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FSF's "Defective By Design" Targets Apple Genius Bars
mjasay writes "At OSCON this year, MySQL's Brian Aker made this bold statement: 'Microsoft is irrelevant ... We're more worried about Apple.' The Free Software Foundation appears to have caught the hint, and has turned its attention to all-things-Apple with a 'denial of service' attack on the Apple Genius Bars. The idea is to completely book all Genius Bars and then ask the 'geniuses,' over and over again, a few questions about Apple's proprietary ways (while, apparently, real customers with support issues are left to flounder). Lost in this anti-Apple fervor, however, is the Free Software Foundation's complete and conscious failure to protect the web. Richard Stallman has long felt that software that doesn't sit on his desktop doesn't affect his freedom, but isn't the opposite true? Why is the FSF focused on Apple when the bigger concern should be Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, and other web players, a point made by Tim O'Reilly recently at OSCON?" Defective by Design is just one of many FSF projects, remember; it hardly seems fair to say that the FSF has been ignoring the implications of software as a service.
Having previously worked at an Apple Store several years back (and even if I hadn't). I can tell you most people will probably get a "I'm sorry I can not answer that question. Please call corporate to get answers to your question."
Unless Apple has noticed this and given an internal memo of detailed responses to give out, this is the response you will get even from a store manager or supervisor.
Some geniuses may actually give you their own personal view on things but they wont represent Apple, nor will Apple necessarily stand behind said responses.
The only benefit of this is perhaps making more Apple customers aware of what the issues are, if they happen to overhear the conversation.
If you will be participating in this, I'd recommend staying polite. Being a stuck up customer trying to stick it to the man via a part-time, full-time non-corporate employee is not going to win you many friends or make people willing to listen to your cause.
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The free software movement has never been very good at PR/communication. It's really a testament to the strength of the idea, that it has made the progress it has.
No offense, but it is as though the whole movement has Aspergers syndrome, in the sense that they have zero intuitive understanding of how they will be perceived.
A link that I got in my email, to the full text of what the FSF is doing here.
From TFA:
Because this is the only way to get the entertainment industry to agree to allow its content to be distributed as openly as it has with Apple, and because Apple wants to make sure it makes money.
From the link:
Jobs is the largest individual shareholder at Disney, and he could insist that its films be DRM-free.
From TFA:
As to the third question, no one cares where you go. Get over it.
Anyone who believes this, where are you right now? Boxers or briefs? How long is your penis / how big are your tits?
If you feel uncomfortable sharing these details with me, keep in mind, you at least have some idea who I am. You have no idea who's tracking you at Apple or AT&T.
What's the recourse if this douche is wrong?
The fourth question? It's not a question. At least put a question mark at the end to pretend.
That's only because you didn't read the whole question. Again, from the FSF:
If Jobs really wants to see open formats, why doesn't the iPhone play Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora video and FLAC?
Anyone who says "because it would cost money" is a moron. All of these formats have free implementations -- in fact, as far as I know, all of them have free, patent-free, royalty-free, and MIT license at worst, which means if iTunes is at all pluggable, it should take one engineer maybe two hours to add support for them, if that.
I think this is kind of an extreme action, and I can't really support it. But then, maybe extreme actions are exactly what's needed. (And maybe that's just Dark Knight rubbing off on me.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Well I will. I've sent several donations already this year, but I won't be sending more.
needs to learn that there is a difference between being a revolutionary and just being really annoying.
One changes the world, the other just makes people hate you. They seem to be in the camp of people that think that as long as people hate you, you must be doing something right.
Are they heavily involved in promoting Linux?
Not hardly. The FSF has been in a snit over Linux's success for at least a decade, so they do all the nit-picking, bitching and moaning that they can about it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Moreover, Apple is one of the few companies where you can actually talk to one of their tech support people face-to-face. This as opposed to Dell or HP, where you typically wait on hold for two hours while your call is transferred to Bangladesh.
Apple "Genuis Bar" is the sort of support system we should be ENCOURAGING.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I have to agree with you.
This kind of puerile stunt is simply absurd. Apple can and should sue them over this.
This is specially bad coming from a flagship name list FSF, and can cause serious problems for the opensource/freesoftware initiatives. Who will take us seriously ?
Even if this is not carried out, the FSF should make a public apology over this unfortunate incident.
morcego
Actually, this is a demonstration that there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Sure, the software is free to use, but the cost of it is a bizarre ideological movement that pulls stunts like this, interfering with people's ability to actually get some use out of their computers.
GNU/FSF were fun and useful about 15 years ago, when free software was generally about coders using and sharing each others code. Unfortunately, I think success has spoiled the movement. I'd rather just pay for my software and avoid all the political crap.
Send them an email saying you will no longer donate while such campaigns are run. I did.
The people are sort of stuck here. Before most businesses we dealt with every day were large corporations, there could be a fairly equal exchange of ideas between customers and proprietors. A concerned community could make itself heard to businesses that affected it. Apple is a large corporation. They'll spend a lot of advertising money to talk at you in a way that sort of feels personal ("Hey, here's a company that understands me!"), but is limited in substantial message to, "Buy our shit, K?" They even go beyond what most companies do and hire a bunch of people to sit in stores and do face-to-face tech support, which means they're listening to customers, though in a somewhat limited way.
The only people that have DIRECT CONTROL over Apple's business practices are high up in the company. They talk a lot, but it's hard to make them listen. If you can tie up all the "genius bars" for a day, that might actually make someone notice. It would be pretty hard to do, but if you did, it might at least be acknowledged by someone with DIRECT CONTROL. It might also get noticed by the mainstream media, who would make some ham-fisted attempt to understand what the fuck it is that the FSF was talking about, and might even report on it, leading reasonable folk to wonder, "What was that clueless reporter blathering about," and look up the real info themselves.
Furthermore, as far as the analogy goes, every waiter at those white-only restaurants didn't have DIRECT CONTROL over anything. They probably were upset they weren't going to make any tip money. And I bet plenty of the would-be customers DID NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT EQUALITY, or maybe were even hostile to the cause. The magnitude of what the FSF is concerned with is not as great as the magnitude of what the civil-rights movement did. But some problems really do deserve more press. The recent Microsoft and Yahoo DRM expiration issues point out what a fundamental problem DRM is; a lot of people that use DRM-laden media every day don't understand that their very use of those files is at the whim of a corporation, and that they have no good reason to believe that those files will remain playable perpetually, or that they'll be able to find convenient portable devices to play those files perpetually.
As far as I'm concerned if the FSF can book a significant amount of "genius bar" time, more power to 'em. If they can make a big corporation listen to them even for a little while, that's a step. Almost any message coming from a position of principle, reason, and understanding (an anti-DRM stance is certainly one) is more important than a day's worth of "productivity" for Apple and its customers.