Proprietary Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

Proprietary Software Is Often Malware

Proprietary software, also called nonfree software, means software that doesn't respect users' freedom and community. A proprietary program puts its developer or owner in a position of power over its users. This power is in itself an injustice.

The point of this page is that the initial injustice of proprietary software often leads to further injustices: malicious functionalities.

Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate.

Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to be had.

As of October, 2018, the pages in this directory list around 350 instances of malicious functionalities (with more than 400 references to back them up), but there are surely thousands more we don't know about.

Injustices or techniques	Products or companies
Back doors (1) Censorship Coverups Deception DRM (2) Incompatibility Insecurity Interference Jails (3) Sabotage Subscriptions Surveillance Tethers (4) Tyrants (5) In the pipe	Appliances Cars Games Mobiles Webpages Adobe Amazon Apple Google Microsoft
Back door: any piece of software that is running on your computer, and listens for commands from someone else who can tell it to do things without asking your approval. Digital restrictions management, or “DRM”: functionalities designed to restrict what users can do with the data in their computers. Jail: system that imposes censorship on application programs. Tether: functionality that requires permanent (or very frequent) connection to a server. Tyrant: system that rejects any operating system not “authorized” by the manufacturer.

Injustices or techniques

Products or companies

Back door: any piece of software that is running on your computer, and listens for commands from someone else who can tell it to do things without asking your approval.
Digital restrictions management, or “DRM”: functionalities designed to restrict what users can do with the data in their computers.
Jail: system that imposes censorship on application programs.
Tether: functionality that requires permanent (or very frequent) connection to a server.
Tyrant: system that rejects any operating system not “authorized” by the manufacturer.

Users of proprietary software are defenseless against these forms of mistreatment. The way to avoid them is by insisting on free (freedom-respecting) software. Since free software is controlled by its users, they have a pretty good defense against malicious software functionality.

Latest additions

Corel Paintshop Pro has a back door that can make it cease to function.

The article is full of confusions, errors and biases that we have an obligation to expose, given that we are making a link to them.
- Getting a patent does not “enable” a company to do any particular thing in its products. What it does enable the company to do is sue other companies if they do some particular thing in their products.
- A company's policies about when to attack users through a back door are beside the point. Inserting the back door is wrong in the first place, and using the back door is always wrong too. No software developer should have that power over users.
- “Piracy” means attacking ships. Using that word to refer to sharing copies is a smear; please don't smear sharing.
- The idea of “protecting our IP” is total confusion. The term “IP” itself is a bogus generalization about things that have nothing in common.
  
  In addition, to speak of “protecting” that bogus generalization is a separate absurdity. It's like calling the cops because neighbors' kids are playing on your front yard, and saying that you're “protecting the boundary line”. The kids can't do harm to the boundary line, not even with a jackhammer, because it is an abstraction and can't be affected by physical action.
Nearly all “home security cameras” give the manufacturer an unencrypted copy of everything they see. “Home insecurity camera” would be a better name!

When Consumer Reports tested them, it suggested that these manufacturers promise not to look at what's in the videos. That's not security for your home. Security means making sure they don't get to see through your camera.
Some Android apps track the phones of users that have deleted them.
Apple and Samsung deliberately degrade the performance of older phones to force users to buy their newer phones.
GM tracked the choices of radio programs in its “connected” cars, minute by minute.

GM did not get users' consent, but it could have got that easily by sneaking it into the contract that users sign for some digital service or other. A requirement for consent is effectively no protection.

The cars can also collect lots of other data: listening to you, watching you, following your movements, tracking passengers' cell phones. All such data collection should be forbidden.

But if you really want to be safe, we must make sure the car's hardware cannot collect any of that data, or that the software is free so we know it won't collect any of that data.