(Thanks to Nelson Beebe for the reference.)… it is clear that what is being charged for is the development of the program, and while I am particularly unhappy that it comes from a university, I believe it is damaging to the whole profession. There isn't a 704 installation that hasn't directly benefited from the free exchange of programs made possible by the distribution facilities of SHARE. If we start to sell our programs, this will set very undesirable precedents.
Note: The GNU Project disagrees with the article's assumption that nonfree programs are morally legitimate competitors.
Note: This article adopts as a premise the popular view that free trade is desirable. We don't always agree—beyond a certain point; free trade gives businesses too much power, allowing them to intimidate democracy. But that is a different matter.
Note: The GNU Project recommends avoiding the term piracy since it implies that sharing copies is somehow illegitimate.
The GNU Project rejects the term “intellectual property” for spreading confusion; we urge everyone to reject it entirely.
Note: This article takes a narrowly economic view of its subject, measuring social alternatives only by what goods are available for what price, assuming that you the citizen are a mere consumer and place no value on your freedom in itself. It also uses the misleading term “intellectual property,” which is misleading because it lumps copyrights and patents together. The article also lumps them together, which it can get away with because it ignores the (different) social issues that copyrights and patents raise.
Despite those flaws, it is significant. If one can judge copyright to be harmful even on narrow economic terms, disregarding the ethical wrong of stopping people from sharing, it can only be even more harmful when we consider the ethics as well.
Note: The Free Software Movement does not endorse Libertarianism, and we do not agree entirely with that article. But it is useful for refuting one specific argument that is made in favor of proprietary software.
Note: We urge people to avoid using the term intellectual property, and to instead speak about copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.
Note: We think it is a mistake to use the enemy's favorable-sounding propaganda terms such as “trusted computing” to describe a malicious plan.
Note: We disagree with one aspect of this article's conclusion: it's not legitimate for Microsoft to help Disney and the RIAA impose Digital Restrictions Management on you, any more than it is legitimate for Disney and the RIAA to try it. The full power of computing should be available to you, not just to the owners of information.
These articles give other people's philosophical opinions in support of free software, or related issues, and don't speak for the GNU Project—but we more or less agree with them.
Many of the Organizations that Work for Freedom in Computer Development and Electronic Communications also have philosophical opinions in support of free software, or related issues.