Abstract
“Free software” is software that respects the users’ freedoms by granting them access to the source code, and allowing them to modify and redistribute the software at will. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free software movement, has argued that creating and distributing non-Free software is always a moral injustice. In this essay, I try to identify the ethical foundations of Stallmanism. I identify three major trends in Stallman’s thinking—libertarian, utilitarian, and communitarian—and I argue that none is sufficient to justify the radical claim that distributing non-Free software is always wrong (unless we accept extremely demanding ethical standards that Stallman himself does not consistently endorse). I recommend thinking of Stallmanism as an attempt to optimize the satisfaction of a number of core values, including freedom, cooperation, and happiness, and I stress the importance of connecting the Free software movement to other political struggles against oppression.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Throughout this essay, I will capitalize “Free” when using it in Stallman’s specific sense of “Free software” in order to disambiguate it from the meaning of “free” as “costless.”
Copyleft licenses require all copies or modified copies to be distributed with the same freedoms, and may not be distributed as part of non-FS. Stallman advocates for copyleft but grants that “non-copylefted free software also exists” (Stallman 1996, p. 44).
Of course, legal measures may also be used to enforce FS requirements such as copyleft, which might be viewed by FS opponents as a restriction on their freedom.
(Open Source Initiative 2007).
(Stallman 2016a).
See (Raymond 2001) for discussion of the cathedral/bazaar metaphor, and arguments in favor of OSS.
Cf. (Stallman 2014a) at 13:45.
These labels are not intended to be highly loaded. For instance, I use the term “communitarian” to distance it from a loaded term like “communist,” which is apt to cause confusion. Similarly, “libertarian” is not intended in the contemporary free-market-economy sense.
A reviewer observes that there are different ways that a person might know “what a program is doing”—seeing the output of the application, seeing the source code, knowing the machine instructions themselves, etc. Access to source code is the ethically relevant sense of “knowing” here, since source code is the format that can be most easily read by programmers to understand what functionality a program has, and this facilitates the fulfillment of the Four Freedoms. Merely seeing the output of the application (e.g., seeing that a web browser has loaded a web page), is not sufficient to “know what the program is doing,” since it may, for example, be recording your keystrokes and sending them to a remote server, a fact that could potentially be uncovered by studying the source code.
For instance, Stallman declares: “I’d rather have no software than a program that mistreats me and trashes my freedom” (Stallman 2014b), suggesting once again that PS has negative moral value, regardless of any material benefits it might confer.
Stallman (2014a, 37:50) also states: “Join us in saying ‘We demand freedom’… and we’re ready to fight for it. We’re ready to make sacrifices for it. Because sometimes freedom requires a sacrifice.” This too implies that utility is less important than autonomy for Stallman, since it is mainly utility/convenience that one might be forced to sacrifice by using FS. As Stallman states shortly after the previous quotation: “You don’t sacrifice convenience for convenience. But for freedom, maybe you will sacrifice convenience.”
This point seems to be acknowledged by Stallman: “…just saying ‘I believe in freedom’ is vacuous. There are so many different freedoms you could believe in, and they conflict with each other, so the real political question is: Which are the important freedoms, the freedoms that we must make sure everybody has?” (Gay 2002, p. 165).
Stallman does support the unrestricted right to redistribute verbatim copies (i.e., sharing). See (Gay 2002, p. 87).
Stallman (2014a) does explicitly compare giving away PS to giving cigarettes to children.
(Chopra and Dexter 2008, p. 69) note this criticism as well.
As a reviewer notes, Stallman also objects to Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS)—that is, services to which users may send their data in order to do computations that they could, in principle, have done with their own computers and software. This does not involve the distribution of PS, but is still considered unethical by Stallman for analogous reasons, in particular that it involves sacrificing the users’ freedom and control over their own computations (see (Stallman 2016b)). Thus, distributing PS is not the only source of computational harm, but this does not weaken the point that Stallman does not explicitly condemn PS that is neither distributed nor offered as SaaSS.
A reviewer notes a further problem: if I am ethically required to share my software with anyone who likes it, or might like it, doesn’t this present me with an impossible obligation? For how am I to know who would like the software? Do I have a duty to seek out every person who likes, or might like, the software? However, I believe a more charitable interpretation of Stallman’s views would be that there is an ethical obligation to make the source code available, in a sufficiently accessible way, to anyone who is interested. I interpret sharing of source code in this sense—packaging the source code with the software, or otherwise making it available to copy in an accessible way.
Stallman’s arguments at times imply, in effect, that the sole moral criterion for a piece of software is the license under which it is distributed.
In one section, Stallman offers all three kinds of reason in succession:
What does society need? It needs information that is truly available to its citizens—for example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt, and improve, not just operate. But what software owners typically deliver is a black box that we can’t study or change.
Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives.
And above all society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary cooperation in its citizens. When software owners tell us that helping our neighbors in a natural way is ‘piracy,’ they pollute our society’s civic spirit (Gay 2002, pp. 49–50).
This is not meant to imply that Stallman does not offer strong reasons for preferring FS over PS.
The essay “Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Networks” in (Gay 2002) is a notable exception. However, although Stallman criticizes “the tendency to give business power over the public and governments” (Gay 2002, p. 146), he rarely engages in criticism of capitalist production per se. Even on his personal website, https://www.stallman.org, Stallman (2017) criticizes “the plutocratic type of capitalism,” but not capitalism or wage labor per se.
I am not suggesting Stallman should be expected to take on all forms of exploitation—it is fine to apply his energy where it is most useful. However, his comments on the matter appear to express a positive attitude towards capitalist production and its relation to FS. I am claiming that such an attitude is in tension with the ethical principles underlying FS.
References
Chopra, S., & Dexter, S. D. (2008). Decoding liberation: the promise of free and open source software. New York: Routledge.
Corazza, J. (2016). A short critique of Stallmanism. http://flowing.systems/2016/09/24/a-short-critique-of-stallmanism/. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Gay, J. (2002). Free software, free society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston: GNU Press.
Gregor, M. (2006). Immanuel Kant: groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Grodzinsky, F. S., & Wolf, M. J. (2008). Ethical interest in free and open source software. In K. E. Himma & H. T. Tavani (Eds.), The handbook of information and computer ethics (pp. 245–271). Hoboken: Wiley.
Kagan, S. (1984). Does consequentialism demand too much? Recent work on the limits of obligation. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 13(3), 239–254.
McConnell, T. C. (1980). Utilitarianism and Supererogatory Acts. Ratio, XXII, 36–38.
Mill, J. S. (1859). On Liberty. In M. Warnock (Ed.), (2003), Utilitarianism and On Liberty (pp. 88–180). Malden: Blackwell.
Moore, A. D. (2008). Personality-based, rule-utilitarian, and Lockean justifications of intellectual property. In K. E. Himma & H. T. Tavani (Eds.), The handbook of information and computer ethics (pp. 105–130). Hoboken: Wiley.
Open Source Initiative (2007). The Open Source Definition. https://opensource.org/osd. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Raymond, E. S. (2001). The cathedral and the bazaar: Musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary. Sebastopol: O’Reilly.
Stallman, R. (2017). The plutocratic system. Blog post. https://www.stallman.org/archives/2016-nov-feb.html#21_January_2017_(The_plutocratic_system). Accessed 6 November 2017.
Stallman, R. (2016a). Why open source misses the point of free software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Stallman, R. (2016b). Who does that server really serve? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Stallman, R. (2014a). Freedom in your computer and in the net. https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6123_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412291130_-_freedom_in_your_computer_and_in_the_net_-_richard_stallman. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Stallman, R. (2014b). Free software: autonomy and cooperation in cyberspace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEAW-XugGRM. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Stallman, R. (2013). Is free software anarchist? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVqCqgmTWCk. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Stallman, R. (2011). Keep control of your computing so it doesn’t control you. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/keep-control-of-your-computing.en.html. Accessed 6 November 2017.
Stallman, R. (2002). Misinterpreting copyright—a series of errors. In J. Gay (Ed.), Free software, free society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman (pp. 79–88). Boston: GNU Press.
Stallman, R. (1996). Free software definition. In J. Gay (Ed.), (2002), Free software, free society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman (pp. 43–46). Boston: GNU Press.
Wolf, M. J., Miller, K. W., & Grodzinsky, F. (2009). Free, Source-Code-Available, or Proprietary: An Ethically Charged, Context-Sensitive Choice. Computer Science & Information Technology Faculty Publications. Paper 17.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Richard Stallman, Samir Chopra, and anonymous reviewers at Philosophy & Technology.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rappaport, J. Is Proprietary Software Unjust? Examining the Ethical Foundations of Free Software. Philos. Technol. 31, 437–453 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0294-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0294-y