I’m trying to change the way people approach knowledge and information in general. I think that to try to own knowledge, to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is sabotage.
Because I don’t believe that it’s really desirable to have security on a computer, I shouldn’t be willing to help uphold the security regime.
If the users don’t control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the “owner” of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.
I never imagined that the Free Software Movement would spawn a watered-down alternative, the Open Source Movement, which would become so well-known that people would ask me questions about ‘open source’ thinking that I work under that banner.
One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.
There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels.
If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.
Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go.
We need to teach people to refuse to install non-free plug-ins; we need to teach people to care more about their long-term interest of freedom than their immediate desire to view a particular site.
I’m always happy when I’m protesting.
I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.
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 can’t begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can’t see how others have done it.
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
The desire to be rewarded for one’s creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
Paying isn’t wrong, and being paid isn’t wrong. Trampling other people’s freedom and community is wrong, so the free software movement aims to put an end to it, at least in the area of software.
I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software.
I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there’s a sucker born every minute.
The GNU GPL was not designed to be “open source”.
Globalizing a bad thing makes it worse. But globalizing a good thing is usually good.
Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.