Proprietary Software is the Driver of Unprecedented Surveillance: Richard Stallman (factor-tech.com)

From a wide-ranging interview of Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, programming legend and recipient of at least 15 honorary doctorates and professorships: "The reason that we are subject now to more surveillance than there was in the Soviet Union is that digital technology made it possible," he says. "And the first disaster of digital technology was proprietary software that people would install and run on their own computers, and they wouldn't know what it was doing. They can't tell what it's doing. And that is the first injustice that I began fighting in 1983: proprietary software, software that is not free, that the users don't control." Here, Stallman is keen to stress, he doesn't mean free in the sense of not costing money -- plenty of free software is paid for -- but free in the sense of freedom to control. Software, after all, instructs your computer to perform actions, and when another company has written and locked down that software, you can't know exactly what it is doing. "You might think your computer is obeying you, when really its obeying the real master first, and it only obeys you when the real master says it's ok. With every program there are two possibilities: either the user controls the program or the program controls the users," he says. "It's free software if users control it. And that's why it respects their freedom. Otherwise it's a non-free, proprietary, user subjugating program."

Comments

Why the FOSS movement is small and obscure

[Anonymous Coward]

The Free Software Foundation requirements are so restrictive that no mainstream Linux distribution qualifies. Stallman is living in a fantasy world where he thinks billions of people are going to start learning command lines and troubleshooting their own comparability issues. This is not reality.

Open source MUST be made easy to use or else Average Joe User will never use it. In the real world, rightly or wrongly, people care about EASE OF USE more than abstract philosophical concerns about free software.

The open source movement needs more businesspeople and fewer armchair philosophers. We do not need yet another FOSS project reinventing the wheel and having 3-5 developers trying to drum up support for their spin on something that has been done 50 times already. We need to see more along the likes of RedHat and Canonical if open source is going to take over the mainstream.

Re:Why the FOSS movement is small and obscure

[Kjella]

More like that in every democracy you must to some degree submit to majority opinion, hence the only ethical solution is anarchy or something like that. RMS is saying that to ethically sell someone a product, you must tell that person how to make it so he can modify it, repair it etc. as they want. Go to a shoe store, try to get blueprints, molds and process/work descriptions on how to make those shoes. Would it be nice? Yes. Do you get it? No. Are those shoe sellers unethical? Maybe if you're RMS. He's holding software to a level of transparency we don't expect from any other product. Most people are happy to just buy a pair of shoes.

The real reason all software can't be "free"

[shuz]

Free/Open Software is an ideal of the STEM community. It is great and I think it is better. However the entire global software user base is not of the STEM mindset. Many companies want to have a business model of selling software licenses. Some sell both licenses and support. Stallman has long preferred the idea that we as a society share information the is easy to copy. He supports a reasonable compensation related to creative works. But puts more emphasis on compensation through continued support of that creative work. He cites situations where people use non-free/open software, support ends for that software and people are then often forced to either discontinue use, increase vulnerability or loss of productivity risks, and/or purchase a new license of what is essentially the same software that has extra non-security related enhancements. For the latter argument it is made that users end up paying not just for the enhancements, but also for the original product as well as a built in support retainer in many cases.

It is my belief that the problem Mr. Stallman really wants to fix is this last business model. For every person in the world to have full control over all the information they are given is a great idea. Reality is that the Human condition of greed, or improving ones self by disadvantaging another, prevents FOSS. It, indeed then, would be enough to mandate software and information not be double charged. That either an ongoing support license for use or a support license retainer built into an original product followed by cheaper enhancements with a further retainer built in be possible. Many companies already do this. It isn't FOSS, it isn't giving the user base full control over information. That isn't possible due to greed. In the same way certain governments such as Marxist Communism really isn't possible.

But, to defend greed just a bit, a sense of bettering ones self does drive many people to do things that are not comfortable, that are above average, that give them a sense of fulfillment in their lives. For those of us that embrace FOSS we are free to continue our scientific sharing of ideas. We should be thankful that those who oppose or seek to abuse FOSS must follow the same rules that protect non-free closed software.

The astonishing thing

[jabberw0k]

is how many geeks who should know better, see nothing wrong with so-called "smart" so-called "telephones" -- which are the antithesis of what we computer hobbyists were trying to build for all those decades. The answer is to stop giving Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and such companies any of your time or money, and to stop being an enabler in the abusive relationships those companies have with your friends and co-workers.

Everything is tracking you now

[Shotgun]

I bought a surround surroundbar from Vizio for my TV. It has an app to allow you to control it from your phone or tablet. It wanted permission to report it's location with the explanation that it would help it to find "wireless networks". Why a glorified remote control would need to find networks is a problem, but reporting home about where I'm at is out of the question. I just refused to install it and used the remote.