Z:gnu-www-ja-rms-nyu-2001-transcript--5a9b34-But for software that's not tr/en

But for software that's not true. Anybody can make another copy. And it's almost trivial to do it. It takes no resources, except a tiny bit of electricity. So there's nothing we can save, no resource we're going to allocate better by putting this financial disincentive on the use of the software. You often find people taking economic, the consequences of economic reasoning, based on premises that don't apply to software, and trying to transplant them from other areas of life where the premises may apply, and the conclusions may be valid. They just take the conclusions and assume that they're valid for software too, when the argument is based on nothing, in the case of software. The premises don't work in that case. It is very important to examine how you reach the conclusion, and what premises it depends on, to see where it might be valid. So, that's Freedom Two, the freedom to help your neighbor.