CHENNAI: Exhorting students to fight against proprietary software that stifled the freedom of users, software freedom activist from the United States, Richard Stallman, on Monday said that all such programs were malicious in nature and pushed the users into the “grip” of the developers.Addressing a packed hall at IIT Madras, the founder of GNU project said that by using such “non-free” software, people were in danger of being entrapped in a moral dilemma as they are forced to comply with the end-user agreements.He said that the programs that were proprietary in nature denied the users important freedoms, including that of changing the working of the software by editing its source code and the ability to distribute such edited software for the betterment of the community. Many of such programs also had backdoor provisions that collect usage data without the knowledge of the user, thereby violating one’s privacy.While Microsoft operating systems had provisions to change or upgrade an installed software without the knowledge or consent of the user, Apple was perhaps the first to censor people from installing their own software through the introduction of the iOS, he said.Pointing to the move by Amazon in 2009 when it deleted copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles without the approval of the users, he said that the e-book giant “swindled” the traditional methods of reading and the freedom to lend and bequeath books that form an essential part of intellectual independence.
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