'Why Software Should Be Free\r'

'Why figurer softw argon Should Be relieve by Richard St distributively(prenominal)man (Version of April 24, 1992) Introduction The human race of packet inevitably raises the interrogative of how finiss about its apply should be made. For example, suppose unrivaled individualist who has a assume of a course of instruction meets an different who would same a imitate. It is possible for them to copy the course of study; who should get down up bingles mind whether this is d unmatchable? The individuals involved? Or an opposite(a) fibery, called the â€Å" possessor”? Softw atomic number 18 developers typically dish out these moves on the trust that the criterion for the answer is to maximize developers profits.The political index number of line duration has led to the goernment adoption of twain this criterion and the answer proposed by the developers: that the plat con nisusation has an owner, typically a corporation associated with its instruc tion. I would kindred to consider the same question using a distinguishable criterion: the prosperity and exemptdom of the super acidplace in general. This answer lot no(prenominal) be sinkd by menses lawâ€the law should conform to ethics, non the slightly some otherwise musical mode around. Nor does current practice resolve this question, although it whitethorn suggest possible answers.The simply modal value to cerebrate is to see who is superviseed and who is hurt by recognizing owners of package, why, and how untold. In other words, we should perform a equal- acquire compendium on behalf of decree as a whole, victorious visor of individual let go ofdom as well as action of squ be secures. In this es suppose, I pass on hunt the sums of having owners, and show that the results ar detrimental. My conclusion is that political course of instructionmers bewilder the duty to encourage others to sh be, redistri onlye, study, and emend the comp uting device packet we compile: in other words, to write â€Å" shift” bundle program. 1) How Owners liberate Their Power Those who benefit from the current governing body where chopines ar property offer twain literary arguments in substitute of their claims to own programs: the randy argument and the economic argument. The emotional argument goes like this: â€Å"I put my sweat, my heart, my maven into this program. It comes from me, its mine! ” This argument does non involve full refutation. The flavouring of attachment is one that programmers toilette crop when it gos them; it is non inevitable. Consider, for example, how bequea thingly the same programmers sually b slight over all rights to a wide corporation for a salary; the emotional attachment mysteriously vanishes. By contrast, consider the big(p) artists and artisans of medieval times, who didnt hitherto sign their names to their achievement. To them, the name of the artist was no t key. What mattered was that the spurt was doneâ€and the role it would serve. This view prevailed for hundreds of geezerhood. The economic argument goes like this: â€Å"I want to get exuberant (usually described inaccurately as `making a living), and if you dont allow me to get rich by scheduling, wherefore I wont program.E reallyone else is like me, so nobody pass on ever program. And indeed youll be stuck with no programs at all! ” This threat is usually veiled as friendly advice from the wise. Ill explain later why this threat is a bluff. First I want to overcompensate an implicit assurance that is often than than than visible in another formulation of the argument. This formulation touch offs by analyse the social utility of a proprietorship program with that of no program, and then concludes that copyrighted packet development is, on the whole, beneficial, and should be encouraged.The fallacy here is in comparing only ii outcomesâ€proprietar y computer bundle product vs. no bundle system system packageâ€and assuming thither argon no other possibilities. Given a formation of packet copyright, package development is usually cerebrate with the earthly c erstrn of an owner who restricts the softw are products do. As ample as this linkage exists, we are frequently faced with the election of proprietary parcel or no(prenominal). However, this linkage is not inherent or inevitable; it is a exoterication of the specific social/legal constitution decision that we are questioning: the decision to father owners.To excogitate the choice as between proprietary software vs. no software is begging the question. The Argument against Having Owners The question at hand is, â€Å"Should development of software be linked with having owners to restrict the determination of it? ” In position to decide this, we be stool to pronounce the matter on rules of order of each of those devil activities indep endently: the c assume of developing the software (regard little of its terms of distri only ifion), and the effect of delimiting its purpose (assuming the software has been demonstrable).If one of these activities is helpful and the other is equipment casualtyful, we would be scatter off off dropping the linkage and doing only the helpful one. To put it another way, if limiting the distri saveion of a program already developed is injureful to society boilers suit, then an ethical software developer leave reject the option of doing so. To determine the effect of restricting sharing, we motivation to compare the economic value to society of a restricted (i. e. , proprietary) program with that of the same program, obtainable to everyone. This nub comparing two possible worlds.This analysis overly addresses the simple counterargument roughtimes made that â€Å"the benefit to the neighbour of giving him or her a copy of a program is passelcelled by the handicap done to the owner. ” This counterargument assumes that the scathe and the benefit are bear on in magnitude. The analysis involves comparing these magnitudes, and shows that the benefit is much bulkyer. To elucidate this argument, lets apply it in another landing field: track aspect. It would be possible to line the construction of all roads with monetary values.This would entail having ships bell booths at all street corners. much(prenominal) a system would offer up a great incentive to improve roads. It would in addition remove the virtue of causing the drug exploiters of each openn road to pay for that road. However, a toll booth is an mushy obstruction to smooth driving-artificial, beca subroutine it is not a consequence of how roads or cars work. slewvass completehanded roads and toll roads by their efficaciousness, we date that (all else being equal) roads without toll booths are cheaper to construct, cheaper to run, safer, and more efficient to whit e plague. 2) In a myopic country, tolls whitethorn wanton away the roads unavailable to umpteen an(prenominal) citizens. The roads without toll booths thus offer more benefit to society at little cost; they are preferable for society. therefore, society should choose to fund roads in another way, not by means of toll booths. theatrical role of roads, one time built, should be free. When the advocates of toll booths propose them as merely a way of raising funds, they distort the choice that is available. gong booths do raise funds, still they do aboutthing else as well: in effect, they degrade the road.The toll road is not as good as the free road; giving us more or technologically superior roads may not be an improvement if this means substituting toll roads for free roads. Of course, the construction of a free road does cost money, which the mankind moldiness roundway pay. However, this does not imply the inevitability of toll booths. We who moldiness in either cas e pay will get more value for our money by buying a free road. I am not saying that a toll road is worse than no road at all. That would be truthful if the toll were so great that precisely whateverone employ the road†just this is an unlikely policy for a toll collector.However, as long as the toll booths cause full-grown muck up and inconvenience, it is better to raise the funds in a less obstructive mode. To apply the same argument to software development, I will forthwith show that having â€Å"toll booths” for recyclable software programs costs society dear: it makes the programs more big-ticket(prenominal) to construct, more expensive to distribute, and less satisfying and efficient to use. It will follow that program construction should be encouraged in some other way. Then I will go on to explain other methods of encouraging and (to the goal in truth necessary) funding software development.The Harm do by Obstructing software program Consider for a heartbeat that a program has been developed, and each necessary payments for its development shake been made; at a time society must choose either to make it proprietary or allow free sharing and use. Assume that the existence of the program and its availability is a desirable thing. (3) Restrictions on the distribution and modification of the program cannot facilitate its use. They can only interfere. So the effect can only be shun. solely how much? And what kind? trinity different levels of strong harm come from much(prenominal)(prenominal) obstruction: • • • Fewer pack use the program.None of the users can aline or fix the program. Other developers cannot reckon from the program, or base crudeborn work on it. Each level of temporal harm has a concomitant form of psychosocial harm. This refers to the effect that states decisions devour on their subsequent touchings, attitudes, and predispositions. These salmagundis in batchs ways of thinking wi ll then consecrate a further effect on their relationships with their fellow citizens, and can have square consequences. The three levels of material harm waste fortune of the value that the program could cave in, but they cannot reduce it to zero.If they waste well all the value of the program, then paternity the program harms society by at close to the effort that went into writing the program. Arguably a program that is profitable to sell must provide some net direct material benefit. However, taking account of the concomitant psychosocial harm, thither is no limit to the harm that proprietary software development can do. Obstructing Use of Programs The initial level of harm impedes the simple use of a program. A copy of a program has al around zero marginal cost (and you can pay this cost by doing the work yourself), so in a free market, it would have nearly zero damage.A licence fee is a significant disincentive to use the program. If a widely-useful program is prop rietary, remote some people will use it. It is motiveless to show that the total contribution of a program to society is reduced by assigning an owner to it. Each potential user of the program, faced with the need to pay to use it, may choose to pay, or may throw in the towel use of the program. When a user chooses to pay, this is a zero-sum transfer of wealth between two parties. save each time someone chooses to forego use of the program, this harms that person without benefitting anyone. The sum of negative poem and zeros must be negative. further this does not reduce the come up of work it hap upons to develop the program. As a result, the major power of the whole process, in de ragingred user satis detailion per arcsecond of work, is reduced. This reflects a crucial difference between copies of programs and cars, chairs, or sandwiches. There is no copy machine for material objects outside of science fiction. But programs are well to copy; anyone can produce as n umerous copies as are wanted, with very little effort. This isnt authoritative for material objects because matter is conserved: each modern copy has to be built from raw materials in the same way that the for the first time copy was built.With material objects, a disincentive to use them makes finger, because fewer objects bought means less raw material and work postulate to make them. Its true that in that respect is usually alike a jump offup cost, a development cost, which is spread over the production run. But as long as the marginal cost of production is significant, adding a lot of the development cost does not make a qualitative difference. And it does not require restrictions on the freedom of ordinary users. However, imposing a price on something that would otherwise be free is a qualitative potpourri.A of importly-imposed fee for software distribution becomes a powerful disincentive. Whats more, central production as at one time practiced is inefficient plan e as a means of delivering copies of software. This system involves enclosing physical disks or tapes in superfluous packaging, shipping large poetry of them around the world, and storing them for bargain. This cost is presented as an expense of doing commerce; in truth, it is part of the waste ca utilise by having owners. negatively charged Social Cohesion Suppose that twain you and your inhabit would find it useful to run a original program.In ethical concern for your neighbor, you should feel that proper handling of the situation will enable both of you to use it. A proposal to permit only one of you to use the program, while restraining the other, is divisive; neither you nor your neighbor should find it acceptable. Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying your neighbor: â€Å"I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so that I can have a copy for myself. ” the great unwashed who make such choices feel interior psychological pressure to in additionify them, by downgrading the immenseness of helping ones neighborsâ€thus public spirit suffers.This is psychosocial harm associated with the material harm of discouraging use of the program. some(prenominal) users unconsciously recognize the wrong of refusing to share, so they decide to ignore the licenses and laws, and share programs anyway. But they practically feel guilty about doing so. They k at a time that they must break the laws in order to be good neighbors, but they still consider the laws authoritative, and they conclude that being a good neighbor (which they are) is naughty or shameful. That is also a kind of psychosocial harm, but one can escape it by deciding that these licenses and laws have no moral force.Programmers also suffer psychosocial harm penetrating that many users will not be allowed to use their work. This leads to an attitude of cynicism or denial. A programmer may describe enthusiastically the work that he finds technically exciting ; then when asked, â€Å"Will I be permitted to use it? ”, his face falls, and he admits the answer is no. To avoid feeling discouraged, he either ignores this fact virtually of the time or adopts a cynical stance designed to minimize the immensity of it. Since the age of Reagan, the greatest scarcity in the coupled States is not technical innovation, but rather the willingness to work unneurotic for the public good.It makes no sense to encourage the creator at the expense of the latter. Obstructing Custom Adaptation of Programs The second level of material harm is the inability to adapt programs. The ease of modification of software is one of its great advantages over older technology. But most commercially available software isnt available for modification, eve after(prenominal)(prenominal) you buy it. Its available for you to tear it or afford it, as a black boxâ€that is all. A program that you can run lie ins of a serial publication publication of numbers who se meaning is obscure. No one, not even a good programmer, can easily modifynate the numbers o make the program do something different. Programmers normally work with the â€Å" stock code” for a program, which is written in a computer programming vocabulary such as Fortran or C. It uses names to steer the data being used and the parts of the program, and it represents operations with symbols such as `+ for addition and `-‘ for subtraction. It is designed to help programmers read and shift programs. Here is an example; a program to calculate the aloofness between two points in a plane: swim distance (p0, p1) struct point p0, p1; { float xdist = p1. x †p0. x; float ydist = p1. y †p0. ; re playing period sqrt (xdist * xdist + ydist * ydist); } Here is the same program in executable form, on the computer I normally use: 1314258944 1411907592 -234880989 1644167167 572518958 -232267772 -231844736 -234879837 -3214848 -803143692 -231844864 2159150 -234879966 1090581031 1314803317 1634862 1420296208 -232295424 1962942495 Source code is useful (at least potentially) to every user of a program. But most users are not allowed to have copies of the start code. Usually the reference point code for a proprietary program is kept secret by the owner, lest anybody else aim something from it.Users receive only the files of incomprehensible numbers that the computer will execute. This means that only the programs owner can change the program. A friend once told me of working(a)(a) as a programmer in a bank for about six months, writing a program mistakable to something that was commercially available. She believed that if she could have gotten source code for that commercially available program, it could easily have been adapted to their needs. The bank was willing to pay for this, but was not permitted toâ€the source code was a secret.So she had to do six months of make-work, work that counts in the GNP but was actually waste. The MIT Ar tificial Intelligence Lab (AI Lab) authentic a graphics printer as a gift from abscond around 1977. It was run by free software to which we added many convenient features. For example, the software would dismiss a user immediately on completion of a print affair. Whenever the printer had trouble, such as a paper jam or running out of paper, the software would immediately notify all users who had print businesss queued. These features facilitated smooth operation.Later Xerox gave the AI Lab a untesteder, faster printer, one of the first laser printers. It was driven by proprietary software that ran in a separate dedicated computer, so we couldnt add any of our favorite features. We could arrange to organise a notification when a print job was sent to the dedicated computer, but not when the job was actually printed (and the delay was usually considerable). There was no way to find out when the job was actually printed; you could only guess. And no one was informed when there w as a paper jam, so the printer often went for an hour without being fixed.The system programmers at the AI Lab were capable of fixing such problems, in all probability as capable as the original authors of the program. Xerox was uninterested in fixing them, and chose to prevent us, so we were forced to accept the problems. They were never fixed. Most good programmers have experienced this frustration. The bank could afford to pull in the problem by writing a mod program from scratch, but a typical user, no matter how skilled, can only give up. heavy(p) up causes psychosocial harmâ€to the spirit of self-reliance. It is demoralizing to live in a house that you cannot rearrange to suit your needs.It leads to resignation and discouragement, which can spread to affect other aspects of ones life. People who feel this way are sad and do not do good work. count what it would be like if recipes were hoarded in the same fashion as software. You might say, â€Å"How do I change this recipe to condense out the common salt? ” and the great chef would respond, â€Å"How dare you insult my recipe, the child of my brain and my palate, by attempt to tamper with it? You dont have the judgment to change my recipe and make it work right! ” â€Å"But my doctor says Im not supposed to eat salt! What can I do? Will you take out the salt for me? ‘ â€Å"I would be buoyant to do that; my fee is only $50,000. ” Since the owner has a monopoly on changes, the fee tends to be large. â€Å"However, right now I dont have time. I am meddling with a commission to design a new recipe for ships biscuit for the Navy Department. I might get around to you in about two years. ” Obstructing Software Development The third level of material harm affects software development. Software development used to be an evolutionary process, where a person would take an existing program and rewrite parts of it for one new feature, and then another person would rew rite parts to add nother feature; in some cases, this continued over a period of 20 years. Meanwhile, parts of the program would be â€Å"cannibalized” to form the beginnings of other programs. The existence of owners prevents this kind of evolution, making it necessary to start from scratch when developing a program. It also prevents new practitioners from studying existing programs to learn useful techniques or even how large programs can be structured. Owners also obstruct education. I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program.They may be good at writing small programs, but they cant begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they cant see how others have done it. In any intellectual field, one can reach great heights by standing on the shoulders of others. But that is no longer generally allowed in the software fieldâ€you can only stand on the shoulders of the other people in your own company . The associated psychosocial harm affects the spirit of scientific cooperation, which used to be so strong that scientists would cooperate even when their countries were at war.In this spirit, Japanese oceanographers abandoning their lab on an island in the Pacific cautiously preserved their work for the invading U. S. Marines, and left a note asking them to take good care of it. Conflict for profit has destroyed what international counterpoint spared. Nowadays scientists in many fields dont relinquish complete in their papers to enable others to geminate the experiment. They publish only adequacy to let readers wonderment at how much they were able to do. This is certainly true in computer science, where the source code for the programs describe on is usually secret.It Does Not Matter How share-out Is Restricted I have been discussing the effects of preventing people from copying, changing, and building on a program. I have not specified how this obstruction is carried out, because that doesnt affect the conclusion. Whether it is done by copy protection, or copyright, or licenses, or encryption, or ROM cards, or hardware serial numbers, if it succeeds in preventing use, it does harm. Users do consider some of these methods more obnoxious than others. I suggest that the methods most detested are those that accomplish their objective.Software Should be Free I have shown how ownership of a programâ€the power to restrict changing or copying itâ€is obstructive. Its negative effects are widespread and important. It follows that society shouldnt have owners for programs. Another way to understand this is that what society needs is free software, and proprietary software is a scant(p) substitute. Encouraging the substitute is not a quick-scented way to get what we need. Vaclav Havel has advised us to â€Å" course for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. ‘ A business making proprietary software stands a chance of success in its own narrow terms, but it is not what is good for society. Why People Will Develop Software If we eliminate copyright as a means of encouraging people to develop software, at first less software will be developed, but that software will be more useful. It is not clear whether the overall delivered user satisfaction will be less; but if it is, or if we wish to increase it anyway, there are other ways to encourage development, just as there are ways besides toll booths to raise money for streets.Before I run out about how that can be done, first I want to question how much artificial boost is truly necessary. Programming is Fun There are some lines of work that few will enter except for money; road construction, for example. There are other fields of study and art in which there is little chance to become rich, which people enter for their fascination or their perceived value to society. Examples include mathematical logic, classical music, and archaeology; and political organizing among working people.People compete, more sadly than bitterly, for the few funded positions available, none of which is funded very well. They may even pay for the chance to work in the field, if they can afford to. Such a field can transform itself long if it begins to offer the possibility of getting rich. When one histrion gets rich, others demand the same opportunity. Soon all may demand large sums of money for doing what they used to do for pleasure. When another couple of years go by, everyone committed with the field will deride the idea that work would be done in the field without large financial returns.They will advise social planners to visualize that these returns are possible, prescribing special privileges, powers, and monopolies as necessary to do so. This change happened in the field of computer programming in the past decade. Fifteen years ago, there were articles on â€Å"computer addiction”: users were â€Å"onlining” and had hundred-dollar-a-week habits. It was generally soundless that people frequently loved programming enough to break up their marriages. immediately, it is generally understood that no one would program except for a blue rate of pay.People have forgotten what they knew fifteen years ago. When it is true at a given time that most people will work in a certain field only for utmost pay, it need not remain true. The dynamic of change can run in reverse, if society provides an impetus. If we take away the possibility of great wealth, then after a while, when the people have readjusted their attitudes, they will once again be eager to work in the field for the joy of accomplishment. The question, â€Å"How can we pay programmers? ” becomes an easier question when we realize that its not a matter of paying(a) them a fortune.A mere living is easier to raise. Funding Free Software Institutions that pay programmers do not have to be software houses. Many other institutions alread y exist that can do this. Hardware manufacturers find it essential to support software development even if they cannot control the use of the software. In 1970, much of their software was free because they did not consider restricting it. straightaway, their increase willingness to join consortiums shows their realization that owning the software is not what is rattling important for them.Universities conduct many programming projects. Today they often sell the results, but in the seventies they did not. Is there any doubt that universities would develop free software if they were not allowed to sell software? These projects could be supported by the same government contracts and grants that now support proprietary software development. It is common nowadays for university researchers to get grants to develop a system, develop it nearly to the point of completion and call that â€Å"finished”, and then start companies where they really finish the project and make it usable . whatsoevertimes they declare the unfinished version â€Å"free”; if they are thoroughly corrupt, they quite get an exclusive license from the university. This is not a secret; it is openly admitted by everyone concerned. that if the researchers were not exposed to the temptation to do these things, they would still do their research. Programmers writing free software can make their living by exchange services related to the software. I have been leased to port the gnu C compiler to new hardware, and to make user-interface extensions to GNU Emacs. (I offer these improvements to the public once they are done. I also teach classes for which I am paid. I am not solely in working this way; there is now a successful, growing corporation which does no other kind of work. Several other companies also provide commercial support for the free software of the GNU system. This is the beginning of the independent software support patienceâ€an industry that could become quite larg e if free software becomes prevalent. It provides users with an option generally unavailable for proprietary software, except to the very wealthy. New institutions such as the Free Software posterior can also fund programmers.Most of the Foundations funds come from users buying tapes through the mail. The software on the tapes is free, which means that every user has the freedom to copy it and change it, but many nonetheless pay to get copies. (Recall that â€Å"free software” refers to freedom, not to price. ) Some users who already have a copy order tapes as a way of making a contribution they feel we be. The Foundation also receives sizable donations from computer manufacturers. The Free Software Foundation is a charity, and its income is spent on hiring as many programmers as possible.If it had been set up as a business, distributing the same free software to the public for the same fee, it would now provide a very good living for its founder. Because the Foundation is a charity, programmers often work for the Foundation for half of what they could make elsewhere. They do this because we are free of bureaucracy, and because they feel satisfaction in knowing that their work will not be obstructed from use. Most of all, they do it because programming is fun. In addition, volunteers have written many useful programs for us. (Even technical writers have begun to volunteer. This confirms that programming is among the most fascinating of all fields, along with music and art. We dont have to fear that no one will want to program. What Do Users owe to Developers? There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moral obligation to contribute to its support. Developers of free software are contributing to the users activities, and it is both fair and in the long-term interest of the users to give them funds to continue. However, this does not apply to proprietary software developers, since obstructionism deserves a punishment rather than reward. We t hus have a paradox: the developer of useful software is authorise to the support of the users, but any attempt to turn this moral obligation into a requirement destroys the stem for the obligation. A developer can either deserve a reward or demand it, but not both. I believe that an ethical developer faced with this paradox must act so as to deserve the reward, but should also entreat the users for unpaid donations. finally the users will learn to support developers without coercion, just as they have learned to support public radio and television stations.What Is Software Productivity? If software were free, there would still be programmers, but perhaps fewer of them. Would this be bad for society? Not necessarily. Today the advanced nations have fewer farmers than in 1900, but we do not think this is bad for society, because the few deliver more food to the consumers than the many used to do. We call this improved productivity. Free software would require far fewer progra mmers to satisfy the demand, because of increased software productivity at all levels: • • • • Wider use of each program that is developed.The ability to adapt existing programs for customization instead of starting from scratch. Better education of programmers. The elimination of twin development effort. Those who object to cooperation claiming it would result in the oeuvre of fewer programmers are actually objecting to increased productivity. Yet these people usually accept the widely-held belief that the software industry needs increased productivity. How is this? â€Å"Software productivity” can mean two different things: the overall productivity of all software development, or the productivity of individual projects.Overall productivity is what society would like to improve, and the most straightforward way to do this is to eliminate the artificial obstacles to cooperation which reduce it. But researchers who study the field of â€Å"software p roductivity” focus only on the second, limited, sense of the term, where improvement requires difficult technological advances. Is Competition requisite? Is it inevitable that people will try to compete, to pass off their rivals in society? Perhaps it is. But disceptation itself is not harmful; the harmful thing is combat. There are many ways to compete.Competition can consist of trying to achieve ever more, to outdo what others have done. For example, in the old days, there was disceptation among programming wizardsâ€competition for who could make the computer do the most amazing thing, or for who could make the absolutelyest or accelerated program for a given task. This kind of competition can benefit everyone, as long as the spirit of good sportsmanship is maintained. Constructive competition is enough competition to motivate people to great efforts. A number of people are competing to be the first to have visited all the countries on Earth; some even spend fortune s trying to do this.But they do not bribe ship captains to strand their rivals on desert islands. They are content to let the top hat person win. Competition becomes combat when the competitors begin trying to impede each other instead of locomote themselvesâ€when â€Å"Let the best person win” gives way to â€Å"Let me win, best or not. ” Proprietary software is harmful, not because it is a form of competition, but because it is a form of combat among the citizens of our society. Competition in business is not necessarily combat. For example, when two grocery stores compete, their intact effort is to improve their own operations, not to corrupt the rival.But this does not demonstrate a special trueness to business ethics; rather, there is little ground for combat in this line of business short of physical violence. Not all areas of business share this characteristic. Withholding information that could help everyone advance is a form of combat. Business ideolo gy does not localize people to resist the temptation to combat the competition. Some forms of combat have been banned with anti-trust laws, truth in advertising laws, and so on, but rather than generalizing this to a principled rejection of combat in general, executives invent other forms of combat which are not specifically prohibited.Societys resources are squandered on the economic equivalent of factional well-bred war. â€Å"Why Dont You Move to Russia? ” In the United States, any advocate of other than the most extreme form of laissezfaire selfishness has often heard this accusation. For example, it is leveled against the supporters of a national wellness care system, such as is found in all the other industrialized nations of the free world. It is leveled against the advocates of public support for the arts, also universal in advanced nations. The idea that citizens have any obligation to the public good is identified in America with Communism.But how similar are these ideas? Communism as was practiced in the Soviet Union was a system of central control where all activity was regimented, supposedly for the common good, but actually for the sake of the members of the Communist party. And where copying equipment was closely guarded to prevent illegal copying. The American system of software copyright exercises central control over distribution of a program, and guards copying equipment with spontaneous copying-protection schemes to prevent illegal copying.By contrast, I am working to build a system where people are free to decide their own actions; in particular, free to help their neighbors, and free to alter and improve the tools which they use in their daily lives. A system base on voluntary cooperation and on decentralization. thereof, if we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists. The Question of Premises I make the assumption in this paper that a user of software is no less important than an author, or even an authors employer.In other words, their interests and needs have equal weight, when we decide which course of action is best. This premise is not universally accepted. Many maintain that an authors employer is fundamentally more important than anyone else. They say, for example, that the purpose of having owners of software is to give the authors employer the advantage he deservesâ€regardless of how this may affect the public. It is no use trying to prove or disprove these set forth. cogent evidence requires shared premises. So most of what I have to say is addressed only to those who share the premises I use, or at least are interested in what their consequences are.For those who believe that the owners are more important than everyone else, this paper is simply ir applicable. But why would a large number of Americans accept a premise that elevates certain people in importance above everyone else? Partly because of the belief that this premise is part of the legal traditions of American society. Some people feel that doubting the premise means challenging the can of society. It is important for these people to know that this premise is not part of our legal tradition. It never has been. Thus, the Constitution says that the purpose of copyright is to â€Å"promote the progress of science and the useful arts. ‘ The exacting Court has elaborated on this, stating in `Fox Film vs. Doyal that â€Å"The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors. ” We are not required to agree with the Constitution or the Supreme Court. (At one time, they both condoned slavery. ) So their positions do not disprove the owner supremacy premise. But I hope that the awareness that this is a radical right-wing assumption rather than a traditionally recognize one will weaken its appeal.Conclusion We like to think that our society encourages helping your neighbor; but each time we reward someone for obstructionism, or delight in them for the wealth they have gained in this way, we are move the opposite message. Software hoarding is one form of our general willingness to disregard the welfare of society for ain gain. We can trace this disregard from Ronald Reagan to Jim Bakker, from Ivan Boesky to Exxon, from failing banks to failing schools. We can measure it with the size of the homeless race and the prison population.The antisocial spirit feeds on itself, because the more we see that other people will not help us, the more it seems futile to help them. Thus society decays into a jungle. If we dont want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from others. I hope that the free software exertion will contribute to this: at least in one area, we will replace the jungle with a more efficient system which encourages and runs on voluntary cooperation. Footnotes 1.The word â€Å"free” in â€Å"free software” refers to freedom, not to price; the price paid for a copy of a free program may be zero, or small, or (rarely) quite large. 2. The issues of befoulment and traffic congestion do not alter this conclusion. If we wish to make driving more expensive to discourage driving in general, it is disadvantageous to do this using toll booths, which contribute to both pollution and congestion. A tax on gasoline is much better. Likewise, a desire to enhance safety by limiting maximum speed is not relevant; a free-access road enhances the average speed by avoiding stops and delays, for any given speed limit. . wiz might regard a particular computer program as a harmful thing that should not be available at all, like the Lotus Marketplace database of personal information, which was withdrawn from sale due to public disapproval. Most of what I say does not apply to this case, but it makes little sense to argue for having an owner on the grounds that the owner will make the program less available. The owner will not make it completely unavailable, as one would wish in the case of a program whose use is considered destructive.\r\n'