Is the Free Software Movement a Kind of Communism?

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 22:00:00 +0800

Is free software, such as GNU/Linux, a kind of communism?

Free software (open source software) requires code to be open and allows others to freely use, modify, and redistribute it, which very easily makes people think of communism. This has been a frequently questioned issue since the free software movement developed in the 1980s. If we talk about the representative masterpiece of free software, it is the great operating-system family developed through the joint effort of developers around the world: GNU/Linux. Anyone, regardless of status, can contribute code, and the entire system kernel is open source and owned by the public. So does free software developed in this way count as a kind of communism?

Note: the free software movement strictly distinguishes its own attitude from the open source movement, because there are slight differences in their philosophies, and each side will accuse the other of missing the point. However, this article will provisionally treat them as the same concept: that is, free software includes the ideas of open source software.

1. Deriving from theory
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If we want to ask whether the free software movement is communism, the roughest indicator is whether the means of production are publicly owned. In software development, this usually means code. In the information age, copying code has almost no cost. If development cost is not counted, the productivity of software is greatly increased.

The four essential freedoms of software proposed by RMS also have some similarities with communist ideas, but these words are precisely what most easily leads to misunderstanding.

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.

Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the community, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The ideas of these four freedoms are also embodied in the GPL license terms written by RMS and others.

If you consider these words carefully, you will observe where free software and communism are incompatible. First, free software does not oppose private property. The GPL emphasizes the right to freely use code, but the author still enjoys part of the rights. It is not the case that once software code is released, it becomes a resource that can be used without any limits. GPL is not the same concept as CC0. On the contrary, all users should follow the license terms of free software, and use software and code under conditions that protect users’ freedom.

Furthermore, although the code is public, no one can use any means to forcibly monopolize the code, or prevent others from viewing modified content. Instead, software should be used while maintaining a free-sharing model. Although the GPL has a viral infection property, meaning that if software uses GPL-licensed components, other parts will inevitably be forced to open source as well, users can absolutely choose not to use the GPL and instead use more permissive approaches such as LGPL to avoid this problem.

Anarchism on Ivon's Blog

Is the Free Software Movement a Kind of Communism?

1. Deriving from theory #

1. Deriving from theory
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