If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.
Interpretation
Programmers should be rewarded for innovation and held accountable for misuse.
This quote by Richard Stallman emphasizes the dual responsibility of programmers: while they are entitled to recognition and rewards for their creative contributions to software, they must also face consequences if they create barriers that limit the use and accessibility of their innovations. It highlights the ethical consideration of freedom and accessibility in the technology space.
In practice
This quote can be referenced in a tech conference discussion about software ethics.
Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Divided because each user is forbidden to redistribute it to others, and helpless because the users can't change it since they don't have the source code. They can't study what it really does. So the proprietary program is a system of unjust power.
EMACS could not have been reached by a process of careful design, because such processes arrive only at goals which are visible at the outset, and whose desirability is established on the bottom line at the outset. Neither I nor anyone else visualized an extensible editor until I had made one, nor appreciated its value until he had experienced it. EMACS exists because I felt free to make individually useful small improvements on a path whose end was not in sight.
One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless.
Proprietary software is an injustice.
Proprietary software tends to have malicious features. The point is with a proprietary program, when the users don't have the source code, we can never tell. So you must consider every proprietary program as potential malware.
People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.
Digital media are biased toward replication and storage. Our digital photos practically upload and post themselves on Facebook, and our most deleted e-mails tend to resurface when we least expect it. Yes, everything you do in the digital realm may as well be broadcast on prime-time television and chiseled on the side of the Parthenon.
Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.
[The] dynamics of computational artifacts extend beyond the interface narrowly defined, to relations of people with each other and to the place of computing in their ongoing activities. System design, it follows, must include not only the design of innovative technologies, but their artful integration with the rest of the social and material world.
The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.
I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.
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