I'm Richard Stallman.
25 years ago [in 1983]
I founded the Free Software movement.
Free Software
is software that respects users' freedom
and the social solidarity of their community.
Nonfree programs are proprietary software.
That is,
they take away users' freedom
keeping them divided and helpless.
Divided
because they are forbidden from sharing the program
and helpless
because users don't have the source code of the program.
That is,
they cannot change it, they cannot even find out
what the program is really doing,
and it can do very bad things.
Free Software
means that the user has 4 essential freedoms:
Freedom 0
is the freedom to run the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1
is the freedom to study the source code of the program
and change it to make it do what you wish.
Freedom 2
is the freedom to help your neighbor;
that is,
the freedom to make and distribute
exact copies of the program whenever you want.
And freedom 3
is the freedom to contribute to your community;
that is,
the freedom to make and distribute copies
of your modified versions of the program.
With these four freedoms a program is Free Software
because the social system for its use and distribution
is an ethical system that respects everyone's freedom
and the freedom of the community of users.
Software must be Free because we all deserve freedom,
we all deserve
to be allowed to participate in a free community.
Therefore,
schools should teach only Free Software.
There are four reasons why this is so.
The most shallow reason is to save money.
Schools don't have enough money,
so they shouldn't waste their money
paying for permission to use proprietary software.
This is an obvious reason,
but some proprietary software companies
usually eliminate this shallow reason
by donating copies of their proprietary programs
to the schools at no charge or at a small price.
The reason why they do that is to get students addicted.
It's a malicious plan.
It's a plan to use schools as instruments to impose
a permanent dependence on students.
If a school teaches how to use a proprietary program,
the student will be dependent on that program,
and after he graduates
he will have to pay to use that program.
He will probably work for a company
that does not receive copies of the program free of charge.
Therefore,
proprietary software developers use schools
to impose permanent dependence on the whole society.
Schools must refuse
to participate in such a malicious plan
because schools have a social mission,
which is to educate the next generation to be good citizens
of a capable, strong, independent, cooperating and
free society.
This can only be achieved by teaching Free Software.
Schools must eliminate, delete proprietary software
and install Free Software.
But there is a deeper reason:
to form good programmers,
because in order to learn good programming skills
students need to read lots of code and write lots of code.
To learn to write good code for big programs
students need to write small changes
in the code of big programs.
All this is possible only with Free Software.
Only Free Software
allows education in information technology.
But there is still a deeper reason:
to teach good citizenship,
because schools have the mission to teach
not only facts and technical skills, but above all
the spirit of good will, the habit of helping others.
Therefore, each class should have this rule:
"students, if you bring a program to the class,
you can't keep it for yourself,
you must share it with the rest of the class."
The school should practice what it preaches,
it should introduce only Free Software in the classroom.
All schools should migrate to Free Software
and teach exclusively Free Software
because each school should participate
in leading society towards freedom and social solidarity.
Thank you.