A Free Software Reader

by Allen B. Downey

A good place to start reading about Free Software is the home page of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). I recommend these articles:

Both are by Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF and coiner of the phrase "Free Software." Stallman presents his views in a straightforward way that some readers find antagonistic, but his ideas are important and IMHO, mostly right.

There is a new book about Stallman called Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams. My copy is in the mail, but you can borrow it when I'm done.

Free Software is not quite the same thing as Open Source Software, but there is a lot of philosophical overlap. The defining document of the Open Source Movement is The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric S. Raymond. This book is available electronically in a variety of formats, and printed copies are also for sale. We have a copy in our library.

An issue that is at the center of the Free Software debate is intellectual property rights, which are generally badly misunderstood. Contrary to the impression you might get from Hollywood, there is no legal principle (or general moral principle) that guarantees authors exclusive control of their work.

The relevant part of the U.S. Constitution explains that the purpose of copyrights and patents is, "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective rights and discoveries..."

Why is that clause there? Because Thomas Jefferson thought ideas should be free. He made this point a little better than I can:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
13 August 1813
Writings 13:333--35

Of course, Jefferson is committing the naturalist fallacy, but it was very much in vogue at the time. For more contemporary thought on the issue, I recommend:

"Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net" by John Perry Barlow.
"Intellectual Property on the Net" by Esther Dyson.

They're both a little long-winded, but worth plowing through.

My former lab partner Lauren Plavisch recommends "May the Source Be With You", by Lawrence Lessig, in Wired magazine.

An idea closely related to Free Software is the freedom of academic work, which is currently limited by the transfer of copyright to academic publishers. A group that is trying to fix that is the Public Library of Science, which I think should expand its mission to include all scholarly work.

Even if you use proprietary software, you should avoid adopting proprietary standards for sharing the documents you write. For example, if you distribute a document in Microsoft Word, you make it difficult or impossible for people who don't use Word to read what you have written.

If that doesn't bother you, maybe this will: Word documents often contain a history of the changes you have made to the document, including text that you have deleted. Do you really want the world to read your first draft?

Richard Stallman wrote my favorite article on this topic, "We Can Put an End to Word Attachments". He suggests several form letters you can send to people who send Word attachments, including my favorite:

You sent the attachment in Microsoft Word format, a secret proprietary format, so it is hard for me to read. If you send me plain text, HTML, or PDF, then I will read it.
Distributing documents in Word format is bad for you and for others. You can't be sure what they will look like if someone views them with a different version of Word; they may not work at all.
Receiving Word attachments is bad for you because they can carry viruses (see http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/acro.html). Sending Word attachments is bad for you, because a Word document normally includes hidden information about the author, enabling those in the know to pry into the author's activities (maybe yours). Text that you think you deleted may still be embarrassingly present. See http://www.microsystems.com/Shares_Well.htm for more info.
But above all, sending people Word documents puts pressure on them to use Microsoft software and helps to deny them any other choice. In effect, you become a buttress of the Microsoft monopoly. This pressure is a major obstacle to the broader adoption of free software. Would you please reconsider the use of Word format for communication with other people?
To convert the file to HTML is simple. Open the document, click on File, then Save As, and in the Save As Type strip box at the bottom of the box, choose HTML Document or Web Page. Then choose Save. You can then attach the new HTML document instead of your Word document. Note that Word changes in inconsistent ways--if you see slightly different menu item names, please try them.
To convert to plain text is almost the same--instead of HTML Document, choose Text Only or Text Document as the Save As Type.

See also Jeff Goldberg's page "MS-Word is Not a document exchange format".

I have a collection of books about Free Software and the Open Source Movement. I would be happy to lend the following to anyone who is interested:

Under the Radar, by Robert Young (the founder of RedHat, not the television actor).
In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson (yes, the science fiction novelist).
Free for All, by Peter Wayner.
Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, edited by DiBona, Ockman and Stone.
Embracing Insanity: Open Source Software Development, by Russell Pavlicek.
Open Source: The Unauthorized White Papers, by Donald Rosenberg.
The UNIX Philosophy, by Mike Gancarz.

As you might have heard, the United States Department of Justice has been trying mostly unsuccessfully to limit the damage caused by the Microsoft monopoly. I also have a couple of books on that topic:

Trust on Trial, by Richard B. McKenzie.
Winners, Losers and Microsoft, by Liebowitz and Margolis.

Here's the almost completely uninteresting web page on the topic by the Department of Justice and a profoundly comical but hideously deceptive defense of Microsoft called (with unintentional Orwellian irony) the Freedom to Innovate Network.

Last, and probably least, you might want to read my essay "Why I Hate FirstClass".