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+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.90 -->
+<title>Richard Stallman's speech in Kolkata (Calcutta), August 2006
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/rms-kol.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+
+<h2>Richard Stallman's speech in Kolkata (Calcutta), August 2006</h2>
+
+<p>by <strong>Richard Stallman</strong></p>
+
+<p>There are a number of reasons why I'm not a communist. The first of
+them is that I'm not against the idea of private business, as long as
+it does not oppose people's human rights and the interests of
+society. Business is legitimate as long as it treats the rest of
+society decently.</p>
+
+<p>Computing is a new area of human life. So we have to think about
+the human rights associated with this. What are the human rights
+software users are entitled to? Four freedoms define Free Software. A
+programme is Free Software for a user if:</p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Freedom 0: Run the software as you wish.</li>
+ <li>Freedom 1: Share the source code and change it.</li>
+ <li>Freedom 2: Help your neighbour and distribute and publish.</li>
+ <li>Freedom 3: Help your community and distribute your modified
+ versions.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>With these 4 Freedoms, you can live an upright life with your
+community. If you use nonfree, proprietary software, the developer
+has the power to decide what you can do. He can use that power over
+you. Like Microsoft. That game is evil. Nobody should play it. So it's
+not a question of beating Microsoft at its game. I set out to get away
+from that game.</p>
+
+<p>Once GNU-Linux was ready in 1992, it began to catch on. It was
+reliable, powerful, cheap and flexible. Thousands and millions of
+people began to use GNU-Linux. But the ideals of freedom began to be
+forgotten though. In 1998, people stopped talking about Free
+Software. Instead they said &ldquo;open source&rdquo;. That was a way
+of not saying &ldquo;free&rdquo; and not mentioning the ideas behind
+it. I don't disagree with that, but that's not what I am interested
+in. What I'm really interested in most of all is to teach people to
+value their freedoms and to fight for them. In software, as in the US,
+our freedom is threatened. So the basic things we need to do are:
+remember our freedom frequently, value it and insist on it. When
+someone says they protect me from terrorism by taking away my
+freedom&mdash;say No! Similarly, with software that threatens our
+freedom, that might give us some temporary comparative
+advantage&mdash;we should say No!</p>
+
+<p>West Bengal should not follow the world trend. It should stand up
+for freedom. That's different. No! I'm not going to let the world lead
+me where it wants to go. I'm going where freedom is. If you're going
+elsewhere&mdash;I'm not going there. It requires firmness, it requires
+a decision that says freedom matters and hence it must be promoted.
+Even if that's inconvenient. Freedom needs some sacrifices, some
+inconvenience, some price. But it's a small price to pay.</p>
+
+<p>By globalisation, people usually mean globalisation of the power of
+business. Business should not have political power. Otherwise
+democracy becomes sick. And with globalisation of business power, this
+political power is enhanced. Free trade treaties are designed to
+attack democracy. For instance, it explicitly allows any business to
+sue government if a law makes its profit less than it has been.
+Companies have to be paid for the permission to do anything of social
+or environmental importance. Not all free trade treaties do this
+explicitly. They do it implicitly. Companies can threaten to move away
+elsewhere. And they do use this threat.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>This actually happened some
+years ago, with the EU software patents. The govt of Denmark was
+threatened that if they did not support this the company would move
+the business elsewhere. This tiny threat was sufficient to blackmail
+the govt of Denmark. If you allow a foreign mega-corporation to buy a
+domestic corporation, you are allowing it to buy a weapon pointed
+against your country. The environment, public health, general
+standards of living&mdash;are all important, and free trade treaties
+should be abolished. They are harmful to freedom, health and the lives
+of people.</p>
+
+<p>I do not accept the term &ldquo;intellectual property&rdquo;. The
+very term is biased and confusing. It talks about useful techniques
+and works. It presumes they are &ldquo;property&rdquo;. It prejudges
+such questions. There's also a more subtle problem. It lumps together
+all the diverse things and makes it look like you can talk about all
+of them together. Copyright, patents, trade laws&mdash;are all very
+different. It takes the greatest efforts of the best scholars to
+overcome the confusion caused by the term &ldquo;intellectual
+property&rdquo; and to discuss the details of these individual
+items.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>The <abbr title="General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade">
+GATT</abbr> Treaty and the <abbr title="Trade-Related Aspects of
+Intellectual Property Rights">TRIPS</abbr>&mdash;actually it should be
+called Trade-related Impediments to Education and Science. Free trade
+and enhancement of world trade harms democracy. When you globalise
+something evil, it becomes a greater evil. And when you globalise
+something good, it becomes a greater good. Human knowledge and
+cooperation are such &ldquo;goods&rdquo;. The Free Software Movement
+is a part of that. It is the globalisation of one area of human
+knowledge, namely software. Through global cooperation like this, you
+get freedom and independence for every region and every country.</p>
+
+<p>Proprietary software is a colonial system. It's electronic
+colonialism. And not by a country, but by a corporation. Electronic
+colonial powers keep people divided and helpless. Look at the end-user
+licensing agreement. You don't have the source code, you are
+helpless. You can't share, and so you are kept divided. National
+colonial powers recruit local elites and pay them and keep them above
+the rest of the people, working for the colonial masters. Today we see
+electronic colonial powers recruit native zamindars to keep the system
+intact. Microsoft sets up a research facility and in exchange it keeps
+its grip firmly on everyone else. Govts and schools are in their
+grip. They know how to do this. They know how to buy govt support. But
+what's the govt buying? Dependency, not development. Only Free
+Software constitutes development. It enables any activity to be fully
+under the control of the people doing it. Free Software is appropriate
+technology. Proprietary software is not appropriate for any use.</p>
+
+<p>The West Bengal govt has an opportunity to adopt a policy of firm
+leadership in this regard. This will give a boost to human resource
+development. Free Software respects people's freedom. Govt has an
+influence on the future of society. Choosing which software to teach
+students: if you teach them Windows, they will be Windows users. For
+something else, they need to learn, and make the effort to learn
+something else. Microsoft knows this. So it donates Windows to
+schools. Addiction (through using unauthorised software use) only
+helps them. They didn't want to leave anything to choice, so they give
+Windows free to schools. Like injecting a dose. The first dose is
+gratis. Afterwards it's not gratis, either for them or their
+employers. This is a way to impose their power on the rest of society
+and its future. Schools have a mission to society. This mission
+requires teaching students to live in freedom, teaching skills to make
+it easy to live in freedom. This means using Free Software.</p>
+
+<p>Free Software is good for computer science education, to maximise
+the potential of natural programmers. It gives students the
+opportunity to really learn. It's good for the natural programmers. If
+you have proprietary software, the teacher says &ldquo;I don't
+know&rdquo;, &ldquo;You are not allowed to know, it's a secret.&rdquo;
+So the alternative is to give him the source codes and let him read it
+all. They will then learn to be really good programmers.
+<span class="gnun-split"></span>But the most
+crucial reason is for the sake of moral education. Teaching them to be
+good corporations and benevolent, helpful citizens. This has to be
+taught. School has to teach by example. If you bring software to
+class, you must share this with other kids. Or don't bring it. Schools
+must follow their own rule, by bringing Free Software to class.
+Schools should use 100% Free Software. No proprietary software should
+be used in schools. Public agencies, after a migration period, should
+use Free Software. All software development must run on Free Software
+platforms. And if it's released to the public, it must be Free
+Software. (Free: as in free speech, not free beer.)</p>
+
+<p>One easy and useful way to put Free Software in schools&mdash;is to
+participate in the &ldquo;1 Laptop per Child&rdquo; programme. India
+recently pulled out of this programme, I'm told. I'm told the Indian
+govt is making lots of laws to make multinational corporations
+happy. Maybe this was to make Microsoft happy. Even if India is not,
+West Bengal can participate in the 1 Laptop per child programme. I can
+put them in touch with the people developing that machine.</p>
+
+<p>The Govt of India is considering a vicious new copyright law,
+imitating US law, in favour of large businesses, and against its
+citizens. The only emergency I can see that requires this being rushed
+through is catastrophic shortfall in the dream profits of some
+businesses! Foreigners should not have political power. In my case, I
+don't.</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>
+
+ <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+ our web pages, see <a
+ href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+ README</a>. -->
+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>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
+ files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
+ be under CC BY-ND 4.0. Please do NOT change or remove this
+ without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
+ Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
+ document. For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the
+ document was modified, or published.
+
+ If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
+ Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying
+ years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable
+ year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including
+ being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).
+
+ There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
+ Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 2006, 2019 Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2019/12/30 11:28:30 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>