1) Let's start. Can you explain to our readers why you started with FSF in 1984? What did you need of? Why you created it?
What I started in 1984 was the development of the GNU operating system. All the operating systems for modern computers of the day were proprietary; users were forbidden to share them, and could not get the source code to change them. The only way to use computers in freedom was to replace those systems with a free operating system. That's what GNU was meant to do.
The Free Software Foundation was started in late 1985 to raise funds for GNU development, and more generally to promote free software.
2) What's Free Software? What's the difference between Free Software and OpenSource?
Free Software is software that respects the four essential freedoms:
0. The freedom to run the software, as you wish.
1. The freedom to study the source code, and change it to do
what you wish.
2. The freedom to make copies and redistribute them to others.
3. The freedom to publish modified versions (including their source code).
The Free Software Movement's goal is for everyone using software to have these freedoms. We believe that it is wrong to take away these freedoms from anyone. In other words, non-free software is unethical. Open Source was started in 1998 by people who liked Free Software but disagreed with our ethical approach to the issue. They wanted a way to talk about Free Software without manifesting any connection to the Free Software Movement and its philosophy. The definition of Open Source was modeled after our definition of Free Software, but it is written in a different way, and the criteria are
not identical. The supporters of Open Source have accepted some licenses that we have rejected as too restrictive. However, the big difference between Free Software and Open Source is in the basic philosophical values. Our goal is to win freedom, for ourselves and for you, by rejecting and replacing the software that tramples the user's freedom. We say that Free Software is ethical and non-free software is not. By contrast, the supporters of Open Source recommend a "development model" on the grounds that it usually results in technically superior software. They do not say that non-open source is inethical. They do not present the issue as a matter of right and wrong.
