Free Software, Free Society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman. 2nd edition.

Here the GNU GPL comes to the rescue. The programmer shows the boss that this proprietary software product would be copyright infringement, and the boss realizes that he has only two choices: release the new code as free software, or not at all. Almost always he lets the programmer do as he intended all along, and the code goes into the next release.

The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy. It says no to some of the things that people sometimes want to do. There are users who say that this is a bad thing— that the GPL “excludes” some proprietary software developers who “need to be brought into the free software community.”

But we are not excluding them from our community; they are choosing not to enter. Their decision to make software proprietary is a decision to stay out of our community. Being in our community means joining in cooperation with us; we cannot “bring them into our community” if they don’t want to join.

What we can do is offer them an inducement to join. The GNU GPL is designed to make an inducement from our existing software: “If you will make your software free, you can use this code.” Of course, it won’t win ’em all, but it wins some of the time.

Proprietary software development does not contribute to our community, but its developers often want handouts from us. Free software users can offer free software developers strokes for the ego—recognition and gratitude—but it can be very tempting when a business tells you, “Just let us put your package in our proprietary program, and your program will be used by many thousands of people!” The temptation can be powerful, but in the long run we are all better off if we resist it.

The temptation and pressure are harder to recognize when they come indirectly, through free software organizations that have adopted a policy of catering to proprietary software. The X Consortium (and its successor, the Open Group) offers an example: funded by companies that made proprietary software, they strived for a decade to persuade programmers not to use copyleft. When the Open Group tried to make X11R6.4 nonfree software, those of us who had resisted that pressure were glad that we did.

In September 1998, several months after X11R6.4 was released with nonfree distribution terms, the Open Group reversed its decision and rereleased it under the same noncopyleft free software license that was used for X11R6.3. Thank you, Open Group—but this subsequent reversal does not invalidate the conclusions we draw from the fact that adding the restrictions was possible.

Pragmatically speaking, thinking about greater long-term goals will strengthen your will to resist this pressure. If you focus your mind on the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will find the strength to do it. “Stand for something, or you will fall for anything.”

And if cynics ridicule freedom, ridicule community… if “hard-nosed realists” say that profit is the only ideal… just ignore them, and use copyleft all the same.

Copyright c 1998, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This version of this essay is part of Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, 2nd ed. (Boston: GNU Press, 2010).

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire chapter are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Part IV. Software Patents: Danger to Programmers

Chapter 23. Anatomy of a Trivial Patent

Programmers are well aware that many of the existing software patents cover laughably obvious ideas. Yet the patent system’s defenders often argue that these ideas are nontrivial, obvious only in hindsight. And it is surprisingly difficult to defeat them in debate. Why is that?

One reason is that any idea can be made to look complex when analyzed to death. Another reason is that these trivial ideas often look quite complex as described in the patents themselves. The patent system’s defenders can point to the complex description and say, “How can anything this complex be obvious?”

I will use an example to show you how. Here’s claim number one from US patent number 5,963,916, applied for in October 1996: