An inquiry into the failure of the free software movement, and a proposal for recovering its radical soul.
Software Freedom in a Post Open Source World
(Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Software Freedom)
software
Software freedom is the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose, to study how the program works, and change it, to redistribute copies and your modified versions so you can help others.
Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software
Choice Outstanding Academic Title Software is more than a set of instructions for computers: it enables (and disables) political imperatives and policies. Nowhere is the potential for radical social and political change more apparent than in the practice and movement known as
You Don’t Own the Word “Freedom”: A Full-Burn Response to the GNU/Linux Comment That Tried to Gatekeep Me Off My Own Machine — fireborn
I woke up this morning to a comment on the first post in the 'I Want to Love Linux' series. Congratulations, random internet user: you earned a full-length blog post in response. Not because you're special, but because your comment is the perfect storm of everything that’s wrong with the self-righteous, gatekeeping corner of this ecosystem—the part that cloaks cruelty in the language of freedom, then acts shocked when people stop showing up.
Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
The terms “free software” and “open source” stand for almost the same range of programs. However, they say deeply different things about those programs, based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles. This is why we do not agree with open source, and do not use that term.
How markets coopted free software’s most powerful weapon (LibrePlanet 2018 Keynote)
Several months ago, I gave the closing keynote address at LibrePlanet 2018. The talk was about the thing that scares me most about the future of free culture, free software, and peer production. A …
Front Page — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software
The technology overrunning our communities isn't built for the benefit of humanity: it's built so that billionaires can control us. Our lives don't have to be this way. The FSF empowers users with free software, technology built through global collaboration, mutual respect, and above all, freedom. The FSF will always continue to resist the encroachment of nonfree software. We're fighting to protect all computer users and build a better future.
When Free Software Depends on Nonfree - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
When a program is free software (free as in freedom), that means it gives users the four freedoms, so that they control what the program does. In most cases, that is sufficient for the program's distribution to be ethical; but not always. There are additional problems that can arise in specific circumstances. This article describes a subtle problem, where upgrading the free program requires using a nonfree program.
freedom 'for users'- which users did you mean, exactly? (or, of users, user-deployers, and user-consumers)
Published: 2007. "Free software...
Freedom Now | Polity: Vol 52, No 3
Left-wing politics is resurgent. Self-proclaimed socialists are unexpectedly popular. Proposals like universal health care are a commonplace of Democratic campaigns. But there is not yet a clear, unifying idea behind this political shift. We propose that that idea is freedom. While the left once understood freedom as emancipation from the economy, the right spent the twentieth century neutralizing and appropriating the idea of freedom by reinventing the economy as the true site of freedom. To reclaim freedom as a value of the left, we have to begin with the daily experience of most people: the unfreedom of the workplace. The authoritarian organization of work is not just an offense against freedom; it also helps us understand how freedom requires emancipation both from the economy and within the economy, and why that emancipation requires mass struggle.
Issue 100 – Freedom of all kinds is worth fighting for
As masked agents execute people and terrorize communities, crypto executives who spent years posting about freedom fall conspicuously silent — except when writing checks for the politicians enabling it
Are we human?
Distributed app platform's proposed agreement 'isn't freedom respecting,' he says
Open Source is Not Enough
by James Halliday // The open source movement has fundamentally changed how software gets written. But in the process, corporations have been given a vast gift of free labor.
Why free stuff makes us irrational
When something is free, people feel a positive glow — and standard cost-benefit analyses go out the window.
The Rules of Open Source No Longer Apply | Built In
When free software first gained traction, the world looked very different.
