Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

‘Software piracy a misnomer’

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Founder of the Free Software Foundation Richard Stallman has said that the very expression ‘software piracy’ is a distortion of the real.

Replying to queries during an interaction with the delegates of the 39th national conference of the All India Trade Union Congress here on Friday, Mr. Stallman said the word ‘piracy’ meant the forceful takeover of a ship, robbery, extortion and even killings. This was an imputation, a distortion.

He said he would not acknowledge the existence of such a phenomenon in software. In knowledge, there could only be ‘sharing.’

Before the interaction, he described the philosophy behind the concept of ‘free software,’ saying that it essentially was rooted in freedom from all fetters in using software tools. Proprietary software meant dependency and bondage. Forbidding people to share knowledge was just not on, he said.

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