Essays and Articles
About Free Software
Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use
software in all the ways that are socially useful. Software differs
from material objects—such as chairs, sandwiches, and
gasoline—in that it can be copied and changed much more easily.
These possibilities make software as useful as it is; we believe
software users should be able to make use of them.
Principles
Practice
Extension to other areas
Mixing free and nonfree
Free software and open source
Upholding Software Freedom
The GNU Project
The free software movement
The need for free software
Guide for action
Licensing Free Software
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Licenses
— General information on licensing and copyleft
Copyleft
Non-copyleft
Licensing traps
Legal issues
Patents
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Giving the Software Field Protection from Patents
(by RMS)
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Europe's “unitary patent” could mean unlimited software
patents
(by RMS)
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EFF “Intellectual Property”: MPAA (Motion Picture
Association of America) DVD Cases Archive
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The Anatomy of a Trivial Patent
(by RMS)
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Microsoft's New Monopoly
(by RMS)
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Soft sell
(by RMS, on theguardian.com)
— Comments on the defeat of the EU software patenting directive.
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Bill Gates and Other Communists
(by RMS)
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Software Patents and Literary Patents
(by RMS)
— Speaking of patenting artistic techniques, US patent (6,935,954)
covers making game characters start to hallucinate when (according to the
game) they are being driven insane. That is getting pretty close to the
hypothetical examples cited in this article.
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Fighting Software Patents—Singly and Together
(by RMS)
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Patent absurdity
(by RMS, on theguardian.com)
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FSF's Position on W3 Consortium “Royalty-Free” Patent Policy
(rewritten)
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Opposing The European Software Patent Directive
(by RMS and Nick Hill)
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Princeton Scientists Sue Over Squelched Research
(press release on eff.org)
— In Felten v. RIAA, scientists ask a court to rule that the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not prohibit them from
publishing their research.
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Harm from the Hague
(by RMS)
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Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation
(by James Bessen and Eric Maskin, on researchoninnovation.org, archived)
— This paper presents a mathematical model showing how patents can
impede progress in fields like software.
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Letter from RMS to Tim O'Reilly
in regard to a statement by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, on the duration of
software patents.
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Amazon Boycott Success!
(a letter from Nat Friedman to RMS)
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(Formerly) Boycott Amazon!
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Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications
network
— Amazon patent with notes by RMS
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Why There Are No GIF Files on GNU Web Pages
— While this story is a historical illustration of the danger of
software patents, these particular patents are now no longer a concern.
For details of our website policies regarding GIFs, see our web
guidelines.
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Saving Europe from Software Patents
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Help Protect the Rights to Write Both Nonfree and Free Software
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Patent Reform Is Not Enough
Copyright
Response to SCO's attacks
Cultural and Social Issues
Digital society
Digital restrictions management
Network Services
Accessing culture
Funding cultural works
Surveillance, censorship, lock-in, etc.
Terminology and Definitions
Philosophical humor
Laugh along with GNU (Philosophy)
— We don't have to be serious all the time.
This page lists a series of articles describing the philosophy of the free software movement, which is the motivation for our development of the free software operating system GNU.
The most important articles are marked with asterisks, and listed first in each category. The other ones are in reverse chronological order.