Comment by riazrizvi
4 months ago
The GPL he wrote is the basis of the reciprocity agreement that drove the open source movement, it is the legal mechanism that prevents commercial actors from taking over shared works, and locking other creators out of continued participation in their collective creations.
Stallman explicitly warned about working on proprietary software for an employer:
> “If I sign a nondisclosure agreement to work on a proprietary program, I am agreeing not to help you. I am agreeing to withhold information from you, and to refuse to give you a copy so you can learn from it.” This isn’t just about ethics toward the public — it’s about how such arrangements strip a developer of the ability to show, reuse, or build on their own work.
GNU Manifesto (1985).
The GNU GPL is in no way reciprocal, under it, code flows downstream to users, not back upstream to developers/maintainers. Its only if downstream devs/users are inclined to send code back does it reach upstream devs/maintainers.
I don't think you understand the passage you've quoted (without a link), and you seem to have accidentally added your own words to it (there's a close quote, but then more words.) That being said, I can't find the quote at all in the essay; did AI make it up?
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
The closest thing I could find was this:
> Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.
So were users or "creators" his concern? I don't remember him ever giving too much of a shit about the happiness of creators, I wouldn't have approved. I don't (particularly) care about programmer's problems.
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edit:
I can't find the quote "If I sign a nondisclosure agreement to work on a proprietary program" on the entire internet.