2.4 Authors

This chapter contains a list of those people who are the writers of the philosophical essays and articles found herein. This program would not be what it is today without the invaluable help of these people, to whom we would like to say:

The names are listed in chronological order of contribution. Each person’s contact information, usually email, and a summary of that person’s contribution is put in per correspondent section.

For the list of maintainers of this package through the ages, see Maintainers.

For other external contributions, that does not matter for copyright purposes, e.g., bug reports, patch for markup and good ideas, see Thanks.

If you would appreciate your own name listed here, please contribute! See Contributing.

Richard M. Stallman (rms) rms@gnu.org

He is the author of the vast majority of essays contained in this package. Those are:

• The Free Software Definition
• The GNU Project
• The Initial Announcement of the GNU Operating System
• The GNU Manifesto
• Why Software Should Not Have Owners
• Why Software Should Be Free
• Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software
• Releasing Free Software If You Work at a University
• Why Free Software Needs Free Documentation
• Selling Free Software
• The Free Software Song
• What’s in a Name?
• Categories of Free and Nonfree Software
• Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software
• Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It’s a Seductive Mirage
• Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing
• The Right to Read; A Dystopian Short Story
• Misinterpreting Copyright—A Series of Errors
• Science Must Push Copyright Aside
• Freedom—or Copyright
• What Is Copyleft?
• Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism
• Anatomy of a Trivial Patent
• Software Patents and Literary Patents
• The Danger of Software Patents
• Microsoft’s New Monopoly
• Introduction to the Licenses (coauthored by Brett Smith)
• GNU General Public License
• Why Upgrade to GPLv3
• GNU Lesser General Public License
• GNU Free Documentation License
• Can You Trust Your Computer?
• Who Does That Server Really Serve?
• Free but Shackled: The Java Trap
• The JavaScript Trap
• The X Window System Trap
• The Problem Is Software Controlled by Its Developer
• We Can Put an End to Word Attachments
• Thank You Larry McVoy
• Computing “Progress”: Good and Bad
• Avoiding Ruinous Compromises
• Overcoming Social Inertia
• Freedom or Power? (coauthored by Bradley M. Kuhn)

Brett Smith

• Introduction to the Licenses (coauthored by Richard M. Stallman)

Bradley M. Kuhn

• Freedom or Power? (coauthored by Richard M. Stallman)

Richard E. Buckman

• A Note on Software (coauthored by Joshua Gay)

Joshua Gay

• A Note on Software (coauthored by Richard E. Buckman)