“There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.”

— Linus Torvalds

Microsoft Patches Linux; Linus Responds, 2009-06-22, Torvalds, Linus, 2009-06-26 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7439,
2000s, 2009

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Linus Torvalds 150

Finnish-American software engineer and hacker 1969

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“It's clear that other problems such as religious fundamentalism, overpopulation, damage to the environment, and the domination of business over government, science, thought, and society, are much bigger than non-free software. But many other people are already working on them, and I don't have any great aptitude or ideas for how to address them. So it seems best for me to keep working on the issue of free software. Besides, free software does counter one aspect of business domination of society.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

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“A tablet without software is just an inconveniently fragile and poorly reflective mirror, so the thing I want to be sure of when I buy a device is that I don't have to implicitly trust one corporation's judgment about what software I should and shouldn't be using.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"Why Samsung's Galaxy Tab is 'meh'" in The Guardian (25 July 2011) http://theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/25/why-samsung-galaxy-tab-is-meh

“"I don't want to! Why should I?"
"Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't."
"So what? I don't care about other people."
"You should."
"But why?"
"Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't."”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Dialogue between Russell and his daughter Katharine, as quoted in My Father – Bertrand Russell (1975)
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Over the years, many companies have contributed to free software development. Some of these companies primarily developed non-free software, but the two activities were separate; thus, we could ignore their non-free products, and work with them on free software projects. Then we could honestly thank them afterward for their free software contributions, without talking about the rest of what they did.
We cannot do the same with these new companies, because they won't let us. These companies actively invite the public to lump all their activities together; they want us to regard their non-free software as favorably as we would regard a real contribution, although it is not one. They present themselves as "open source companies," hoping that we will get a warm fuzzy feeling about them, and that we will be fuzzy-minded in applying it.
This manipulative practice would be no less harmful if it were done using the term "free software."”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

But companies do not seem to use the term "free software" that way; perhaps its association with idealism makes it seem unsuitable. The term "open source" opened the door for this.
1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)

“Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On the kde-licensing mailing list, (13 April 1998) https://marc.info/?l=kde-licensing&m=89249041326259&w=2
1990s

“Free software permits students to learn how software works.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2003) http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.html
2000s
Context: Free software permits students to learn how software works. Some students, on reaching their teens, want to learn everything there is to know about their computer and its software. They are intensely curious to read the source code of the programs that they use every day. To learn to write good code, students need to read lots of code and write lots of code. They need to read and understand real programs that people really use. Only free software permits this.
Proprietary software rejects their thirst for knowledge: it says, “The knowledge you want is a secret — learning is forbidden!” Free software encourages everyone to learn. The free software community rejects the “priesthood of technology”, which keeps the general public in ignorance of how technology works; we encourage students of any age and situation to read the source code and learn as much as they want to know. Schools that use free software will enable gifted programming students to advance.

“If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.”

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

JWZ
http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html
Groupware.

“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."”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Of course, it won't win 'em all, but it wins some of the time.
1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)

“We want to replace proprietary software, with its unjust social system with Free Software and its ethical social system. And so we develop free replacements for proprietary software, and other free programs whenever we get an idea, so that the world can live in freedom. The part that uses computers, at least, in that one area of life. Because winning and maintaining freedom in general is a much bigger, much broader and harder activity, but this is one part of it.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

2000s, What is free software? (2006)

“Software has to be designed by hackers who understand design, not designers who know a little about software. If you can't design software as well as implement it, don't start a startup.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"The Other Road Ahead" http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html, September 2001

“There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.”

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