Jury-Law books

But that is exactly what the world of
proprietary software is like. A world in which common
decency towards other people is prohibited or prevented."
With this introductory analogy out of the way, Stallman
launches into a retelling of the Xerox laser-printer
episode. Like the recipe analogy, the laser-printer
story is a useful rhetorical device. With its
parable-like structure, it dramatizes just how quickly
things can change in the software world. Drawing
listeners back to an era before Amazon.com one-click
shopping, Microsoft Windows, and Oracle databases, it
asks the listener to examine the notion of software
ownership free of its current corporate logos.
Stallman delivers the story with all the polish and
practice of a local district attorney conducting a
closing argument. When he gets to the part about the
Carnegie Mellon professor refusing to lend him a copy
of the printer source code, Stallman pauses.
"He had betrayed us," Stallman says. "But he didn't
just do it to us. Chances are he did it to you.


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