RafaelFajardo

By repeatedly insisting that free software should be “free as in speech, not as in beer,” FOSS advocates attempt to make software a matter of expression, not property. Without a doubt, freedom of speech and the importance of private property are among liberalism’s most cherished tenets, but in the case of intellectual property these tenets are in tension with one another. Because it draws attention to the fact that code needn’t necessarily function like all other private property, the work (the coding, the talk, the campaigning) of FOSS hackers has been nothing short of revolutionary,