Slashdot: Thus Spake Stallman

“Q: Lets assume for a moment that free software becomes the
way business happens. Every company, if it wants to keep
shareholder value anyway, opens up the source, makes their softwre
free. What’s next? Where do you go from there? What do you do
for an encore? Or is that the “end of the war” and at that point,
GPL protecting our freedoms, you go back to coding?”

“RMS: Non-free software is not the world’s only problem. I
undertook to work on this problem because (1) it dropped in my lap
(I could not be neutral except by leaving my field), (2) I had an
idea for how I could tackle it effectively, and (3) nobody else was
even working on it.”

“It’s clear that other problems such as religious
fundamentalism, overpopulation, damage to the environment, and the
domination of business over government, science, thought, and
society, are much bigger than non-free software. But many other
people are already working on them, and I don’t have any great
aptitude or ideas for how to address them. So it seems best for me
to keep working on the issue of free software. Besides, free
software does counter one aspect of business domination of
society.”

“If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I
could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead
try to help deal with the world’s larger problems. Standing up to
an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it. I
could volunteer my time to the ACLU, Amnesty International,
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, or ZPG, if I’m
of any use to them.”

Complete
Story