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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.77 -->
+<title>MyDoom and You
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/my_doom.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>MyDoom and You</h2>
+
+<p>by <a href="http://stallman.org/"><strong>Richard
+Stallman</strong></a></p>
+
+<p>
+I grew up in a community whose other members sometimes committed crimes as
+serious as murder. The city of New York, with its 8 million
+inhabitants, had hundreds of murders each year, mostly committed by
+people who lived in the city. Violent assaults and robberies were
+even more common.</p>
+<p>
+Other evils involving information rather than physical violence were
+common also. For instance, some New York police regularly lied on the
+witness stand, and even made up a word for it: instead of
+&ldquo;testifying&rdquo;, they described court appearances as
+&ldquo;testilying&rdquo;. Some New York programmers fell into the
+lawful but socially destructive practice of proprietary software: they
+offered other people attractive software packages without source code,
+and exacted a promise not to share them with anyone else.</p>
+<p>
+Despite these prevalent evils, never in my life have I seen anyone try
+to condemn all New Yorkers on the basis of the wrongs that only some
+have committed. I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of
+New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing
+proprietary software. People are aware that the mere fact that some
+New Yorkers were known to have done these things is no justification
+for treating all of us as guilty. That would be &ldquo;guilt by
+association,&rdquo; and people know that is unjust.</p>
+<p>
+I now live in the
+smaller city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Murder and robbery occur
+here, too; I do not know if Cambridge police regularly lie in court,
+but proprietary software is rife. Nonetheless, I have never seen
+anyone try to condemn the whole city of Cambridge for this. Here, too,
+people recognize that guilt by association is an injustice.</p>
+<p>
+However, people don't always remember to apply the principle. My
+virtual community, the free software community which I have helped to
+build since 1984 by developing the GNU operating system, is
+now the victim of a campaign of guilt by association. A number of
+articles&mdash;I have seen some&mdash;have tried to hold our entire
+community guilty for the development of the MyDoom virus.</p>
+<p>
+We can be pretty sure that some New Yorkers have committed murder,
+because they have been tried and convicted for it. We do not know
+whether anyone in the free software community participated in the
+development of MyDoom. The developers have not been identified; they
+know who they are, but you and I can only speculate. We could
+speculate that users of GNU/Linux developed the virus to attack SCO.
+We could speculate that Microsoft developed the virus so it would be
+blamed on us. We could speculate that disgruntled former SCO
+employees developed the virus to get even. But there is no evidence
+for any of these speculations.</p>
+<p>
+If some day we find out that those who developed the virus were free
+software users, then my virtual community will be in the same
+situation as New York City and Cambridge: proved to have had some
+members who acted destructively.</p>
+<p>
+This should not surprise anyone. The free software community numbers
+in the tens of millions, larger than New York or even Shanghai. It is
+hardly to be expected that so many people would all be ethical. Our
+community is self-selected for at least partial rejection of one
+unethical practice, proprietary software, but even that doesn't
+guarantee perfection. The presence of a few wrongdoers among many
+millions is no surprise&mdash;and no excuse for guilt by
+association.</p>
+<p>
+I am confident that nearly all readers of this article have nothing to
+do with developing the MyDoom virus. So if someone is accusing you,
+don't act defensive. You have no more to do with the virus than
+your accuser, so stand tall and say so.</p>
+<p>
+If anyone has knowledge or evidence about who developed the virus, I
+hope he or she will come forth and make an accusation against specific
+people based on specific proof. But nobody should make accusations
+without proof, and there is no excuse for guilt by association.
+Not in New York, not in Cambridge, and not in the Free World.</p>
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<div class="unprintable">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to <a
+href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org">&lt;gnu@gnu.org&gt;</a>. There are also <a
+href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> the FSF. Broken links and other
+corrections or suggestions can be sent to <a
+href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org">&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+ replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+ We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+ translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+ Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+ to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org">
+ &lt;web-translators@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
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+ href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
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+Please see the <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations README</a> for
+information on coordinating and submitting translations of this article.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 2004, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/">Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2014/04/12 12:40:28 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>