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Proprietary Blobs and the Pursuit of a Free Kernel
jammag writes "Ever since the GNewSense team pointed out that the Linux kernel contains proprietary firmware blobs, the question of whether a given distro is truly free software has gotten messier, notes Linux pundit Bruce Byfield. The FSF changed the definition of a free distribution, and a search for how to respond to this new definition is now well underway. Who wins and what solutions are implemented could have a major effect on the future of free and open source software. Debian has its own solution (by allowing users to choose their download), as do Ubuntu and Fedora (they include the offending firmware by default but make it possible to remove it). Meanwhile, the debate over firmware rages on. What resolves this issue?"
fixed that for ya.
What is...?
there is a problem with buying time, however. In the case of computer software and freedom, there are three kinds of users: the two poles are those who want 100% freedom and those who feel it's ok to use only proprietary software or enslaving software (software that turns the user into a slave of the developer/owner), and in the middle ground between these two poles there are the users who understand that being enslaved to a vendor is a bad thing but still don't see any reason to be vocal about 100% freedom (ie they may feel it is desirable to run a free version of an application they use most often, but they don't mind if this application uses a non-free driver, library, or firmware).
Right now the majority of computer users are technologically illiterate and don't even know that their software is in fact compiled source code. As a result, they don't demand freedom, or only have very vague ideas about what freedom even is, for example they may think that free software is about paying nothing, when in fact it is about being in control of the source code of their applications. So, most people now are in non-free pole (they feel absolutely no need for freedom, or don't even know that freedom exists, or may even not know the notion of freedom), and a few are in the middle-ground but still close to the non-free extreme.
If we help more people to adopt GNU/Linux by making it compatible with their non-free hardware by including non-free BLOBs and other non-free components in it, then what we do is to help those in the non-free extreme to move towards the middle-ground position, so they will understand that, for example, using a non-free web browser is bad but they will not understand that using a non-free driver or even a non-free BIOS is bad as well, maybe because they are not technologically literate enough to know about drivers or BIOSes.
Certainly half-liberty is better than no-liberty from a pragmatist perspective in the short term, but it is worse than true-liberty in the long term. The problem lies in that if a person becomes half-free, they may feel OK in that position and stop demanding more freedom. This will mean that GNU/Linux users who have distros with BLOBs may accept BLOBs and non-free components as a constant fact of life and not as a temporary solution to a problem that should eventually be solved. This will mean that those appreciating freedom will be seen as extremists and the free software movement will be compromised and eventually die, and what we will end up with will be a combination of technological freedom and slavery, ie half-freedom, with slavery getting bigger and bigger as the free software movement dies until we have nothing else than slavery.
Some may feel that a constant state of half-freedom is not much of a problem, but the problem lies in the fact that half-freedom has the tendency to disintegrate towards non-freedom. If a person with unclear ideas about freedom accepts one BLOB when they install GNU/Linux for the first time, they will accept another when they want to buy a new hardware component. Later they will want to install some software to do a new task, but they will happily accept a non-free version if it offers more features than free versions or even if it cleverly masquerades as free software, for example by using a cleverly written "X source/software" characterisation where X is something other than "open" or "free" that still makes freedom-illiterate people think that it's free. In the end, half-liberated users will completely forget what freedom is about and will again convert to 100% unfree software.
Therefore, half-freedom is a direct competitor of true-freedom in the long term, albeit it is often seen as a helper in the short-term. This is why Greeks say "liberty or death" when demanding their freedom, to indicate that anything else than true freedom is just masquerated slavery.
Which makes them no better than the developers. And no worse.
Help stamp out iliturcy.