with this technology
because it restricted only the mass producers of copies.  It did not
take freedom away from readers of books.  An ordinary reader, who did
not own a printing press, could copy books only with pen and ink, and
few readers were sued for that.

   Digital technology is more flexible than the printing press: when
information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with
others.  This very flexibility makes a bad fit with a system like
copyright.  That's the reason for the increasingly nasty and draconian
measures now used to enforce software copyright.  Consider these four
practices of the Software Publishers Association (SPA):

   * Massive propaganda saying it is wrong to disobey the owners to help
     your friend.

   * Solicitation for stool pigeons to inform on their coworkers and
     colleagues.

   * Raids (with police help) on offices and schools, in which people
     are told they must prove they are innocent of illegal copying.

   * Prosecution (by the US government, at the SPA's request) of people
     such as MIT's David LaMacchia, not for copying software (he is not
     accused of copying any), but merely for leaving copying facilities
     unguarded and failing to censor their use.(1)

   All four practices resemble those used in the former Soviet Union,
where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying,
and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from
hand to hand as samizdat.  There is of course a difference: the motive
for information control in the Soviet Union was political; in the US the
motive is profit.  But it is the actions that affect us, not the motive.
Any attempt to block the sharing of information, no matter why, leads to
the same methods and the same harshness.

   Owners make several kinds of arguments for giving them the power to
control how we use information:

Name Calling
------------

Owners use smear words such as "piracy" and "theft," as well as expert
terminology such as "intellectual property" and "damage," to suggest a
certain line of thinking to the public--a simplistic analogy between
programs and physical objects.

   Our ideas and intuitions about property for material objects are
about whether it is right to _take an object away_ from someone else.
They don't directly apply to _making a copy_ of something.  But the
owners ask us to apply them anyway.

Exaggeration
------------

Owners say that they suffer "harm" or "economic loss" when users copy
programs themselves.  But the copying has no direct effect on the owner,
and it harms no one.  The owner can lose only if the person who made the
copy would otherwise have paid for one from the owner.

   A little thought shows that most such people would not have bought
copies.  Yet the owners compute their "losses" as if each and every one
would have bought a copy.  That is exaggeration--to put it kindly.

The Law
-------

Owners often describe the current state of the law, and the harsh
penalties they can threaten us with.  Implicit in this approach is the
suggestion that today's law reflects an unquestionable view of
morality--yet at the same time, we are urged to regard these penalties
as facts of nature that can't be blamed on anyone.

   This line of persuasion isn't designed to stand up to critical
thinking; it's intended to reinforce a habitual mental pathway.

   It's elementary that laws don't decide right and wrong.  Every
American should know that, in the 1950s, it was against the law in many
states for a black person to sit in the front of a bus; but only racists
would say sitting there was wrong.

Natural Rights
--------------

Authors often claim a special connection with programs they have
written, and go on to assert that, as a result, their desires and
interests concerning the program simply outweigh those of anyone
else--or even those of the whole rest of the world.  (Typically
companies, not authors, hold the copyrights on software, but we are
expected to ignore this discrepancy.)

   To those who propose this as an ethical axiom--the author is more
important than you--I can only say that I, a notable software author
myself, call it bunk.

   But people in general are only likely to feel any sympathy with the
natural rights claims for two reasons.

   One reason is an overstretched analogy with material objects.  When I
cook spaghetti, I do object if someone else eats it, because then I
cannot eat it.  His action hurts me exactly as much as it benefits him;
only one of us can eat the spaghetti, so the question is, which one?
The smallest distinction between us is enough to tip the ethical
balance.

   But whether you run or change a program I wrote affects you directly
and me only indirectly.  Whether you give a copy to your friend affects
you and your friend much more than it affects me.  I shouldn't have the
power to tell you not to do these things.  No one should.

   The second reason is that people have been told that natural rights
for authors is the accepted and unquestioned tradition of our society.

   As a matter of history, the opposite is true.  The idea of natural
rights of authors was proposed and decisively rejected when the US
Constitution was drawn up.  That's why the Constitution only _permits_ a
system of copyright and does not _require_ one; that's why it says that
copyright must be temporary.  It also states that the purpose of
copyright is to promote progress--not to reward authors.  Copyright does
reward authors somewhat, and publishers more, but that is intended as a
means of modifying their behavior.

   The real established tradition of our society is that copyright cuts
into the natural rights of the public--and that this can only be
justified for the public's sake.

Economics
---------

The final argument made for having owners of software is that this leads
to production of more software.

   Unlike the others, this argument at least takes a legitimate approach
to the subject.  It is based on a valid goal--satisfying the users of
software.  And it is empirically clear that people will produce more of
something if they are well paid for doing so.

   But the economic argument has a flaw: it is based on the assumption
that the difference is only a matter of how much money we have to pay.
It assumes that _production of software_ is what we want, whether the
software has owners or not.

   People readily accept this assumption because it accords with our
experiences with material objects.  Consider a sandwich, for instance.
You might well be able to get an equivalent sandwich either gratis or
for a price.  If so, the amount you pay is the only difference.  Whether
or not you have to buy it, the sandwich has the same taste, the same
nutritional value, and in either case you can only eat it once.  Whether
you get the sandwich from an owner or not cannot directly affect
anything but the amount of money you have afterwards.

   This is true for any kind of material object--whether or not it has
an owner does not directly affect what it _is,_ or what you can do with
it if you acquire it.

   But if a program has an owner, this very much affects what it is, and
what you can do with a copy if you buy one.  The difference is not just
a matter of money.  The system of owners of software encourages software
owners to produce something--but not what society really needs.  And it
causes intangible ethical pollution that affects us all.


   What does society need?  It needs information that is truly available
to its citizens--for example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt,
and improve, not just operate.  But what software owners typically
deliver is a black box that we can't study or change.

   Society also needs freedom.  When a program has an owner, the users
lose freedom to control part of their own lives.

   And, above all, society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary
cooperation in its citizens.  When software owners tell us that helping
our neighbors in a natural way is "piracy," they pollute our society's
civic spirit.

   This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not
price.

   The economic argument for owners is erroneous, but the economic issue
is real.  Some people write useful software for the pleasure of writing
it or for admiration and love; but if we want more software than those
people write, we need to raise funds.

   Since the 1980s, free software developers have tried various methods
of finding funds, with some success.  There's no need to make anyone
rich; a typical income is plenty of incentive to do many jobs that are
less satisfying than programming.

   For years, until a fellowship made it unnecessary, I made a living
from custom enhancements of the free software I had written.  Each
enhancement was added to the standard released version and thus
eventually became available to the general public.  Clients paid me so
that I would work on the enhancements they wanted, rather than on the
features I would otherwise have considered highest priority.

   Some free software developers make money by selling support services.
In 1994, Cygnus Support, with around 50 employees, estimated that about
15 percent of its staff activity was free software development--a
respectable percentage for a software company.

   In the early 1990s, companies including Intel, Motorola, Analog
Devices Texas Instruments and Analog Devices combined to fund the
continued development of the GNU C compiler.  Most GCC development is
still done by paid developers.  The GNU compiler for the Ada language
was funded in the 90s by the US Air Force, and continued since then by a
company formed specifically for the purpose.

   The free software movement is still small, but the example of
listener-supported radio in the US shows it's possible to support a
large activity without forcing each user to pay.

   As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary
program.  If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to
refuse.  Cooperation is more important than copyright.  But underground,
closet cooperation does not make for a good society.  A person should
aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying
no to proprietary software.

   You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other
people who use software.  You deserve to be able to learn how the
software works, and to teach your students with it.  You deserve to be
able to hire your favorite programmer to fix it when it breaks.

   *You deserve free software.*

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) The charges were subsequently dismissed.

