Stephen Fry: proprietary software akin to tyranny

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 2 Sep 2008 at 16:04

Stephen Fry has appeared in a short film eulogising free software, as part of GNU's 25th birthday celebrations.

In the video, available at GNU.org, Fry gives a brief history of GNU's Not Unix (GNU), beginning in 1983 with Richard Stallman's desire to create an operating system that would be in the hands of the community rather than a proprietary software firm.

Fry goes on to describe proprietary operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS as akin to "bad science", due to the fact that they don't allow users to tinker.

"You can't really fiddle with your operating system, and you certainly can't share any ideas you have about your operating system with other people, because Apple and Microsoft, who run the two most popular operating systems, are very firm about the fact that they own that," says Fry in the video.

The actor goes on to note that while most people are conditioned to think we shouldn't be able to fiddle with our operating systems, that doesn't necessarily make it right.

"All knowledge is free and all knowledge is shared in good science. If it isn't, it's bad science, and really a kind of tyranny," he says.