If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the "owner" of the program, that controls the program-and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.
Richard StallmanRelated topics
control entity instrument owner power program proprietary yoke softwareRelated quotes
Each state claims the right to control interests foreign to itself when those interests are such that it can control them without putting its own interests in danger. ... other powers only recognize this right of intervening in proportion as the country doing it has the power to do it.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it! And woe thrice over to the nation in which the average man loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of need should arise!
Theodore Roosevelt
