Z:gnu-www-ja-rms-interview-edinburgh--19c335-The Open Source Movement was f/en

The Open Source Movement was founded specifically to discard the ethical foundation of the free software movement. The Free Software movement starts from an ethical judgment, that nonfree software is anti-social, it is wrong treatment of other people. And I reached this conclusion before I started developing the GNU system. I developed the GNU system specifically to create an alternative to an unethical way of using software. When someone says to you: &ldquo;you can have this nice package of software, but only if you first sign a promise you will not share it with anyone else&rdquo;, you are being asked to betray the rest of humanity. And I reached the conclusion in the early eighties, that this was evil, it is wrong treatment of other people. But there was no other way of using a modern computer.