In other words,
programmers who simply modified Emacs for private use
no longer needed to send the source-code changes back
to Stallman. In what would become a rare compromise of
free software doctrine, Stallman slashed the price tag
for free software. Users could innovate without
Stallman looking over their shoulders just so long as
they didn't bar Stallman and the rest of the hacker
community from future exchanges of the same program.
Looking back, Stallman says the GPL compromise was
fueled by his own dissatisfaction with the Big Brother
aspect of the original Emacs Commune social contract.
As much as he liked peering into other hackers'
systems, the knowledge that some future source-code
maintainer might use that power to ill effect forced
him to temper the GPL.
"It was wrong to require people to publish all
changes," says Stallman. "It was wrong to require them
to be sent to one privileged developer. That kind of
centralization and privilege for one was not consistent
with a society in which all had equal rights.
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