GNU founder Stallman: ‘Open source is not free software’
Quote: For software to be truly free, “users have to have control to run the program as they wish and to study the program’s source code and change it,” Stallman said. “This is based on two essential freedoms: to make exact copies and to copy and distribute your modified versions as you wish.”<p>The distribution part describes the BSD Licence, not the GPL. With the GPL, you are not free to &quot;distribute your modified version as you wish.&quot; With the GPL, if you distribute a modified version to others, you must provide the modifications. That&#x27;s not freedom to choose.<p>Stallman&#x27;s idea of freedom in terms of the GPL is that, if you don&#x27;t like the many pages of terms, then you are free to choose to not use the software, which is a freedom you already have.<p>If you have to have as many pages of stipulations as the GPL has, I can&#x27;t see it as freedom. The BSD license is, in my opinion, a free license, as you release it, and the consumer of it is truly free to do what they want with it.