The Four Freedoms  ## Metadata - Author: [[Matt]] - Full Title: The Four Freedoms - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [open-source, software-freedom, WordPress] author: Matt Mullenweg source: ma.tt reference: [https://ma.tt/2014/01/four-freedoms/] date created: 2025-11-19 00:00 --- # 🏷️ Title: The Four Freedoms ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Include links cited in or relevant to the article. ## 📝 Summary - What happened: Advocates applying “four freedoms” to software, crediting free software for WordPress’s success and broader innovation. - Why it matters: Control of software shapes speech, knowledge, and power; openness accelerates progress. - Key stakeholders: Developers, users/communities, companies, OSS ecosystems. - Risks and tradeoffs: IP fears, loss of exclusivity, coordination costs. - Bottom line: Open source freedoms expand creativity, resilience, and scale beyond closed models. ## 📖 Main Content - Core arguments: - Software mediates modern life; control over it is civic power. - Stallman’s four freedoms (use, study, share, modify) form a “Bill of Rights” for software. - WordPress exists and thrives because of these freedoms (fork from B2, GPL). - The value is the community (themes, plugins, WordCamps), not just core features. - Open models outperform closed over time by tapping global talent. - Context/definitions: - “Free” as in freedom, not price. - Community vs “users” framing. - Uncertainties: - Sustainability and governance models vary. - Balancing design leadership with community autonomy. ### 🗒️ Notes - “If you don’t control the software, the software controls you.” - Stallman’s freedoms: run, study/change, redistribute, distribute modified versions. - WordPress origin: fork of B2 due to freedoms 2–3. - Community scale: tens of thousands of contributors; 29k+ plugins (at the time). - Open source → Linux, WebKit/Chrome, WordPress; open science → Open Genomics Engine; open events → TEDx, BarCamp; open knowledge → Wikipedia. - Bill Joy’s maxim: most smartest people work elsewhere. ## 📚 References - Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (1941) (https://fdrlibrary.org/four-freedoms) - Free Software Definition (FSF) (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html) - GNU General Public License (GPL) (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html) - “Why Software Is Eating the World” (Andreessen) (https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world/) - WordPress project (https://wordpress.org/) - B2/cafelog history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B2/Cafelog) - Wikipedia on Bill Joy’s quote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy) - Open Genomics/commons example: GA4GH (https://www.ga4gh.org/) - TEDx (https://www.ted.com/tedx) - BarCamp (https://barcamp.org/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Paragraph A: Software now shapes communication, news, cognition; if you don’t steer it, it steers you. - Paragraph B: Stallman’s four freedoms define ethical, durable software—freedom as speech, not price. ## 📰 Newsletter - This week’s read: Matt Mullenweg on the “Four Freedoms” powering WordPress’s rise—freedoms to use, study, share, and modify. The takeaway: communities—not features—compound value. Explore plugin ecosystems, attend a local WordCamp, and invest in docs that invite first-time contributors. Fresh links: WordPress.org, FSF’s Free Software Definition, and Andreessen’s “Software is Eating the World.” ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Publish examples-first docs and 3 quickstarts. - Host monthly office hours; track satisfaction and time-to-first-PR. - Ship 5 code samples per API; instrument attribution. #### OSPO - Adopt inbound/outbound GPL policy and review cadence. - Automate license scanning; quarterly training. - Define embargo policy and signing/attestations. #### Community - Run “first issue” rotations; pair mentors. - Quarterly roadmap clinics; release hygiene checklist. - Sponsor impact reports with transparent budgets. #### WordPress - Core: triage performance issues; set release criteria. - Training: lesson plans on GPL and contribution flow. - Marketing: community storytelling and case studies. - Accessibility: WCAG reviews and issue heatmap. - Documentation: examples-first and style guide updates. - Plugins/Themes: review throughput, lints, mentoring. #### The WPCC - Microgrants for maintainers; documentation sprints. - Matched grants with milestone payouts. ### FAIR - Signatures/provenance for releases. - Funding transparency and anti-capture covenants. - Publish governance charters and scorecards. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Projects with GPL-like freedoms grow ecosystems faster than closed peers. - Community plugin volume predicts adoption more than core feature count. - Open governance correlates with longer project longevity. - Developer NPS increases with “study/modify” affordances. ### 📊 Methodology - Comparative cohort of OSS vs proprietary CMS over 10 years (adoption, plugin counts). - Regression on ecosystem size vs adoption. - Survival analysis on project longevity vs governance openness. ### ❓ Questions - Which governance patterns best sustain plugin ecosystems? - How to quantify “community value” vs “core features”? - What are effective safeguards against open-source capture? ### 🔮 Future Research - Maintainer burnout interventions. - Economic models for sustainable OSS funding. - Metrics for “forkability” and resilience. ### 💡 Implications - Practice: invest in contributor experience over feature lists. - Policy: procurement favors open standards and licenses. - Education: curricula on OSS ethics/governance. - Funding: milestone-tied grants and shared infrastructure. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level: ~Grade 10–11 (Flesch–Kincaid estimate). #### 👀 Visual learners - Improve: ecosystem maps, governance diagrams. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Improve: 3–5 minute audio summary. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: clear definitions; add glossaries. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Improve: contributor onboarding labs/checklists. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Improve: causal diagrams and KPI dashboards. #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: WordCamps; add cohort guides. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Improve: self-check quizzes and reflection prompts. #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Improve: ecosystem lifecycle analogies. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment - Improve: explicit lang attributes; descriptive alt text. - Ensure: visible focus, skip links, 4.5:1 contrast, reflow at 200%. - Provide: transcripts/captions; avoid autoplay. - Forms: labels, inline validation, generous targets. - Map to WCAG 2.2 AA throughout. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment - Improve: multilingual resources and global case studies. - Use inclusive language; avoid idioms; expand glossary. - Increase representation in examples and imagery. - Publish community guidelines and escalation paths. ### ✅ Logical Validity - Strong reasoning: inductive causal argument—open freedoms → larger community → compounding value (WordPress plugin ecosystem). - Fallacies: None salient; anecdotal but supported by scale metrics. - Tone: Persuasive, pragmatic, community-forward. ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - None observed: no denial, attack, or role reversal rhetoric. ## 🎯 Conclusion - Bottom line: Software freedoms amplify innovation by unlocking community scale. Invest in openness, governance, and contributor experience for durable impact. - Next steps: Adopt GPL-compatible policies, improve onboarding/docs, measure ecosystem health, and fund maintainers. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix (append after 🎯 Conclusion) ### 📚 Literature Split Pad ### [H1] Open freedoms compound community value > [!quote] The Four F - Summary: Eleven months before the U.S. declared war on Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said “As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone.” He articulated four … - URL: https://ma.tt/2014/01/four-freedoms/ Eleven months before the U.S. declared war on Japan, [President Franklin D. Roosevelt said](http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/fdr-the-four-freedoms-speech-text/) “As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone.” He articulated four fundamental freedoms that everyone in the world ought to enjoy: 1. Freedom of speech. 2. Freedom of worship. 3. Freedom from want. 4. Freedom from fear. Fast forward 72 years: technology has advanced at dizzying rates and permeated every aspect of our lives, from [how we are born](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-most-scientific-birth-is-often-the-least-technological-birth/254420/) to [how we die](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/30/070430fa_fact_gawande) and everything in between. In this co-evolution of society and technology, what it means to be truly “free” is no longer about just the country we live in, or even its laws, but is shaped by the products we live *on*. As [Marc Andreessen says, software is eating the world](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460). It’s a creative gale of destruction that irreversibly changes every industry it touches, and if you don’t control the software, the software controls you. It mediates how and with whom you communicate, what news you see, and what other software you’re able to run. It [influences](http://edge.org/responses/how-is-the-internet-changing-the-way-you-think) the [very way your brain works](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/), as you process the creative gale of *distraction* that interrupts us all hundreds of times each day. With [every ping](http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/10/escape.html), software burrows deeper into our lives. In the early nineties, a prescient hacker named [Richard Stallman](http://stallman.org/) — working at MIT, where today’s future had already happened — recognized this shift. He [proposed a set of four freedoms](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) that were fundamental for software in an enlightened, tech-dependent society. 0. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. 1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. 2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. 3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions, giving the community a chance to benefit from your changes. (Aside: I originally thought Stallman [started counting with zero instead of one](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering) because he’s a geek. He is, but that wasn’t the reason. Freedoms one, two, and three came first, but later he wanted to add something to supercede all of them. So: freedom zero. The geekness is a happy accident.) This is our Bill of Rights. Stallman called it [Free Software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). The “free” doesn’t have to do with price, as you’re still free to charge for your software, but with freedom to create. Or as we geeks often say: not free as in beer, [free as in speech](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States). People are scared of free software, and I understand why. You’re taking the [most valuable thing](http://intenseminimalism.com/2010/creativity-in-a-copyright-less-world/) you have, [your intellectual property](http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=1519), and granting the freedom you enjoy as a creator to anyone who downloads your work. It’s terrifying, actually. It’s releasing your ideas, and letting anyone build on them — in a way that might be better than your own work. It’s releasing your traditional understanding of ownership, and your fear of being out-developed. The most experienced entrepreneurs can cling to the concept that your [idea is something precious that must be protected from the world](http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html), and meted out in a controlled way. Lots of us hang on to the assumption that scarcity creates a proprietary advantage. It’s how many non-tech markets work. Open source abdicates your flexibility as a developer to better serve the people who actually use your products. You can see that as a constraint… or you can see it as a door to iteration, innovation, and constant progress. I’ve spent a third of my life building software based on Stallman’s four freedoms, and I’ve been astonished by the results. [WordPress](http://wordpress.org/) wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for those freedoms, and it couldn’t have evolved the way it has. WordPress was based on a program called [B2/cafelog](http://cafelog.com/) that predated it by two years. I was using B2 because it had freedoms 0 and 1: I could use it for whatever I wanted, including my zero-budget personal blog, and the source code was open. It was elegant and easy to understand, and anyone could tweak it. B2 was ultimately [abandoned](https://ma.tt/2003/01/the-blogging-software-dilemma/) by its creator. If I’d been using it under a proprietary license, that would have been the end — for me, and all its other users. But because we had freedoms 2 and 3, Mike Little and I were able to use the software as a foundation, giving us a two-year headstart over building something from scratch, and realize our own vision of what blogging could be. We were just consumers of the software, volunteers in the forums, and occasional contributors to the codebase, but because (of the GPL) we had the freedom to build on B2, we were able to continue development as if it had been our own creation. Ten years later, those freedoms are still embedded in every copy of WordPress downloaded, including the [9.2 million downloaded](http://wordpress.org/download/counter/) in the past month or so since our [3.8 release](http://wordpress.org/news/2013/12/parker/). I believe that software, and in fact entire companies, should be run in a way that assumes that the sum of the talent of people outside your walls is greater than the sum of the few you have inside. None of us are as smart as all of us. Given the right environment — one that leverages the marginal cost of distributing software and ideas — independent actors can work toward something that benefits them, while also increasing the capability of the entire community. This is where open source gets really interesting: it’s not just about the [legal wonkery around software licensing](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html), but what effect open sourced software has on people using it. In the proprietary world, those people are typically called “users,” a strange term that connotes dependence and addiction. In the open source world, they’re more rightly called a community. The core features of WordPress aren’t [rocket surgery](http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-Do-It-Yourself/dp/0321657292?tag=photomatt08-20). A handful of smart people in a room for a year could create a reasonable approximation of the software, and undoubtably improve some things — I see other startups do this [three or four times a year](http://www.crunchbase.com/tag/cms). What they miss is that WordPress isn’t a checklist of features. It’s over [29,000 plugins](http://wordpress.org/plugins/) created by the community, from the in-demand things like SEO to niche features like [using your 404 page to help adopt homeless dogs in Sweden](http://wordpress.org/plugins/hundstall-404/). Every WordPress site looks different, because of the thousands of themes available. Instead of one event to outdo, there are more than [70 volunteer-organized WordCamps on six continents](http://central.wordcamp.org/) (and there’ll be more in 2014). WordPress marketing has nothing to do with its website or [logo](http://wordpress.org/about/logos/), it’s the [tens of thousands of people who make a living building WordPress sites](http://wordpress.tv/2013/07/29/matt-mullenweg-state-of-the-word-2013/) and receive so much value from it that they proselytize to anyone that will listen, spreading the flame one site at a time. It works — as of December 2013, 21% of websites are powered by WordPress. One-fifth of the web is built with a tool that anyone can use, change, or improve, whenever and however they want (even more when you count other open source projects, like Drupal). This approach to building isn’t an abdication of developers’ and designers’ responsibility to build beautiful, functional software. Design and forethought are *more important* than ever when every change sends millions of independent actors down a new path. Changes to WordPress have consequences today, tomorrow, five years, and ten years down the road, but the passion and talent of the community helps ensure that it always moves forward in a positive way. The four freedoms don’t limit us as creators — they open possibilities for us as creators *and* consumers. When you apply them to software, you get Linux, Webkit/Chrome, and WordPress. When you apply them to medicine, you get the [Open Genomics Engine](http://www.opengenomicsengine.org/), which is accelerating cancer research and bringing us closer to personalized treatment. When you apply them to companies, you get radically geographically distributed, results-based organizations like [Automattic](http://automattic.com/). When you apply them to events you get [TEDx](http://www.ted.com/tedx), [Barcamp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp), and [WordCamp](http://wordcamp.org/). When you apply them to knowledge, you get [Wikipedia](http://wikipedia.org/). [William Gibson](http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/) is attributed with saying “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” The world is changing faster than any one person or organization can keep up with it. Closed off, proprietary development creates closed off, proprietary products that won’t keep pace in the long run. Open source provides another path — one that’s open to everyone, and can take advantage of the skills and talents of anyone in the world to build software that helps everyone. As [Bill Joy said](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy's_Law_(management)), “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” Good ideas aren’t the sole province of groups of people behind high walls, and software shouldn’t be either. *This was adapted from a talk I gave at [the Life is Beautiful festival](http://www.lifeisbeautifulfestival.com/) in [Downtown Las Vegas](http://downtownproject.com/). Thanks to [Michelle](http://kingofstates.com/), [Ben](http://stratechery.com/), [Davide](http://intenseminimalism.com/), and [Paul](http://paulmaiorana.com/notes/) for help with this.*, The Four Freedoms, Matt, 01kacpy4wmp35hb26ba3p5x0vb.