surveillance features, specific known digital handcuffs and known backdoors. So Windows is malware. More than that, one of the backdoors allows Microsoft to remotely forcibly install changes without asking the permission of the theoretical ‘owner’ of the computer. I say theoretical, because once Microsoft has allowed Windows to run on any computer, Microsoft has owned the computer. This means that any malicious feature that is not in Windows today can be remotely installed tomorrow by Microsoft. So Windows is not just malware, it is a universal malware. So is Mac OS. It has digital handcuffs. The Apple products, the ‘i’ things, are even worse. They have known spy features, discovered less than a year ago. They have the tightest digital handcuffs ever in a generalpurpose computer. Apple is a pioneer in attacking the freedom of its customers, because Apple extended its control even over application installation. Users cannot install any program they choose; they can only install from Apple’s App Store. This is censorship! Qwhy

this Gnu/linux debate? Once Linux was available as Free Software, the combination of Linux and the almostcomplete GNU system made a complete free system, which was basically GNU, but also contained Linux. So a reasonable fair way of talking about it is Gnu+linux or the Gnu/linux system. However, the people who put together Linux with various big and small components of GNU, which we had actually released as a system (though we didn’t have all the components yet) were so focused on this one component, Linux, that they perceived all the rest as a small ‘addon’ to Linux. And they spoke about the combination as the Linux system, and that’s how most people use this variant of the GNU system to address the complete system. They think it was started in 1991 by Torvalds, which is not true. Obviously this is unfair to us. Please, when you talk about our work, use the name we gave it, and call it GNU. If you want to give credit to Mr Torvalds as well, there is nothing wrong with that. Call it Gnu/linux.

But there is more at stake here than how you treat us— your freedom (indirectly, of course). Directly, your choice of names doesn’t alter the substance of things. But your choice of words determines the message you transmit to others, which influences their thoughts, which then guide their actions. So it makes a difference what name you use.

Since 1983, the name GNU has been associated with our philosophy of freedom and justice in computing, whereas the name Linux is associated with different ideas, those of Mr Torvalds—which are very different ideas. Torvalds never agreed with the Free Software Movement. He doesn’t believe that you, as a computer user, deserve freedom. He doesn’t believe that he, as a computer user, deserves freedom. He just doesn’t think of the field that way. His values are powerful, reliable software, and he says that he is willing to use proprietary software, as long as it is powerful and reliable. So these philosophies are different at the root, at the basic values’ level. Well, he has the right to promote his views; the problem is that when people think of the system as Linux, they also think it was started by Mr Torvalds in 1991, and admire him tremendously for developing this whole system—and then they often adopt his ideas, without even considering ours, which they consider radical and extreme. That way, they don’t even learn to value their own freedom.

It’s bad for them that they do not demand freedom, but it’s also bad for us—because when we fight for our freedom, they are not with us, since they don’t even understand there is something to fight for. And we could lose because of that. When we try to bring our ideas to the attention of users of the GNU system, we face two obstacles. First of all, users of the GNU system mostly don’t know that it’s the GNU system. They think it’s Linux, and was mainly developed by Torvalds. So when they see our articles, based on our philosophies, they wonder why they should read these ‘philosophies of extremists from GNU’, and don’t care what we think. They identify themselves as ‘Linux users’, and they follow the pragmatic ideas of Mr Torvalds. If you use the term Gnu/linux, it will help our campaign, as it will inform these people that they are Gnu/linux users—and then they will pay attention to what we say.

The other obstacle that has arisen is that when people talk about Free Software, they call it open source software. They coined this term in 1998. Before that, there were two political camps: a Free Software Movement which campaigned for all users’ freedom, and the other camp, where people like Mr Torvalds, who didn’t want to raise this as an ethical issue, only wanted to talk about practical benefits like power, reliability, efficiency, affordability, etc. In 1998, the other camp coined the term ‘open source’, so that they could avoid using the term ‘free’. With a new term, they could decide which ideas to associate it with and which to leave out. They chose to completely leave out the ethical level. They don’t raise the ethical issues. They don’t present the ethical ways to release