My disagreement with Richard Stallman
Why is free software important?
Software and computers are all pervasive in today's world and thus demand our utmost diligence: The lives we live are run and organised by software, we depend on software, we trust our most intimate data to software systems. Thus, the importance of free software: Only free software can protect our freedoms, gives us control to study and if necessary modify that which governs our lives, and only free software allows us to share improvements with fellow human beings. Proprietary software, on the other hand, forces us to adopt anti-social behaviour and attacks our freedoms by depriving us of insight and ultimate control over the machines that run our lives, and by making our freedoms subject to the whims of software vendors.
This is the oft-repeated message of Richard Stallman (RMS), an exceptional fighter for everyone's freedom, who founded the free software movement decades ago and has devoted most of his life to educating and campaigning for free software and - more importantly - everyone's personal freedom. During two recent talks at the University of Auckland, RMS had a chance to elaborate on his points once more. I attended these two talks, and have written about them here and here.
Freedom as the most important 'feature'
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