The Free Software Foundation recently published a new short essay entitled Freedom or Power?, by Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman. It's not a terrifically inspiring or insightful piece, but I've deemed it worthy of a brief response.

The central thesis of the paper is the distinction between "freedom" and "power", or at least the distinction between those two terms as defined by the authors. The FSF has its own definition of "freedom", particularly, and many others disagree with that definition. In part, this paper seems to aim to clarify that disagreement by describing the distinction between "freedom" and "power" as the FSF sees it.

What it won't do, of course, is solve the problems of misunderstanding that arise when one plays Humpty Dumpty with one's words. Even so, let us for the moment allow the FSF to have "freedom" and "power" mean just what they choose them to mean — neither more nor less — and criticise only on the consistency of their argument and its consequences.

For a start, I will agree in principle with their claim that "freedom" and "power", as they define them, are in conflict. In an early revision (rev 2) of my essay Philosophies of Free Software and Intellectual Property, I quippped, "your rights, you see, are someone else's restrictions." In later revisions of the document, I dropped this sound-bite in favour of a more detailed discussion of the various rights and restrictions in question, but there is a real trade-off here regarding which party is empowered and in what way.

The authors construct a straw man, however, when they say, "a choice of masters is not freedom." The statement, in and of itself, could be considered true, but is it actually what we face? I think the answer is clearly, "no". Given that free software exists, the choice is not a choice of masters, but whether to have a master.

Nowhere in the essay do they even mention the possibility that people might include the terms of the license in their decision to use a particular piece of software. It's entirely true that proprietary software has a long list of disadvantages associated with it, some of which they mention in the essay, but they ignore (and implicitly disagree with) the view that these disadvantages should be allowed to stand on their own demerits.

The big problem here is that the FSF is ignoring "freedom of choice" at the level of the end-user. They want the end-user to be protected from choosing a license which udermines his or her own freedom. The stated purpose of the GNU GPL (as summarised in this essay) is, "it puts you [as an end-user] in control of your usage of the software, while protecting you from others who would like to take control of your decisions." The FSF is so sure that it knows what's best for end users that the terms of its license mandate it — whether the users want it or not.

But don't be misled into thinking that the FSF advocates the abolition of copyright — not even on computer software specifically. "Current copyright law," they say, "places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not." If you don't like it, then waive your rights and put your code in the public domain. But, of course, that's not what the FSF advocates. They advocate the GNU GPL as a license instead, and that license derives its power from copyright law itself.

The reason they advocate the GNU GPL rather than donating to the public domain is fairly self-evident. The FSF is "activist" in the sense that it's trying to achieve a particular end — roughly the proliferation of free software relative to proprietary software — and the GPL is just another tool they use to that end. It's quite possibly the single most powerful weapon they have at their disposal.

But if power is defined as, "being able to make decisions that affect others more than you," then isn't power exactly what they're wielding here? Isn't that the whole point of the GPL — its potential coercive power over other software developers? Placing something under the GPL is every bit as much an exercise of power as placing it under a proprietary license. The terms and conditions are different, the party targeted by the restrictions is different, and very likely the motives for the license are different, but the power used is the same: copyright.

When the FSF say they do not advocate the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write", it's not because this is a "power" rather than a "freedom". Their real reason for opposing it is because it's a power that could be used against their stated goals. They are quite supportive of all use of power that works for them, even copyright itself until such time as they have a better weapon. And although they won't support your freedom (or power) to choose any license, they will, no doubt, be very supportive of your freedom (or power) to choose the GNU GPL specifically.

The idea that they are unsupportive of "power" if and only if it works against their other aims sounds a lot less noble than a simple "pro-freedom, anti-power" stance, but by my analysis, that is the reality of the matter. If it isn't, then I challenge the FSF to lay down their arms and renounce the power they have by placing all their copyrighted works in the public domain.

If you think that hell will freeze over before the FSF changes their tune from "GPL" to "public domain", then I fully agree with you, and their active anti-proprietarism isn't actually a bother to me. I'm just peeved that they've pulled a political stunt here, making themselves look "pro-freedom, anti-power" when they are nothing of the sort.