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Richard Stallman is the creator of the Open Source movement, and this book is a collection of several of his most important essay regarding the principles and values behind this movement. Open Source is based on software, and believes that software should not have owners. There are four basic tenets of Open Source: the freedom to run a program for any purpose, the freedom to modify a program, the freedom to redistribute a program with or without a fee, and the freedom to distribute modifications you made to a program for the benefit of others. The internet was founded on a similar set of principles – the free interchange of intellectual property, products and ideas, and the ability to use and build on that property for new creative works. Stallman wants to do away with software “piracy” (and other kinds of piracy as well), and get back to more community ownership and “the commons”. He argues that it is not theft to make a copy of something – the person you took from still has the original, and now you both can build on it and modify it as you wish. The ideas behind Creative Commons stem from these beliefs.
Stallman advocates more direct, individual ownership versus corporate or “unseen ownership”. Society needs more information made directly available to citizens, and our insistence that the author is more important than the user is misguided and harmful. Voluntary cooperation is needed to create an online commons, a world of resources and tools both academic and creative, that we can take and grow from. These essays illustrate how the public domain is good for society, and the most important thing to citizens is freedom.
Another brainchild of Stallman’s, the GNU Public License or GPL, is directly responsible for the emergence of Creative Commons licensing online. It was a way to take back the copyright protections and control that had been increasingly handed over to large corporations. It stresses the importance of the public domain and its necessity for all creative individuals.
There has been a recent moral schism between Open Source/GNU and the Creative Commons world. Stallman believes that Creative Commons is starting to veer away from the original ideals of Open Source, and does not have enough legal ground or strict-enough rules to govern it. He believes Creative Commons allows for too much misuse and misinterpretation, and no longer wants his name referenced with it. Stallman disagrees with the options Creative Commons allows for strictly commercial uses, and the restriction on derivative works. These are valid concerns for someone whose name is still attached to Creative Commons history. But giving more control to copyright content owners, and allowing people to license their work as they wish means just that – there needs to be room for everyone’s interests and goals. It is better to have these varied options and create the desired public domain, than to not have it at all.
Stallman advocates more direct, individual ownership versus corporate or “unseen ownership”. Society needs more information made directly available to citizens, and our insistence that the author is more important than the user is misguided and harmful. Voluntary cooperation is needed to create an online commons, a world of resources and tools both academic and creative, that we can take and grow from. These essays illustrate how the public domain is good for society, and the most important thing to citizens is freedom.
Another brainchild of Stallman’s, the GNU Public License or GPL, is directly responsible for the emergence of Creative Commons licensing online. It was a way to take back the copyright protections and control that had been increasingly handed over to large corporations. It stresses the importance of the public domain and its necessity for all creative individuals.
There has been a recent moral schism between Open Source/GNU and the Creative Commons world. Stallman believes that Creative Commons is starting to veer away from the original ideals of Open Source, and does not have enough legal ground or strict-enough rules to govern it. He believes Creative Commons allows for too much misuse and misinterpretation, and no longer wants his name referenced with it. Stallman disagrees with the options Creative Commons allows for strictly commercial uses, and the restriction on derivative works. These are valid concerns for someone whose name is still attached to Creative Commons history. But giving more control to copyright content owners, and allowing people to license their work as they wish means just that – there needs to be room for everyone’s interests and goals. It is better to have these varied options and create the desired public domain, than to not have it at all.