Richard Stallman — "Copyleft is a legal tool to ensure that every user of a program has freedom."
Copyleft is a legal tool to ensure that every user of a program has freedom.
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More from Richard Stallman
"The internet is a surveillance machine if you don't use free software."
"If you give up your freedom for convenience, you will have neither."
"Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can."
"Don't use services that spy on you."
"I'm not an anarchist. I believe in law, but law that serves freedom."
About Richard Stallman (born 1953)
American programmer who founded the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, whose copyleft GPL licensing made the modern Linux ecosystem possible. Closely associated with Linus Torvalds (Linux kernel creator who builds on GNU userland) and Eric S. Raymond (open-source advocate (The Cathedral and the Bazaar)). For an intellectual contrast, see Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder — Gates's 1976 Open Letter to Hobbyists arguing for software-as-property is the foundational document Stallman's GPL was specifically written to refute — the two opposing answers to 'who owns the code'.