After our coverage of London's Oyster card, which uses Linux for its online payment system, we had a response from Richard Stallman, head of the Free Software Foundation.

Open-source software helped London's Oyster card system move past a proprietary roadblock, an open-source conference in London was told last week.

RMS (Zagreb on March 9th 2006): "... Many people suggest a two stage solution. They say, first, let's teach people to use Free Software, and then, once they're using it, we'll teach people to appreciate the freedom.

We, the undersigned, urge all computer makers implementing UEFI's so-called "Secure Boot" to do it in a way that allows free software operating systems to be installed. To respect user freedom and truly protect user security, manufacturers must either allow computer owners to disable the boot restrictions, or provide a sure-fire way for them to install and run a free software operating system of their choice. We commit that we will neither purchase nor recommend computers that strip users of this critical freedom, and we will actively urge people in our communities to avoid such jailed systems.

There are different reasons people use Unix-like operating systems, including configurable, availability free of charge, powerful command line interface an many more. Some people are motivated by the moral issue: they reject non-free software.

"... Open source is the term that was used in 1998 by people who liked our free software, but didn't like seeing as the ethical, political issues. They preferred to forget about the deeper aspects--the question of respecting the user's freedom--and focus only on the practical benefits that they got from having the freedom.

– ## Why I agree with RMS on convenience vs. freedom: --
* RMS: «We cater to them (people who don't care about software freedom) to the extent it doesn't interfere with more important goals, such as establishing a free society.»

When explaining why Free Software is important, one question that often comes up is: “do I really need the software freedom?”

"Freedom is... the GNU Operating System. GNU is the first operating system designed to give you, the user, the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software, because the user is free. GNU and free software are used by millions of people all over the world.