International Statement Of Software Freedom

This page is the drawing board for the International Statement of Software Freedom. This statement is being developed for http://www.freedevelopers.net/.

The purpose of this statement is to unify all free developers around the world without excluding any. It is an original work initiated by Neal E. Coombes, with much contribution from everyone at free developers, including Ricardo Andere de Mello, Michael Del Solio, Andres Moya Velazquez, Gabriel Mihalache, Romeo Anghelache, John Ky, and Mike Warren. Much thanks to everyone for their contributions. Please feel free to make your own.

The statement is currently being drawn into it's second draft.

[Begin Draft -- please no notes in here]

INTERNATIONAL STATEMENT OF SOFTWARE FREEDOM

Software

The standard programming procedures and specific programs associated with a computer system.

Freedom

The condition of not being under another's control; power to do, say or think as one pleases; liberty.

It used to be that books in the US came with contracts called license agreements. The agreements were fairly standard: You could not copy the contents; you could not resell the book; you could not lend the book to a friend; you could not discuss the book with fellow readers; you could not build on any of the idea's in the book for your own creation.

These contracts were eventually determined to be unconstitutional and the practice was halted by the Supreme Court.

Today, the proprietary software companies have managed to convince the US Congress that these practices are in fact necessary for the growth of the software industry. We see them everywhere: You cannot reverse engineer your software; you cannot copy it; you cannot modify it; you cannot learn from it.

It should appear counter intuitive to anyone with any common sense; If you cannot build on what others have done in the past, how will anything grow or improve? If you must redesign software from scratch every time, how will anything ever get better? The answer of course is that it won't.

Software must be free to grow, improve and adapt as the needs of users change.

Without the freedom to modify and learn from software, the world of computers will stand still where it is: barely capable of taking full advantage of the hardware available; bloated and inefficient; full of security flaws and more capable of crashing than accomplishing anything useful.

Without the freedom of software, users can never be sure of what they're getting. The proprietor could be dishonest in any number of ways. They could be selling your vital private information, profiling your computer usage, tracking your internet usage, intercepting your email or using your system resources for some unscrupulous task.

Without the freedom of software, your computer can never truly be yours.

This is a statement of those people around the world who are devoted to making sure their country does not make the same mistakes as the US. It is a statement of those in the US (and countries that have already made these mistakes) that they are devoted to remedy them. It is a statement that software must be free.

[End of Draft]

Comments

I suppose the appropriate question would be: is software more like a book, where the purpose is to communicate ideas, or is it more like an automobile -- a collection of parts designed to accomplish a specific function? Surely you aren't suggesting we remove patent protection from everything so that computer hardware can also be "free"?

The question we pose is not: is software more like a book or more like an automobile, because it is quite obviously nothing like an automobile. The question we pose is instead: is software more like Literature or more like Law? Please see Is software Law or Literature? at the following URL: http://www.freedevelopers.net/press/whydecl/. Also note that this is an alternative to the document mentioned in that article the DeclarationOfSoftwareFreedom because not all people throughout the world relate to the Declaration of Independance after which it was modelled.

This is not true. And even if it was, so what?

They are already laws protecting us. Besides, information should be free, there are no "vital private information".

They are already laws protecting us.

There certainly are such laws. But if it is difficult for me to tell if those laws have been violated, and impossible to see who exactly violated them, then what good are these laws?

If some application from some company, in addition to doing whatever you expected it to do, also modified your web browser so it never, ever displayed advertisements for any of that company's competitors, how would anyone ever know? (It may not be technically illegal, but it's certainly not a nice thing to do).

Ballot stuffing is illegal. But if some ElectronicVotingMachine tilted the balance of the election one way or another, how would anyone know?

These contracts were eventually determined to be unconstitutional and the practice was halted by the Supreme Court.

[[ Please Provide source. Educational and Fair use have been in the law since at least 1976. I am not aware of any time when it was not so if so please educate us. ]]

I'm not an attorney, so take this with a grain of salt, but as far as I can tell, fair use has been a part of common law for as long as the US has had copyright law. The 1976 copyright law just codified some of what was already in the common law.

[[That was my understanding as well. Given the existence of Libraries the statement above seems overbroad. It may be that they are thinking of certain non-published information such as investment reports, which, even to this day, have resrictive terms. And the use of recorded music on the radio was its own issue at the time as it was a for profit use and arguably a 'public preformance'. In fact, if we were to revisit that issue it is likely that it would not be considered fair use due to the profit motive. I am not sure where the author is getting this notion. I will look into it if I get the chance as it is, if true, a significatant issue. ]]