Freedoms Of Free Software

[Mohammed Faerber]

FranklinRoosevelt was elected president for an unprecedented third term in 1940 because at the time the world faced unprecedented danger, instability, and uncertainty. Much of Europe had fallen to the advancing German Army and Great Britain was barely holding its own. A great number of Americans remained committed to isolationism and the belief that the United States should continue to stay out of the war, but President Roosevelt understood Britain's need for American support and attempted to convince the American people of the gravity of the situation.

In his Annual Message to Congress (State of the Union Address) on January 6, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt presented his reasons for American involvement, making the case for continued aid to Great Britain and greater production of war industries at home. In helping Britain, President Roosevelt stated, the United States was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people possessed.

As America entered the war these "four freedoms" - the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear - symbolized America's war aims and gave hope in the following years to a war-wearied people because they knew they were fighting for freedom.

The Library's mission is to foster research and education on the life and times of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and their continuing impact on contemporary life. Our work is carried out by four major areas: Archives, Museum, Education and Public Programs.

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

The FSF's commitment is unwavering, but we urgently need your financial support. New and renewing associate members will help us bring free software to every facet of people's lives. Help us reach our goal of 200 new members by July 26.

You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you mayhave obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got yourcopies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software,even to sell copies.

The free software definition presents the criteria for whether aparticular software program qualifies as free software. From time totime we revise this definition, to clarify it or to resolve questionsabout subtle issues. See the History sectionbelow for a list of changes that affect the definition of freesoftware.

A program is free software if it gives users adequately all of thesefreedoms. Otherwise, it is nonfree. While we can distinguish variousnonfree distribution schemes in terms of how far they fall short ofbeing free, we consider them all equally unethical.

In any given scenario, these freedoms must apply to whatever codewe plan to make use of, or lead others to make use of. For instance,consider a program A which automatically launches a program B tohandle some cases. If we plan to distribute A as it stands, thatimplies users will need B, so we need to judge whether both A and Bare free. However, if we plan to modify A so that it doesn't use B,only A needs to be free; B is not pertinent to that plan.

We want to invite everyone to use the GNU system, including businessesand their workers. That requires allowing commercial use. We hopethat free replacement programs will supplant comparable proprietaryprograms, but they can't do that if businesses are forbidden to usethem. We want commercial products that contain software to includethe GNU system, and that would constitute commercial distribution fora price. Commercial development of free software is no longerunusual; such free commercial software is very important. Paid,professional support for free software fills an important need.

Thus, to exclude commercial use, commercial development or commercialdistribution would hobble the free software community and obstruct itspath to success. We must conclude that a program licensed with suchrestrictions does not qualify as free software.

A free program must offer the four freedoms to any would-be user thatobtains a copy of the software, who has complied thus far with theconditions of the free license covering the software in any previousdistribution of it. Putting some of the freedoms off limits to someusers, or requiring that users pay, in money or in kind, to exercisethem, is tantamount to not granting the freedoms in question, and thusrenders the program nonfree.

The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of personor organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind ofoverall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about itwith the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it isthe user's purpose that matters, not the developer'spurpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes,and if you distribute it to other people, they are then free to run it fortheir purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on them.

The freedom to run the program as you wish means that you are notforbidden or stopped from making it run. This has nothing to do with whatfunctionality the program has, whether it is technically capable offunctioning in any given environment, or whether it is useful for anyparticular computing activity.

Whether a change constitutes an improvement is a subjective matter.If your right to modify a program is limited, in substance, to changes thatsomeone else considers an improvement, that program is not free.

Freedom to distribute (freedoms 2 and 3) means you are free toredistribute copies, either with or without modifications, eithergratis or charging a fee for distribution, toanyone anywhere. Being free to do thesethings means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or payfor permission to do so.

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use themprivately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that theyexist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required tonotify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.

Freedom 3 includes the freedom to release your modified versionsas free software. A free license may also permit other ways ofreleasing them; in other words, it does not have to bea copyleft license. However, alicense that requires modified versions to be nonfree does not qualifyas a free license.

The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executableforms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified andunmodified versions. (Distributing programs in runnable form is necessaryfor conveniently installable free operating systems.) It is OK if thereis no way to produce a binary or executable form for a certain program(since some languages don't support that feature), but you must have thefreedom to redistribute such forms should you find or develop a way tomake them.

Certain kinds of rules about the manner of distributing freesoftware are acceptable, when they don't conflict with the centralfreedoms. For example, copyleft(very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program,you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms.This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather itprotects them.

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