brian@sdcc3.UUCP (Brian Kantor) (03/22/85)
[Reprinted from Dr. Dobbs Journal March 1985. Permission statement below.]
(I'm posting this because I agree with a lot of the things mentioned in it,
and because I think it should get a wide distribution among those whose
daily life it concerns. Richard Stallman's credentials are impressive,
including among other things the development of the EMACS editor and a
great deal of pioneering work with Lisp and Lisp machines.)
The GNU Manifesto
by
Richard Stallman
GNU, which stands for GNU's Not Unix, is the name for the
complete Unix-compatible software system that I am writing
so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.
Many other programmers are helping me. Contributions of
time, money, programs, and equipment are greatly needed.
So far we have a portable C and Pascal compiler which
compiles for Vax and 68000, an Emacs-like text editor with
Lisp for writing editor commands, a yacc-compatible parser
generator, a linker, and around 35 utilities. A shell (com-
mand interpreter) is nearly completed. When the kernel and
a debugger are written, by the end of 1985 I hope, it will
be possible to distribute a GNU system suitable for program
development. After this we will add a text formatter, an
Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things,
plus on-line 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 with 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, and 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 less powerful machines will be left to someone who wants
to use it on them.
Why I Must Write GNU
If I like a program, I must share it with other people who
like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and con-
quer them, making each user agree not to share with others.
I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure or software
license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial
Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies. My efforts were
wasted. I cannot remain in an institution where such things
are done for me against my will.
So that I can continue to use computer without violat-
ing my principles I have decided to put together a body of
free software sufficient to enable me to get along without
any software that is not free. I have resigned from the AI
lab to deny MIT any legal excuse for preventing me from giv-
ing 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. Furth-
ermore 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 that they feel like
competitors with other programmers rather than like com-
rades. The fundamental act of programmers is the sharing of
programs; marketing arrangements now in use essentially
forbid programmers to treat others as friends. The pur-
chaser of software must choose between friendship and obey-
ing 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 computer manufacturer has already offered to pro-
vide a machine. We can use more. One consequence you can
expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them
at an early date. The machine should be able to operate in
a residential area, and not require sophisticated cooling or
power.
I have found very many programmers eager to contribute
part-time work to GNU. For most projects, such part-time
distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the
parts, written independently, 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 if Murphy creates a few
unexpected problems, assembling these components will be a
feasible task. (The kernel will require closer communica-
tion 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
programmer's 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
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 that
owns the sources and is in a sole position to make changes.
Schools will be able to provide a superior 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 sys-
tem 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
impose a tremendous cost on society through the cumbersome
mechanisms necessary to figure out how much (that is, which
programs) a person must pay for. Furthermore, only a police
state can force everyone to obey. Consider the analogy of a
space station where air must be manufactured at great cost:
charging each breather per liter of air might be fair, but
wearing the metered oxygen mask all day and all night would
be intolerable even if everyone could afford to pay the
bill. And the TV cameras everywhere to see if you ever took
it off would be outrageous. It would be 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 pro-
gram 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 and mere handholding. The former is something
that 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 to have all the necessary sources
and tools. Then you can hire any available person to fix
your problem and you will not be at the mercy of any indivi-
dual. With Unix, the price of sources puts this out of con-
sideration for most businesses. With GNU this will be easy.
It is still possible that there will be no available com-
petent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on distri-
bution arrangements. GNU does not eliminate all the world's
problems, only some of them.
Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers
need handholding, i.e., they need for others to do for them
the things which they could easily do themselves, but don't
know how to. Such services could be provided by companies
that sell just handholding and repair service. If it is
true that users would rather spend money and get a product
with services, 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 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 some-
thing 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 mail-
ing 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 com-
panies 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 systems
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 benefiting mutually in this one. If your
business is selling an operating system, you will not like
GNU, but that's tough on you. GNU can save you from being
pushed into the expensive business of selling operating sys-
tems. 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 insofar as society is free to use the results. If pro-
grammers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative pro-
grams, 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 customarily used in the area of software development
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 that and the ways
in which 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 because, if everyone did so, we would all
become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kan-
tian 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 person 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 mak-
ing faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend
our lives standing on the street and starving. We do some-
thing 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 because it will still be pos-
sible for them to get paid for programming; just not as much
as now.
Restricting copying is not the only means for making a
profit in software development. It is the most common means
because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited,
or rejected by the customer, software business would move to
other methods of profitmaking that are now used less often.
Probably programming would not be as lucrative 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 carefully studied the issue of intellectual pro-
perty rights (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrin-
sic 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 inven-
tions. 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 lengthy extracts from other
authors 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 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
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 or not.
``Won't everyone stop programming without a monetary
incentive?'' Actually, many people will program with abso-
lutely no monetary incentive. Programming has an irresisti-
ble fascination for some people, usually the people who are
best at it. There is no shortage of professional musicians
who keep at it even thought 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 pro-
grammers 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 pro-
grammers 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 gone.
``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 one cent
for tribute.
``Programmers need to make a living somehow.'' There
are plenty of ways by which programmers can make a living
without selling the right to use a program. 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, handholding, and maintenance
services could also employ programmers.
+ People with new ideas could distribute programs as
freeware, asking for donations from satisfied users. I
am told that several people are already working this
way successfully.
+ Users with related needs can form user's groups, and
pay dues. A group would contract with programming com-
panies to write programs that the group's members would
like to use.
All sorts of development can be funded with a software tax:
+ Suppose that everyone who buys a computer has to pay
x percent of the price as a software tax. The govern-
ment 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 vote of the
payers of the tax, weighted according to how much tax
they paid in the previous year.
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.
In the long run, making programs free is a step toward
the post-scarcity world, where nobody will have to work very
hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote
themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming,
after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required
tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair,
and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able
to make a living from programming.
We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that
the whole society must do for its actual productivity, but
only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for
workers because so much nonproductive activity is required
to accompany productive activity. The main causes of this
are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition.
Free software will greatly reduce these drains in the area
of software production. We must do this in order for techn-
ical gains in productivity to translate into less work for
us.
-------------
Richard Stallman, 166 Prospect Street, Cambridge MA
02139. Copyright (c) 1985 Richard Stallman. Permission is
granted to make and distribute copies of this article as
long as the copyright and this notice appear, and the copies
are distributed at no charge.dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) (03/26/85)
Richard Stallman is much to be commended for having enough courage of
conviction to devote such an amount of time and hard work to a very
commendable cause.
I do, however, wish that he would not be quite so religiously adamant
about those who disagree with him. "Intellectual property" is as real
as any other. Why should I expect less of an ownership right to the
fruits of my labor simply because the output is not tangible? Richard
suffers from the common trait of economic naivete. Software is not air.
Why should I be taxed to support the writing of COBOL programs?
Forgive the disjointed nature of the last paragraph - I'm trying to be
brief and I'm afraid I may be making myself obscure. Let me
reemphasize, though, that while I disagree with some of his views, I
applaud his efforts. I'm working on some quasi-public domain stuff
myself (though nowhere near as ambitious) and I think I'm closer to his
ideas than the above might suggest.
How's that for a wishy-washy posting?
--
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC 27706
(919) 684-3695
USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgarydimare@ucla-cs.UUCP (03/27/85)
Mr Brad Templeton recently posted a message on which he said: "I'm glad that I don't think RMS will succeed. If he gets his way, unix will be the last operating system, as nobody will upgrade it for a long, long time." He goes further, and claims that the news software is not being improved because it's free. I don't agree. I think there are plenty of people in the world, and in this country, that would be glad to work on GNU, for free. But more than this, I don't like this desire of failure against GNU. Why not let people build things? I'm sick of seeing those that destroy, which is far easier. Let the people decide whether GNU is worthwhile! I which success to GNU, and I hope we all can contribute to it. Adolfo ///
henry@rochester.UUCP (03/29/85)
From: Henry.Kautz
This would be really funny, if it wasn't so pitiful that an obviously
talented guy was wasting his life, rewriting Unix. Of course
programming is a "job", or a craft, if you prefer, and of course people
should be (must be) paid for their work. Plenty of things in life are
free or of nominal cost, including being with friends, enjoying nature,
listening to or making music, going to museums, reading books...
Programs aren't free or cheap, but neither are automobiles, or for that
matter, machine tools or cyclotrons. And the business about people
having no rights to their creations is twisted reasoning that would do
Big Brother proud...
---- Henry Kautz
:uucp: {seismo|allegra}!rochester!henry
:arpa: henry@rochester
:mail: Dept. of Comp. Sci., U. of Rochester, NY 14627
:phone: (716) 275-5766bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass) (03/31/85)
Mr Henry Kautz has said it about as well as any could ... I agree. Rewriting unix is a waste of good talent there are too many really nneded things to do in this world. GNU is likely to get finished just in time to realize that it is not a needed tool anymore. I have worked with UNIX since V5/V6 and have watched it grow. EVEN in the begining the UNIX OS was JUST ANOTHER OPERATING SYSTEM from the Multics, TENEX, XDS940 (Berkeley Timesharing System) mold. UNIX as an OS has maybe another few years of life before the hardware outstrips the need for it in its current mold (if not already true). The rapid shift to Macintosh/GEM type user interfaces in the next few years combined with distributed multiprocessor system designs will make new UNIX kernels from AT&T and other vendors change radically in design. What UNIX REALLY IS (and its true value is) is a rich tools environment. UNIX as JUST an operating system would most likely have DIED years ago in some dark corner of Bell Labs --- the fact that the OS and Tools make such a rich development environment and applications host was it's real success. The TOOLS are unix -- NOT THE OS. UNIX is C, Lex, Yacc, UUCP, SCCS, grep, Make, awk, plot, and so on --- /unix is a MINOR part of UNIX. Rewriting the UNIX OS is a fun project to start -- many of us have started (and few finished) the task -- a great learning exersize but not the way to leave your mark for the world -- many others have been along the same path. Mr Stallman dreams of some idealistic world where HE can get paid to write softare to be given away for free -- but it is wrong for the rest of us to work writing software as self employed independents and sell it to make a living. I wonder how many of the kids shouting his liberal politics and economics really understand that if all software were REALLY FREE then the high paying systems programmer jobs they dream of would never exist. Going to school and working for free is fine has long as daddy has deep pockets to pay the bills -- but for most of us many greedy little hands want money for food, housing, transportations, and entertainment and daddy doesn't pay the bills forever -- working for a paycheck to pay bills is a reality that even Mr Stallman can't escape forever unless his daddy has VERY deep pockets. The danger to society is that the KIDS tring to follow these idealisms may waste half their productive youth on a fantsy bigger than just GNU -- and fall prey to the socialist falacy. John Bass
phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (03/31/85)
> Plenty of things in life are > free or of nominal cost, including being with friends, enjoying nature, > listening to or making music, going to museums, reading books... > Programs aren't free or cheap, but neither are automobiles, or for that > matter, machine tools or cyclotrons. That is the essence of rms's argument, that software is more like music or books than automobiles. Assuming proper compensation to the authors to avoid discouragement of creation, society will always be better served by spreading software as widely as possible. I can give you a copy of my software which is every bit as good as my version without losing anything, I can't give you my automobile and still have one. Is this dead horse well beaten yet? -- Preverted word of the day: tribadism, to rub Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720 UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.ARPA
mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (04/02/85)
In article <184@dmsd.UUCP> bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass) writes: >GNU is likely to get finished just in time to realize that it is not a needed >tool anymore. I have worked with UNIX since V5/V6 and have watched it grow. >EVEN in the begining the UNIX OS was JUST ANOTHER OPERATING SYSTEM from the >Multics, TENEX, XDS940 (Berkeley Timesharing System) mold. UNIX as an OS has >maybe another few years of life before the hardware outstrips the need for it >in its current mold (if not already true). The rapid shift to Macintosh/GEM >type user interfaces in the next few years combined with distributed >multiprocessor system designs will make new UNIX kernels from AT&T and other >vendors change radically in design. I don't think so. History has demonstrated just the opposite, if anything. Look at all the systems out there running NOS, EXEC8, VM/TSO, etcetera. My guess is that, as long as there are VAXes, there will be UNIX. I won't argue one way or the other as to whether re-writing a whole operating system is a good idea, but improvements upon the existing tools are just as necessary for the so-called obsolete systems. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe
bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass) (04/04/85)
Mr Charley Wingate choose the rebut my argument that GNU would likely get finished just in time to be obsolete -- I cited that rapid changes in technology would cause a rewrite of the "typical" unix kernel in the next few years. Charley's argument was a non-arguement -- of the type "I don't think so" and "as long x hardware is around, y software will be too". I really doesn't matter that old beasts are still running old OS's thats the way of life. As for vaxes running unix for a long time -- big deal. Where is the arguement for gnu running a long time? Blind faith has no place in counter arguements. For gnu to become succesful it will have to be interesting for high-tech hobbests to run. For a number of applications I am not yet ready to trade my mac for any old unix box. For a number of other applications I AM ready to change my current unix boxes for systems I see in the market over the next 2 years. If by some chance his argument was that GNU will replace unix on older systems -- he missed the point of his own non-arguement. John Bass