Free Software is important for freedom in the community is a general statement, but let me be specific. A program that you have a copy of is free for you if you have four essential freedoms. Freedom ‘0’ is to run the program as you wish. Freedom ‘1’ is the freedom to study the source code and change it—so it does your computing as you wish. Freedom ‘2’ is the freedom to help others to make copies of the software, and distribute them. Freedom ‘3’ is the freedom to contribute to your community, to make copies of your modified versions, and distribute them to others if you wish. So, if a program comes with these four freedoms, it’s Free Software, because the social system of its distribution and use is an ethical system that respects the freedom of the community.

If one of these freedoms is missing or insufficient, it is proprietary software, because it imposes an unethical social system on its users. So, the distinction between free and proprietary software is not a technical distinction. But this is a social, ethical and political distinction, which is why it is so important... more important in general than any technical distinction.

The use of proprietary software in society is not development; it’s dependence. The use of proprietary software is a social problem. We should aim to put an end to it. Writing free programs is a contribution to society. So, if you have a choice between writing a proprietary software or doing nothing at all, you should do nothing at all—because that way, you don’t do harm. Thus, the goal of the Free Software Movement is that all software should be free, so that their users can be free. Once you have understood this issue, you should make sure that you don’t get into this. We should reject the propaganda terms that the developers of the proprietary software use to demonise the cooperation. I am referring to terms like ‘pirates’. When they call people ‘pirates’, they mean that helping other people (by sharing software) is the moral equivalent of attacking ships.