Richard Stallman said:
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I haven’t been speaking about free software, but let me briefly tell you a little bit about what that means. Free software does not refer to price; it doesn’t mean that you get it for free. (You may have paid for a copy, or gotten a copy gratis.) It means that you have freedom as a user. The crucial thing is that you are free to run the program, free to study what it does, free to change it to suit your needs, free to redistribute the copies of others and free to publish improved, extended versions. This is what free software means. If you are using a non-free program, you have lost crucial freedom, so don’t ever do that.
The purpose of the GNU project is to make it easier for people to reject freedom-trampling, user-dominating, non-free software by providing free software to replace it. For those who don’t have the moral courage to reject the non-free software, when that means some practical inconvenience, what we try to do is give a free alternative so that you can move to freedom with less of a mess and less of a sacrifice in practical terms. The less sacrifice the better. We want to make it easier for you to live in freedom, to cooperate.
This is a matter of the freedom to cooperate. We’re used to thinking of freedom and cooperation with society as if they are opposites. But here they’re on the same side. With free software you are free to cooperate with other people as well as free to help yourself. With non-free software, somebody is dominating you and keeping people divided. You’re not allowed to share with them, you’re not free to cooperate or help society, anymore than you’re free to help yourself. Divided and helpless is the state of users using non-free software.
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Source:
IT_speaks 🖥😴 