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<title>When Free Software Depends on Nonfree - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
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<h2>When Free Software Depends on Nonfree</h2>
<address class="byline">by Richard Stallman</address>
<p>When a program is free software (free as in freedom), that means it
gives users <a
href="/philosophy/free-sw.html">the four freedoms</a>,
so that they control what the program does. In most cases, that is
sufficient for the program's distribution to be ethical; but not
always. There are additional problems that can arise in specific
circumstances. This article describes a subtle problem, where
upgrading the free program requires using a nonfree program.</p>
<p>If the free program's use depends unavoidably on another program which
is nonfree, we say that the free program is “trapped.” Its code is
free software, and you may be able to copy pieces of its code into
other free programs with good, ethical results. But you shouldn't
<em>run</em> the trapped program, because that entails surrendering
your freedom to the other nonfree program.</p>
<p>Someone who upholds the principles of free software would not knowingly
make a program that is trapped. However, many free programs are
developed by people or companies that don't particularly support these
principles, or don't understand the problem.</p>
<p>Dependence on a nonfree program can take various forms. The most
basic form is when the programming language used has no free
implementation. The first programs I wrote for the GNU system in the
1980s, including GNU Emacs, GDB and GNU Make, had to be compiled with
AT&T's nonfree C compiler, because there was no free C compiler until
I wrote GCC. Fortunately, this kind of problem is mostly a thing of
the past; we now have free compilers and platforms for just about all
the languages anyone uses for writing free software.</p>
<p>We can release the program from this kind of trap by translating it to
another language, or by releasing a free implementation of the
language it's written in. Thus, when a full free Java implementation
became available, that released all the free Java programs from the <a
href="/philosophy/java-trap.html">Java Trap</a>.</p>
<p>This kind of dependence is conceptually simple because it stems from
the situation at one given instant in time. At time T, free program P
won't run without nonfree programming platform Q. To borrow a term
from linguistics, this relationship is “synchronic.”</p>
<p>More recently, we have seen another kind of dependence in database
programs, where you can build and run any given version of the program
in the free world, but upgrading from version N to version N+1
requires a nonfree program.</p>
<p>This happens because the internal format of the database changes from
version N to version N+1. If you have been seriously using version N,
you probably have a large existing database in the version N format.
To upgrade to version N+1 of the database software, you need to
reformat that database.</p>
<p>If the way you are supposed to do this is by running a proprietary
database reformat program, or using the developer's service which is
SaaSS (<a
href="/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html">Service as
a Software Substitute</a>),
the database software is trapped—but in a more subtle
way. Any single version of the database program can be used without
nonfree software or SaaSS. The problem arises when you try to keep
using the program for the long term, which entails upgrading it from
time to time; you can't use it this way without some nonfree software
or equivalent. This database program is trapped across time—we
could call it “diachronically trapped,” borrowing another term from
linguistics.</p>
<p>For example, the program OpenERP (since renamed “Odoo”),
though free, is diachronically
trapped. <a href="/software/health/">GNU Health</a>, our free package
for running a medical clinic, initially used OpenERP. In 2011, GNU
Health developer Luis Falcón discovered that upgrading to the next
version of OpenERP required sending the database (full of patients'
medical data) to OpenERP's server for reformatting. This is SaaSS:
it requires the user of GNU Health (a
clinic) to entrust its own computing and its data to the company
developer of OpenERP. Rather than bow down, Falcón rewrote GNU Health
to use <a href="https://www.tryton.org">Tryton</a> instead.</p>
<p>Using SaaSS is inherently equivalent to running a proprietary program
with snooping functionality and a universal back door. The service
could keep a copy of the databases that users reformat. Even if we
can trust the company that runs the service never to intentionally
show any form of the data to anyone, we can't be sure that it won't be
accessed by <a href="/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html">the
intelligence agencies of various countries</a> or security-breaking
crackers (<a
href="https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html">please don't call
them “hackers”</a>).</p>
<p>When a program is diachronically trapped, releasing it from the trap
requires more than a one-time job of programming. Rather, the job has
to be done continually, each time there is a change in the data
format. Launching a project with a long-term commitment to continue
doing this is not easy. It may be easier to pressure the company to
stop trying to trap users—by rejecting the trapped program until it
does so. Given how difficult it is to free the program, you had
better stay away from it.</p>
<p>It is possible to try out a diachronically trapped free program
without nonfree software, but if you're going to do more than dabble,
you must steer clear of really using it. Both businesses and
individuals will find fine free alternatives that don't have such a
problem; all it takes to avoid the trap is to recognize it.</p>
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