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 <title>Richard Stallman's Speech on Free Software and the West Bengal Government (2006)
 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
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 <h2>Speech on Free Software and the West Bengal Government</h2>
 
 <address class="byline">by Richard Stallman</address>
 
 <div class="infobox">
 <p>Transcript of a speech that was given in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta)
 in August, 2006.</p>
 </div>
 <hr class="thin" />
 
 <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
 program 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 four 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 globalization, people usually mean globalization of the power of
 business. Business should not have political power. Otherwise
 democracy becomes sick. And with globalization 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 government 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 government 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, 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, 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 globalize
 something evil, it becomes a greater evil. And when you globalize
 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 globalization 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 government 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. Government 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. 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;One Laptop per Child&rdquo; program. India
 recently pulled out of this program, I'm told. I'm told the Indian
 governmentt 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 One Laptop per child program. I can
 put them in touch with the people developing that machine.</p>
 
 <p>The Government 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>
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 <p>Copyright &copy; 2006, 2021 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>
 
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 <p class="unprintable">Updated:
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 $Date: 2021/09/14 16:25:47 $
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