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Control and ownership are not the same. Some people propose a capitalist-market solution to data harvesting and surveillance, which is that people should ‘own’ their data and be paid a tiny amount for surrendering it to a company. This is a complete red herring and won’t solve any practical problem…

As I understand the term capitalism, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there are quasi-monopolies or oligopolies that politically dominate the world. I do condemn the current system of plutocracy very strongly. When I talk about capitalism, I mean private business. There is a difference between the …

[...] For instance, the cameras on the street that recognize licence plates, and maybe now faces—we can’t block that by insisting on free software on our computers. The only protection against that kind of surveillance is political. We need to demand, and campaign for parties that will protect our …

You’ve argued that this foregrounding of freedom radically differentiates your movement from so-called ‘open source’, which started later.

Open source is an amoral, depoliticized substitute for the free-software movement. It was explicitly started with that intent. It was a reaction campaign, …

What’s your definition of free software?

Free software is software that respects users’ freedom and community. It’s not about price. It’s libre, not gratis. With any program, there are two possibilities: either the users control the program, or the program controls the users. When the users co…