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RMS On Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before
jrepin points out an article by Richard Stallman following up on the 30th anniversary of the start of his efforts on the GNU Project. RMS explains why he thinks we should continue to push for broader adoption of free software principles. He writes,
"Much has changed since the beginning of the free software movement: Most people in advanced countries now own computers — sometimes called “phones” — and use the internet with them. Non-free software still makes the users surrender control over their computing to someone else, but now there is another way to lose it: Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, which means letting someone else’s server do your own computing activities. Both non-free software and SaaSS can spy on the user, shackle the user, and even attack the user. Malware is common in services and proprietary software products because the users don’t have control over them. That’s the fundamental issue: while non-free software and SaaSS are controlled by some other entity (typically a corporation or a state), free software is controlled by its users. Why does this control matter? Because freedom means having control over your own life. ... Schools — and all educational activities — influence the future of society through what they teach. So schools should teach exclusively free software, to transmit democratic values and the habit of helping other people. (Not to mention it helps a future generation of programmers master the craft.) To teach use of a non-free program is to implant dependence on its owner, which contradicts the social mission of the school. Proprietary developers would have us punish students who are good enough at heart to share software or curious enough to want to change it."
I dare anyone, especially after mr. Snowden's revelations, to contradict mr. Stallman's points.
Thank you rms, for fighting for our freedom for 30 years!
assignment != equality != identity
One thing the FSF's licences haven't dealt with properly is the problem of Free software being used to TAKE control rather than GIVE it. Most of the huge SaaS providers are running Free software, adapted as they will - but with code not distributed, because it doesn't need to be as long as they're not distributing their proprietary platforms - and with all your data on their systems. Should the GPL be adapted to deal with that? Could it?
Maybe the FSF need to prepare a set of terms to explain what counts as adequate vs inadequate control over systems and data - to be more clear about e.g. how one could prepare a 'phone ecosystem which leaves control in the hands of the user. For "server" to be a person's home computer rather than Google's cloud would perhaps be a start.
but democratic values are less likely to be transmitted if I use Office?
If you are a teacher, yes. If you learn office at a young age, it becomes very unlikely you will switch to anything else. It can be difficult for some people too, as the interface is different. Once the students go home and have to set up their own computer they will likely use office. They will either pay for it or not pay for it. If they don't pay they are committing a crime which can be severely punished if they get caught. If they pay then the school is basically training them to give money to a large corporation. Not only that, a specific corporation, with a partial monopoly in that market. Evidenced by the fact that you write 'Office' with a capital O and take it as a given that everyone knows you mean Microsoft® Office®.
Training kids to give money to support a monopolistic corporation does not seem to be directly in line with the principles of democracy.
Crypto is what stops 'them' getting to see your data
End-to-end cryptography won't stop "them" from seeing with whom you communicate, how often, where, and when.
Of course, in practice there might be issues with trusting them to be running the code they say they're running.
Things like "trusting trust" are why David A. Wheeler invented diverse double compiling. Take two or more independently developed compilers, preferably Free ones such as such as GCC and Clang, and bootstrap a compiler in all of them. If the end result of both bootstrap processes is the same binary, the resulting compiler is overwhelmingly unlikely to be booby-trapped.
Free-Software-as-a-Service gives you the freedom to choose which Service to trust, or to run your own Service if you wish.
Which doesn't help if the Service is a social network whose value lies in allowing users to communicate with other users of the same Service. Nor does it help when telcos have a blanket policy of not letting home users run their own Service. Let me know when Diaspora and some federated alternative to Twitter are ready for inexperienced end users.
Why should the school itself not be in charge of it's own stuff? Should we give the students the admin password to the grade-tracking software?
I didn't see anything in Mr. Stallman's essay implying that students should have administrative privileges on the school's authoritative instance of the grade-tracking software. But students should still have the opportunity to obtain a copy of the software to study and possibly share with other schools that friends and family attend. Besides, software to administer a school is not the only software used in a school. Mr. Stallman used the example of Adobe Photoshop. Schools shouldn't teach particular proprietary software packages. Instead, they should teach skills, and skills can be taught in free software such as GIMP.
Every time I read an RMS opinion, it seems to start at a good position and consistently attempts to be more and more idealistic to the point that he seems to be arguing a strawman.
RMS definitely is radical, but I've never known him to use strawman arguments.
I know he defines Malware differently from the common way (he considers DRM as malware, for example),
I guess he's also talking about backdoors for law enforcement (aka "legal interception") and other purposes.
but democratic values are less likely to be transmitted if I use Office? Proprietary developers want to punish students? I guess he means the corporations
His explanation indicates why he does mean proprietary developers rather than just corporations: e.g. in the US definition of core democratic values, there are aspects like personal freedom (e.g., modifying software) and the common good (e.g., sharing things with others). Note that he's not arguing here that it should be illegal for others to write proprietary software, i.e., he's not arguing to impinge on other people's liberty.
- and again, they don't generally give their source for modification, so they might be preventing students from modifying other people's work. Is that punishing them?
It limits the possibilities for expressing their creativity. Schools should be places where encouraging creativity is one of the highest valued goals. I know that is generally not the case right now (amazing video, btw), but this is a (small) way in which the situation can be improved.
I won't even claim to understand what the social mission of schools are supposed to be - prepare students for functioning in society?
I'm obviously not RMS, but I'd argue they should be prepared for functioning in society, for critically thinking about that same society (and anything else), and for contributing to a society that they consider to be better than what it is today.
Prepare them for jobs? Prepare them for college? Prepare them to develop free software?
I'd say: prepare them to become the best they can be. That can include a particular kind of job, being an artist, college (about which you can have very similar discussions as about school), developing free software or any combination of the above and many more things.
Prepare them for ignoring copyrights?
Now that last part is a great a strawman on your part: encouraging students to use Free Software, which they can share and modify freely according to the copyright license terms of that same software, is by no means the same as preparing them for ignoring copyright. It mainly teaches them that there are also alternatives to software whose business model depends on artificial scarcity. They will get to know MS Office and other popular products anyway, and if you can work with OpenOffice or LibreOffice, the jump isn't that great in any case. Maybe one of the primary things schools should teach are transferable skills (of which creative thinking is probably the "übervariant").
Donate free food here
While proprietary software won't always do things the way you want them for normal applications you could always restrict their permissions, firewall their network and most importantly unless you had a very serious leak built in the data stayed on your own computer, it might be locked up in a proprietary format with software that has forced obsolescence but I always felt the hyperbole was a bit thick. If you buy a CD you buy the mix the artist wanted you to have, you don't get the raw tracks to remix it the way you wanted it to be. Likewise when you buy a closed source game you get the game experience they wanted you to have, not all the source and assets to remake it the way you wanted it to be. All other things being equal it'd of course be desirable, but it's doesn't make it worthless or immoral to buy it without that possibility.
With "Service as a Software Substitution" as RMS calls it or as web services and the cloud as I'd call it you've got no control at all of neither the software nor the data. You can't even do the slightest change in how it works. When they want it to change, it changes and there's nothing you can do to stay on an old version the only thing you could do is to go nuclear and stop using it at all. Getting the data out and over to a competing service is often far worse and more locked up than a proprietary format. And again, they control your data. I'd be far more concerned about all my documents being on a Google Docs server somewhere than in a MS Office document on my disk under my control.
The worst part is really the way you're tied not technically to their service though, but legally. When the iTunes app store tells me they've updated their Terms of Service and asks me to answer yes or no, it's basically "Would you like to continue using your phone as normal or totally cripple all access to new software and updates?" I don't even bother reading it, it's accepting at gunpoint anyway. And I really don't feel it'd be much different with Android and the Play store. It didn't concern me much when it was primarily so I'd have a phone to play Angry Birds on (see above) because I totally don't care where my scores go, but as you start wanting to use it for more serious things it matters but there's really no opting out.
The stupid thing is that I really do like advantages of cloud syncing, I'd just like it to be against my own private server or at least in a local colo of my choice. I don't want to route it through Apple or Google or Facebook or any of the other big megacorporations. But what we need is a solid alternative, not the wailing song of RMS. He could have complained about the lack of a free kernel forever but as long as HURD wasn't an alternative it just didn't matter much until Linux came along and became usable. Give us a real alternative, based perhaps on AOSP or Ubuntu Touch (ugh) and maybe we can turn the tide. P.S. There was a poll here, 90% wouldn't change their online habits one bit after the Snowden revelations - don't assume the general public is with you.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
but democratic values are less likely to be transmitted if I use Office?
If you are a teacher, yes. If you learn office at a young age, it becomes very unlikely you will switch to anything else. It can be difficult for some people too, as the interface is different. Once the students go home and have to set up their own computer they will likely use office. They will either pay for it or not pay for it. If they don't pay they are committing a crime which can be severely punished if they get caught. If they pay then the school is basically training them to give money to a large corporation. Not only that, a specific corporation, with a partial monopoly in that market. Evidenced by the fact that you write 'Office' with a capital O and take it as a given that everyone knows you mean Microsoft® Office®. Training kids to give money to support a monopolistic corporation does not seem to be directly in line with the principles of democracy.
This does not limit the abuse by monopoly to just school children! Our very first "home computer" was purchased so that we could become more literate in the coming "digital age". We had a 6 year old daughter and my wife and myself both needed to use fax for the purposes of both getting work and communicating. So we spent 2000 dollars on a decent 486 which could run "Windows" on top of dos. We both had used Vax at work for years and now that it was obviously being dumped and we knew that the "Windows" gui was going to dominate the very future of both our working lives. My wife insisted upon the then brand new Office which set us back another huge chunk of change and took for freaking ever to install from the set of floppies! When we upgraded the unit to the "start me up" roll me over and take it in the rear year 95 version of "Windows" our old version of office would not install PERIOD. So this was my first desperate and financially crippling experience with MSFT. We were almost bankrupted by this at the time because of health issues that occurred concurrently, so I pirated WORD so that we could still fax and my wife could keep her work communications up.
THIS EXPERIENCE SOURED ME so much against MSFT that I investigated what all the fuss was online about Red Hat. After a really good dummies book showed me that our old terminal skills could still make our older 486 work online (good old ifup ip foobar commands) and even do faxes by simply sticking in a different modem than the Win Modem we had things started to look up and the experience brought me into the light. I have never looked back. OR may I add have never "pirated" anything since!
IT WAS a revelation reading Eric Raymond and watching the antics of RMS, Linus and others, the one great rhetorical statement that always sticks in my mind and I am never going to forget is "WOULD YOU BY A CAR WITH THE HOOD WELDED SHUT?"
With companies like Corbis, and others trying to deprive and lock down the world to its very own shared historical great heritage of images online one comes to finally understand the true Ferengi like nature of those who like Milo Minderbinder with a computer have come to dominate digital communications. Do they deserve the laurels and accolades that are heaped upon them. Only history will tell, but if the young are left to believe that they are saints chances are we are headed into a digital dark age.
Thank you RMS and all the others for keeping up the good fight!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Why is it that you think that if the entire chain is open that means it has to be zero cost to you the customer?
They don't follow on.
Free has more than one meaning. You're a free man, yes? Does that mean you work for zero wages?
Think on it.
If you can.
Yes, but since the hood is not welded shut, you can take your car to ANY garage: The dealer, Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, the old scoundrel down the street... That is the freedom that you get with Free software. You can fix it yourself, or pay someone of your choosing to fix it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!