Wait a minute now. Are those really a user's basic rights? Who is Stallmam to decide for both users and developers what our rights are? If users get those rights then developers have theirs taken from them.
This is unique to software and it isn't right. There's an underlying sense of entitlement to this that I don't agree with. No one is entitled to the right to modify my work and redistribute it. That completely undermines the developer and there's no incentive for people to innovate. It's a free for all where everyone rips everyone else off. This only works if everyone holds firm to Stallmam's beliefs.
If we want to talk about rights and freedom, how about the right for everyone to choose. As it stands now we all can choose to make or use software that allows us to modify, extend, or distribute or we can choose to go proprietary. Both have their merits for both users and developers. These aren't really rights at all. Anything that takes freedom from one group and shifts it to another isn't freedom at all.
Stallman's entire ideology is built around a false choice. This shouldn't be free or proprietary, it should be free and proprietary.
Stallman's ideology is actually fundamentally libertarian. The core principle of libertarianism is, "Your rights end where mine begin." It doesn't matter if you're a state, a corporation or another individual. Your rights end where mine begin.
Amongst the rights granted to each individual is the right to modify the tools that they use. You restricting my freedom to modify is as wrong (according to Stallman) as you restricting my freedom to move about.
I think "libertarian" is close but not quite right (unless you are coming from Chomsky's viewpoint, which is a niche within a niche, at least as far as US libertarian thinking is concerned).
If you take libertarianism to mean "allow anything that is consensual and does not involve externalities", then proprietary software as implemented today is totally fine. The user consents to an agreement that amounts to "I'll give you the output of my compiler, but I'm not going to give you the input. Also, you have to promise not to redistribute it."
Of course, setting up the details of that arrangement for every creative work would be a huge hassle, and copyright is an attempt (in my opinion a failed one) to streamline it. One way to envision copyright in a libertarian framework is a legal presupposition that when I tell you a "creative secret" (copyrighted work), you'll keep it secret (won't redistribute) unless I give you explicit permission (a license).
*Edit: to elaborate on why I think copyright is a failed streamlining of the above framework, I'll just give one example. If I broadcast my "creative secret" out loud (or over the EM spectrum) then I can't reasonably expect it to be secret. The people who listen to it and hear my "secret" have never formed a consensual agreement with me. Thus, copyright as it stands gets twisted into "you can't participate in public communications without promising to pretend that various things you hear are owned secrets"
A human's birthright is to learn from and improve their tools. Making software proprietary demotes a tool to an appliance we can only interact with in prescribed ways as mere consumers, a role which is beneath us. It severely limits the benefits society derives from your work, and I believe it also harms the customers through learned helplessness. Our incentive should be getting paid for writing the code as a work for hire, not coding on spec and then rent-seeking against people for finding it useful.
Before software, this was much less feasible and generally nobody bothered (e.g., this is why they still sell cars without the hood welded shut, and why simpler computers used to come with schematics).
_Wait a minute now. Are those really a user's basic rights? Who is Stallmam to decide for both users and developers what our rights are? If users get those rights then developers have theirs taken from them._
He didn't decide anything, he simply presents his view on such matters and backs it up with solid logic.
Anyone is free to disagree with him and to make oneself heard.
This is unique to software and it isn't right. There's an underlying sense of entitlement to this that I don't agree with. No one is entitled to the right to modify my work and redistribute it. That completely undermines the developer and there's no incentive for people to innovate. It's a free for all where everyone rips everyone else off. This only works if everyone holds firm to Stallmam's beliefs.
If we want to talk about rights and freedom, how about the right for everyone to choose. As it stands now we all can choose to make or use software that allows us to modify, extend, or distribute or we can choose to go proprietary. Both have their merits for both users and developers. These aren't really rights at all. Anything that takes freedom from one group and shifts it to another isn't freedom at all.
Stallman's entire ideology is built around a false choice. This shouldn't be free or proprietary, it should be free and proprietary.