Confessing Evangelical

Excellent talk by Richard Stallman, father of the free software movement, explaining what "free software" is and why it matters.

Stallman explains that Free software is software that - regardless of the price you pay for it - offers the following four freedoms:

• Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program however you wish.
• Freedom 1: the freedom to help yourself. That's the freedom to study the source code and change it to do what you wish.
• Freedom 2: the freedom to help your neighbour. That's the freedom to copy the programme and distribute the copies to others when you wish.
• Freedom 3: the freedom to help your community. That's the freedom to publish or distribute a modified version when you wish.

These freedoms can seem rather abstract. 99% of us don't/can't "study the source code" to any useful purpose or modify/redistribute the software we use. Why should we care whether the software we use is "free" or not?

Stallman explains using a very helpful analogy, with recipes. "People who cook enjoy the same four freedoms in using recipes", Stallman points out:

The freedom to cook the recipe when you want. That's freedom zero. The freedom to study the ingredients and how it's done, and then change it. That's freedom one. Cooks frequently change recipes. And then the freedom to copy it and hand copies to your friends. That's freedom two. And then, freedom three is less frequently exercised because it's more work, but if you cook your version of the recipes for a dinner with your friends, and a friend says "that was great, can I have the recipe?" you can write down your version of the recipe and make a copy for your friend.

It is "no coincidence" that the same four freedoms apply to recipes and computer programs, because:

...programs, like recipes, are works that you use for practical work. You use them to do something. When you use a work to do something, if you're not in control of it, you're not in control of your life. And if you can't share with other people, you're forbidden to be part of a community.

This then goes some way to explaining the passion that has driven Stallman and the free software movement, the moral indignation against proprietary software:

Imagine how angry everyone who cooks would be if some day the government says "From now on, if you share or change a recipe, we're going to call you a pirate, we're going to compare you with people who attack ships, and we're going to put you in prison for years because that's forbidden cooperation". Imagine the anger that there would be. That anger is at the basis of the free software movement too. We want to have freedom in using our computers.

Stallman goes on to look at how free software has particular value in developing countries, in contrast to proprietary software which represents a new "colonial system":

What does it mean if your society increases the use of non-free software? Well, that's software which nobody in your city, unless you happen to live in just the right place in the World, nobody in your city is in a position to understand it, maintain it, adapt it, extend it, or do anything with it. It's just like the old colonial system where the colonial power had all the industry. They made all the technology and the people in the colony, they just had to buy it, and they weren't supposed to understand anything or make anything...

That's what proprietary software is like. This is not sustainable development. It's not appropriate technology. This is a technology of dependence, and dependence is exactly what that system is all about. It's keeping people helpless.

Proprietary software can also be compared to an addictive drug, including the methods in which it is marketed to people. The first few doses are offered at zero or reduced price; after that, you (and your employer) have to pay full whack:

[Sellers of non-free software] say to schools: "We will help you by giving you these gratis copies of our non-free software so that you can turn your students into addicts of our software" Why do I use the term addicts? Because they develop a dependency on this software and then after they graduate, you can be sure they are not going to be offered these gratis copies anymore because it's only the first dose that's gratis. Once you're addicted, then you're supposed to pay, and then also, of course, the companies that these graduates work for, those companies are not going to be offered gratis copies.

So, essentially, what these software developers are doing is they're recruiting the schools into agents to lead people into permanent lifelong dependency.

All this is more important than arguments over whether proprietary or "open-source software" offers lower "total costs of ownership" or provides better functionality. Stallman dislikes the "open source" paradigm, arguing that it is simply "a way of promoting software that usually is free but without mentioning these ideals".

Open source advocates prefer to point to free software as way to "have powerful, reliable, convenient software and get it cheap". As it happens, this is true, but the problem with casting the argument in these terms is that this is a battle Microsoft is capable of fighting (perhaps even winning, in many cases), by arguing (however disingenuously) that its software offers better value or is of a better quality than "open source" alternatives. In contrast:

When we say the goal is to live in in freedom and to be allowed to cooperate with other people in a community, they can't say they're going to offer us more of that, cheaper. They don't offer that at all, they're not even competing with us. They're out of the running. Once you decide you want to live in freedom, they are out of the running.

Labels: free as in freedom, free software, rms