Stallman included within the document
a lengthy section devoted to the many arguments used by
commercial and academic programmers to justify the
proliferation of proprietary software programs. One
argument, "Don't programmers deserve a reward for their
creativity," earned a response encapsulating Stallman's
anger over the recent Gosling Emacs episode:
"If anything deserves a reward, it is social
contribution," Stallman wrote. "Creativity can be a
social contribution, but only in so far [sic] as
society is free to use the results. If programmers
deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative
programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished
if they restrict the use of these programs."See Richard Stallman, "The GNU
Manifesto" (1985).
http://www.gnu.org/manifesto.html
With the release of GNU Emacs, the GNU Project finally
had code to show. It also had the burdens of any
software-based enterprise. As more and more Unix
developers began playing with the software, money,
gifts, and requests for tapes began to pour in.
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