Benkler wants us to grasp the difference between free beer and free speech. Not everything has to be free as gratis beer, but it should be available as free speech. Eben Moglen , professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia Law School, continued by stating that the Internet is a social condition, not a thing or a place. Moglen is a strong advocate of free software and is acting pro bono as the primary lawyer for the Free Software Foundation. According to Moglen the user must always have the right to modify, redistribute, reverse engineer etcetera any program on the Internet.
Free software is essential to protect the human rights of the user.
Free software is free speech but doesn't have to be free beer. Free software is not gratis. It's just open to everyone in full. Moglen then introduced Richard M. Stallman, the main attraction of the conference. Richard M. Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project, launched in 1984 to develop the free operating system GNU and thereby give users the freedom to copy and redistribute software , as well as to make any changes .