[With sincerest apologies to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, et al.]
When in the course of digital events, it becomes necessary for the people to dissolve the proprietary bonds which have connected them with their computer operating systems and other proprietary software.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all computer users are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are the pursuit of control of their digital experience: the right to choose their software, the right to run a program for any purpose, the right to study and adapt the program to one’s needs, the right to redistribute copies to help your neighbor and the freedom to improve the program and redistribute the improvements to the public for the benefit of all.
That whenever any form of corporate software hegemony becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it and institute a new system, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form that ensures digital choice and digital freedom.
When a long train of abuses and usurpations by proprietary softtware provided by multinational corporations design to subject computer users to digital despotism, it is the computer user’s right — it is their duty — to throw off this system, and to provide new safeguards for their future digital freedom.
We, therefore, the computer users of the world solemnly publish and declare that all computer users ought to be free and independent of proprietary software; that they are absolved from all allegiances to, and all political and social connection to, proprietary software, and claim all rights digital freedom provides. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our sacred honor.
During my wanderings and sojourns in cyber space and the blogosphere I stumbled on this masterpiece.
It kinda caught the whole mood ad spirit of FLOSS and that is why I have decided to have it up here.
