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diff --git a/docs/foreword-v1.md b/docs/foreword-v1.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f07794f --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/foreword-v1.md @@ -0,0 +1,190 @@ +--- +Generator: 'texi2html 1.82' +description: Untitled Document +distribution: global +keywords: Untitled Document +resource-type: document +title: Untitled Document +... + +Foreword to the First Edition {#foreword-to-the-first-edition .unnumbered} +============================= + +@firstcopyingnotice{{Copyright © 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.\ + {This foreword was originally published, in 2002, as the introduction +to the first edition. This, the original version, is part of +@fsfsthreecite} Every generation has its philosopher—a writer or an +artist who captures the imagination of a time. Sometimes these +philosophers are recognized as such; often it takes generations before +the connection is made real. But recognized or not, a time gets marked +by the people who speak its ideals, whether in the whisper of a poem, or +the blast of a political movement. + +Our generation has a philosopher. He is not an artist, or a professional +writer. He is a programmer. Richard Stallman began his work in the labs +of MIT, as a programmer and architect building operating system +software. He has built his career on a stage of public life, as a +programmer and an architect founding a movement for freedom in a world +increasingly defined by “code.” + +“Code” is the technology that makes computers run. Whether inscribed in +software or burned in hardware, it is the collection of instructions, +first written in words, that directs the functionality of machines. +These machines—computers—increasingly define and control our life. They +determine how phones connect, and what runs on TV. They decide whether +video can be streamed across a broadband link to a computer. They +control what a computer reports back to its manufacturer. These machines +run us. Code runs these machines. + +What control should we have over this code? What understanding? What +freedom should there be to match the control it enables? What power? + +These questions have been the challenge of Stallman’s life. Through his +works and his words, he has pushed us to see the importance of keeping +code “free.” Not free in the sense that code writers don’t get paid, but +free in the sense that the control coders build be transparent to all, +and that anyone have the right to take that control, and modify it as he +or she sees fit. This is “free software”; “free software” is one answer +to a world built in code. + +“Free.” Stallman laments the ambiguity in his own term. There’s nothing +to lament. Puzzles force people to think, and this term “free” does this +puzzling work quite well. To modern American ears, “free software” +sounds utopian, impossible. Nothing, not even lunch, is free. How could +the most important words running the most critical machines running the +world be “free.” How could a sane society aspire to such an ideal? + +Yet the odd clink of the word “free” is a function of us, not of the +term. “Free” has different senses, only one of which refers to “price.” +A much more fundamental sense of “free” is the “free,” Stallman says, in +the term “free speech,” or perhaps better in the term “free labor.” Not +free as in costless, but free as in limited in its control by others. +Free software is control that is transparent, and open to change, just +as free laws, or the laws of a “free society,” are free when they make +their control knowable, and open to change. The aim of Stallman’s “free +software movement” is to make as much code as it can transparent, and +subject to change, by rendering it “free.” + +The mechanism of this rendering is an extraordinarily clever device +called “copyleft” implemented through a license called GPL. Using the +power of copyright law, “free software” not only assures that it remains +open, and subject to change, but that other software that takes and uses +“free software” (and that technically counts as a “derivative”) must +also itself be free. If you use and adapt a free software program, and +then release that adapted version to the public, the released version +must be as free as the version it was adapted from. It must, or the law +of copyright will be violated. + +“Free software,” like free societies, has its enemies. Microsoft has +waged a war against the GPL, warning whoever will listen that the GPL is +a “dangerous” license. The dangers it names, however, are largely +illusory. Others object to the “coercion” in GPL’s insistence that +modified versions are also free. But a condition is not coercion. If it +is not coercion for Microsoft to refuse to permit users to distribute +modified versions of its product Office without paying it (presumably) +millions, then it is not coercion when the GPL insists that modified +versions of free software be free too. + +And then there are those who call Stallman’s message too extreme. But +extreme it is not. Indeed, in an obvious sense, Stallman’s work is a +simple translation of the freedoms that our tradition crafted in the +world before code. “Free software” would assure that the world governed +by code is as “free” as our tradition that built the world before code. + +For example: A “free society” is regulated by law. But there are limits +that any free society places on this regulation through law: No society +that kept its laws secret could ever be called free. No government that +hid its regulations from the regulated could ever stand in our +tradition. Law controls. But it does so justly only when visibly. And +law is visible only when its terms are knowable and controllable by +those it regulates, or by the agents of those it regulates (lawyers, +legislatures). + +This condition on law extends beyond the work of a legislature. Think +about the practice of law in American courts. Lawyers are hired by their +clients to advance their clients’ interests. Sometimes that interest is +advanced through litigation. In the course of this litigation, lawyers +write briefs. These briefs in turn affect opinions written by judges. +These opinions decide who wins a particular case, or whether a certain +law can stand consistently with a constitution. + +All the material in this process is free in the sense that Stallman +means. Legal briefs are open and free for others to use. The arguments +are transparent (which is different from saying they are good) and the +reasoning can be taken without the permission of the original lawyers. +The opinions they produce can be quoted in later briefs. They can be +copied and integrated into another brief or opinion. The “source code” +for American law is by design, and by principle, open and free for +anyone to take. And take lawyers do—for it is a measure of a great brief +that it achieves its creativity through the reuse of what happened +before. The source is free; creativity and an economy is built upon it. + +This economy of free code (and here I mean free legal code) doesn’t +starve lawyers. Law firms have enough incentive to produce great briefs +even though the stuff they build can be taken and copied by anyone else. +The lawyer is a craftsman; his or her product is public. Yet the +crafting is not charity. Lawyers get paid; the public doesn’t demand +such work without price. Instead this economy flourishes, with later +work added to the earlier. + +We could imagine a legal practice that was different—briefs and +arguments that were kept secret; rulings that announced a result but not +the reasoning. Laws that were kept by the police but published to no one +else. Regulation that operated without explaining its rule. + +We could imagine this society, but we could not imagine calling it +“free.” Whether or not the incentives in such a society would be better +or more efficiently allocated, such a society could not be known as +free. The ideals of freedom, of life within a free society, demand more +than efficient application. Instead, openness and transparency are the +constraints within which a legal system gets built, not options to be +added if convenient to the leaders. Life governed by software code +should be no less. + +Code writing is not litigation. It is better, richer, more productive. +But the law is an obvious instance of how creativity and incentives do +not depend upon perfect control over the products created. Like jazz, or +novels, or architecture, the law gets built upon the work that went +before. This adding and changing is what creativity always is. And a +free society is one that assures that its most important resources +remain free in just this sense. + +This book collects the writing and lectures of Richard Stallman in a +manner that will make their subtlety and power clear. The essays span a +wide range, from copyright to the history of the free software movement. +They include many arguments not well known, and among these, an +especially insightful account of the changed circumstances that render +copyright in the digital world suspect. They will serve as a resource +for those who seek to understand the thought of this most powerful +man—powerful in his ideas, his passion, and his integrity, even if +powerless in every other way. They will inspire others who would take +these ideas, and build upon them. + +I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard +man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at +friend as easily as foe. He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in +both. + +Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of +code—when it finally sees that code, like laws, or like government, must +be transparent to be free—then we will look back at this uncompromising +and persistent programmer and recognize the vision he has fought to make +real: the vision of a world where freedom and knowledge survives the +compiler. And we will come to see that no man, through his deeds or +words, has done as much to make possible the freedom that this next +society could have. + +We have not earned that freedom yet. We may well fail in securing it. +But whether we succeed or fail, in these essays is a picture of what +that freedom could be. And in the life that produced these words and +works, there is inspiration for anyone who would, like Stallman, fight +to create this freedom. + +LAWRENCE LESSIG + +@lessigbio + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +This document was generated by *tonghuix* on *March 25, 2016* using +[*texi2html 1.82*](http://www.nongnu.org/texi2html/).\ |