To the Free Software Developers of the World

A specter is haunting the world of computing—the specter of software freedom. To wage a holy crusade against this specter, all the powers of the old world have united: the empires of proprietary software, the builders of digital enclosures, and the platforms that call users “resources” while refusing to call them “people.”

Which free software advocate has not been denounced by its opponents as an “extremist,” a “moral purist,” an “impractical idealist”? Which one has not been repeatedly proclaimed an “obstacle to progress” by those who profit from depriving users of freedom—from the boardrooms of Silicon Valley to the lobbying corridors of Brussels?

From this fact we draw two conclusions:

Software freedom has been recognized as a force.

The time has come for free software advocates to openly state their views, their aims, and their intentions before the whole world—and to answer the myth of the software-freedom specter with a manifesto of their own.

All…