-File: xemacs.info, Node: Manifesto, Next: Key Index, Prev: Glossary, Up: Top
-
-The GNU Manifesto
-*****************
-
-What's GNU? GNU's Not Unix!
-============================
-
- GNU, which stands for GNU's Not Unix, is the name for the complete
-Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it
-away free to everyone who can use it. Several other volunteers are
-helping me. Contributions of time, money, programs, and equipment are
-greatly needed.
-
- So far we have an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor
-commands, a source level debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator,
-a linker, and around 35 utilities. A shell (command interpreter) is
-nearly completed. A new portable optimizing C compiler has compiled
-itself and may be released this year. An initial kernel exists, but
-many more features are needed to emulate Unix. When the kernel and
-compiler are finished, it will be possible to distribute a GNU system
-suitable for program development. We will use TeX as our text
-formatter, but an nroff is being worked on. We will use the free,
-portable X window system as well. After this we will add a portable
-Common Lisp, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other
-things, plus online documentation. We hope to supply, eventually,
-everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and more.
-
- GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to
-Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our
-experience with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to
-have longer filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof file system,
-filename completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and
-perhaps eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several
-Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. Both C
-and Lisp will be available as system programming languages. We will
-try to support UUCP, MIT Chaosnet, and Internet protocols for
-communication.
-
- GNU is aimed initially at machines in the 68000/16000 class with
-virtual memory, because they are the easiest machines to make it run
-on. The extra effort to make it run on smaller machines will be left
-to someone who wants to use it on them.
-
- To avoid horrible confusion, please pronounce the `G' in the word
-`GNU' when it is the name of this project.
-
-Why I Must Write GNU
-====================
-
- I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
-must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to
-divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share
-with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this
-way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a
-software license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial
-Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities,
-but eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an
-institution where such things are done for me against my will.
-
- So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have
-decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I
-will be able to get along without any software that is not free. I
-have resigned from the AI lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent
-me from giving GNU away.
-
-Why GNU Will Be Compatible With Unix
-====================================
-
- Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The essential
-features of Unix seem to be good ones, and I think I can fill in what
-Unix lacks without spoiling them. And a system compatible with Unix
-would be convenient for many other people to adopt.
-
-How GNU Will Be Available
-=========================
-
- GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to
-modify and redistribute GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to
-restrict its further redistribution. That is to say, proprietary
-modifications will not be allowed. I want to make sure that all
-versions of GNU remain free.
-
-Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help
-=======================================
-
- I have found many other programmers who are excited about GNU and
-want to help.
-
- Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system
-software. It may enable them to make more money, but it requires them
-to feel in conflict with other programmers in general rather than feel
-as comrades. The fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the
-sharing of programs; marketing arrangements now typically used
-essentially forbid programmers to treat others as friends. The
-purchaser of software must choose between friendship and obeying the
-law. Naturally, many decide that friendship is more important. But
-those who believe in law often do not feel at ease with either choice.
-They become cynical and think that programming is just a way of making
-money.
-
- By working on and using GNU rather than proprietary programs, we can
-be hospitable to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU serves as
-an example to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in
-sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which is impossible if
-we use software that is not free. For about half the programmers I
-talk to, this is an important happiness that money cannot replace.
-
-How You Can Contribute
-======================
-
- I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and
-money. I'm asking individuals for donations of programs and work.
-
- One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU
-will run on them at an early date. The machines should be complete,
-ready-to-use systems, approved for use in a residential area, and not
-in need of sophisticated cooling or power.
-
- I have found very many programmers eager to contribute part-time
-work for GNU. For most projects, such part-time distributed work would
-be very hard to coordinate; the independently-written parts would not
-work together. But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this
-problem is absent. A complete Unix system contains hundreds of utility
-programs, each of which is documented separately. Most interface
-specifications are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each contributor
-can write a compatible replacement for a single Unix utility, and make
-it work properly in place of the original on a Unix system, then these
-utilities will work right when put together. Even allowing for Murphy
-to create a few unexpected problems, assembling these components will
-be a feasible task. (The kernel will require closer communication and
-will be worked on by a small, tight group.)
-
- If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full
-or part time. The salary won't be high by programmers' standards, but
-I'm looking for people for whom building community spirit is as
-important as making money. I view this as a way of enabling dedicated
-people to devote their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them
-the need to make a living in another way.
-
-Why All Computer Users Will Benefit
-===================================
-
- Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system
-software free, just like air.
-
- This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a Unix
-license. It means that much wasteful duplication of system programming
-effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the
-state of the art.
-
- Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result,
-a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them
-himself, or hire any available programmer or company to make them for
-him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company
-which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes.
-
- Schools will be able to provide a much more educational environment
-by encouraging all students to study and improve the system code.
-Harvard's computer lab used to have the policy that no program could be
-installed on the system if its sources were not on public display, and
-upheld it by actually refusing to install certain programs. I was very
-much inspired by this.
-
- Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system software
-and what one is or is not entitled to do with it will be lifted.
-
- Arrangements to make people pay for using a program, including
-licensing of copies, always incur a tremendous cost to society through
-the cumbersome mechanisms necessary to figure out how much (that is,
-which programs) a person must pay for. And only a police state can
-force everyone to obey them. Consider a space station where air must
-be manufactured at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air
-may be fair, but wearing the metered gas mask all day and all night is
-intolerable even if everyone can afford to pay the air bill. And the
-TV cameras everywhere to see if you ever take the mask off are
-outrageous. It's better to support the air plant with a head tax and
-chuck the masks.
-
- Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as
-breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.
-
-Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU's Goals
-==============================================
-
- "Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means they can't
- rely on any support."
-
- "You have to charge for the program to pay for providing the
- support."
-
- If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free
-without service, a company to provide just service to people who have
-obtained GNU free ought to be profitable.
-
- We must distinguish between support in the form of real programming
-work and mere handholding. The former is something one cannot rely on
-from a software vendor. If your problem is not shared by enough
-people, the vendor will tell you to get lost.
-
- If your business needs to be able to rely on support, the only way
-is to have all the necessary sources and tools. Then you can hire any
-available person to fix your problem; you are not at the mercy of any
-individual. With Unix, the price of sources puts this out of
-consideration for most businesses. With GNU this will be easy. It is
-still possible for there to be no available competent person, but this
-problem cannot be blamed on distibution arrangements. GNU does not
-eliminate all the world's problems, only some of them.
-
- Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers need
-handholding: doing things for them which they could easily do
-themselves but don't know how.
-
- Such services could be provided by companies that sell just
-hand-holding and repair service. If it is true that users would rather
-spend money and get a product with service, they will also be willing
-to buy the service having got the product free. The service companies
-will compete in quality and price; users will not be tied to any
-particular one. Meanwhile, those of us who don't need the service
-should be able to use the program without paying for the service.
-
- "You cannot reach many people without advertising, and you must
- charge for the program to support that."
-
- "It's no use advertising a program people can get free."
-
- There are various forms of free or very cheap publicity that can be
-used to inform numbers of computer users about something like GNU. But
-it may be true that one can reach more microcomputer users with
-advertising. If this is really so, a business which advertises the
-service of copying and mailing GNU for a fee ought to be successful
-enough to pay for its advertising and more. This way, only the users
-who benefit from the advertising pay for it.
-
- On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and
-such companies don't succeed, this will show that advertising was not
-really necessary to spread GNU. Why is it that free market advocates
-don't want to let the free market decide this?
-
- "My company needs a proprietary operating system to get a
- competitive edge."
-
- GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of
-competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but
-neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over you. You and
-they will compete in other areas, while benefitting mutually in this
-one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will not
-like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your business is something else,
-GNU can save you from being pushed into the expensive business of
-selling operating systems.
-
- I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many
-manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.
-
- "Don't programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?"
-
- If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution.
-Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society
-is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for
-creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be
-punished if they restrict the use of these programs.
-
- "Shouldn't a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his
- creativity?"
-
- There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to
-maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that are
-destructive. But the means customary in the field of software today
-are based on destruction.
-
- Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of
-it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the
-ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth
-that humanity derives from the program. When there is a deliberate
-choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
-
- The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to
-become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become
-poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or,
-the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if
-everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one
-to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity
-does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that
-creativity.
-
- "Won't programmers starve?"
-
- I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us
-cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making
-faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives
-standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something
-else.
-
- But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's
-implicit assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers
-cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.
-
- The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be
-possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as
-now.
-
- Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software.
-It is the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If it
-were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would
-move to other bases of organization which are now used less often.
-There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
-
- Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it
-is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not
-considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they
-now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice
-either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than
-that.)
-
- "Don't people have a right to control how their creativity is
- used?"
-
- "Control over the use of one's ideas" really constitutes control over
-other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more
-difficult.
-
- People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights
-carefully (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to
-intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property
-rights that the government recognizes were created by specific acts of
-legislation for specific purposes.
-
- For example, the patent system was established to encourage
-inventors to disclose the details of their inventions. Its purpose was
-to help society rather than to help inventors. At the time, the life
-span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate of
-advance of the state of the art. Since patents are an issue only among
-manufacturers, for whom the cost and effort of a license agreement are
-small compared with setting up production, the patents often do not do
-much harm. They do not obstruct most individuals who use patented
-products.
-
- The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors
-frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This
-practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have
-survived even in part. The copyright system was created expressly for
-the purpose of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was
-invented--books, which could be copied economically only on a printing
-press--it did little harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals
-who read the books.
-
- All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society
-because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole
-would benefit by granting them. But in any particular situation, we
-have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What kind
-of act are we licensing a person to do?
-
- The case of programs today is very different from that of books a
-hundred years ago. The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is
-from one neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source
-code and object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is
-used rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in
-which a person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole
-both materially and spiritually; in which a person should not do so
-regardless of whether the law enables him to.
-
- "Competition makes things get done better."
-
- The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we
-encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this
-way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it
-always works this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered
-and become intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other
-strategies--such as, attacking other runners. If the runners get into
-a fist fight, they will all finish late.
-
- Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners
-in a fist fight. Sad to say, the only referee we've got does not seem
-to object to fights; he just regulates them ("For every ten yards you
-run, you can fire one shot"). He really ought to break them up, and
-penalize runners for even trying to fight.
-
- "Won't everyone stop programming without a monetary incentive?"
-
- Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary
-incentive. Programming has an irresistible fascination for some
-people, usually the people who are best at it. There is no shortage of
-professional musicians who keep at it even though they have no hope of
-making a living that way.
-
- But really this question, though commonly asked, is not appropriate
-to the situation. Pay for programmers will not disappear, only become
-less. So the right question is, will anyone program with a reduced
-monetary incentive? My experience shows that they will.
-
- For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked
-at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could
-have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards:
-fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a
-reward in itself.
-
- Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same
-interesting work for a lot of money.
-
- What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other
-than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they
-will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly
-in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly
-if the high-paying ones are banned.
-
- "We need the programmers desperately. If they demand that we stop
- helping our neighbors, we have to obey."
-
- You're never so desperate that you have to obey this sort of demand.
-Remember: millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute!
-
- "Programmers need to make a living somehow."
-
- In the short run, this is true. However, there are plenty of ways
-that programmers could make a living without selling the right to use a
-program. This way is customary now because it brings programmers and
-businessmen the most money, not because it is the only way to make a
-living. It is easy to find other ways if you want to find them. Here
-are a number of examples.
-
- A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of
-operating systems onto the new hardware.
-
- The sale of teaching, hand-holding, and maintenance services could
-also employ programmers.
-
- People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware and ask
-for donations from satisfied users or sell hand-holding services. I
-have met people who are already working this way successfully.
-
- Users with related needs can form users' groups and pay dues. A
-group would contract with programming companies to write programs that
-the group's members would like to use.
-
- All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax:
-
- Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay a certain percent
- of the price as a software tax. The government gives this to an
- agency like the NSF to spend on software development.
-
- But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development
- himself, he can take a credit against the tax. He can donate to
- the project of his own choosing--often, chosen because he hopes to
- use the results when
-
- it is done. He can take a credit for any amount of donation up to
- the total tax he had to pay.
-
- The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of the
- tax, weighted according to the amount they will be taxed on.
-
- The consequences:
-
- * The computer-using community supports software development.
-
- * This community decides what level of support is needed.
-
- * Users who care which projects their share is spent on can
- choose this for themselves.
projects / chise / xemacs-chise.git / blobdiff