Learning about software freedom

On the front page of Hacker News at the moment is a post on The Three Software Freedoms. It does away with the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Zero:

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.

On the basis that it “is just silly I mean of course I can use the program as I wish.” Of course you can. Except, of course, that’s not in fact true, and because software companies are licensing – not selling – you software, you’re actually bound by their terms and the limitations they impose. Picking just one example, here are some snippits from the Apple Licensed Application End-User License Agreement, relevant to apps bought (sorry, licensed) through the iTunes App Store:

The Products transacted through the Service are licensed, not sold, to You for use only under the terms of this license

The licensor (“Application Provider”) reserves all rights not expressly granted to You.

This license granted to You for the Licensed Application by Application Provider is limited to a non-transferable license to use the Licensed Application on any iPhone or iPod touch that You own or control and as permitted by the Usage Rules set forth in Section 9.b. of the App Store Terms and Conditions (the “Usage Rules”). This license does not allow You to use the Licensed Application on any iPod touch or iPhone that You do not own or control, and You may not distribute or make the Licensed Application available over a network where it could be used by multiple devices at the same time. You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute or sublicense the Licensed Application. You may not copy (except as expressly permitted by this license and the Usage Rules), decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, modify, or create derivative works of the Licensed Application, any updates, or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or to the extent as may be permitted by the licensing terms governing use of any open sourced components included with the Licensed Application).

If You breach this restriction, You may be subject to prosecution and damages.

Your rights under this license will terminate automatically without notice from the Application Provider if You fail to comply with any term(s) of this license. Upon termination of the license, You shall cease all use of the Licensed Application, and destroy all copies, full or partial, of the Licensed Application.

You agree that any Services contain proprietary content, information and material that is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws, including but not limited to copyright, and that You will not use such proprietary content, information or materials in any way whatsoever except for permitted use of the Services. No portion of the Services may be reproduced in any form or by any means. You agree not to modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works based on the Services, in any manner, and You shall not exploit the Services in any unauthorized way whatsoever, including but not limited to, by trespass or burdening network capacity. You further agree not to use the Services in any manner to harass, abuse, stalk, threaten, defame or otherwise infringe or violate the rights of any other party, and that the Application Provider is not in any way responsible for any such use by You, nor for any harassing, threatening, defamatory, offensive or illegal messages or transmissions that You may receive as a result of using any of the Services.

You may not use or otherwise export or re-export the Licensed Application except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Licensed Application was obtained. In particular, but without limitation, the Licensed Application may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List. By using the Licensed Application, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

So don’t claim, through malice or ignorance, that Freedom Zero is not worth making explicit, and doesn’t need protecting.