.free-software-position-paper.md 4.1 KB
title: Free Software Position Paper ...
Free software is beautiful. Although definitions vary, free software essentially is software that respects the user to use, inspect, modify, and redistribute the program. Free software is pervasive, through projects like GNU, Linux, and Firefox. However, its key proponent, there are two critical flaws in the philosophy of the Free Software Foundation and its leader Richard Stallman.
In particularly, I disagree with two key views of the FSF:
- Proprietary software in and of itself is evil in all forms
- Software is special
The issue with #1 is pragmatic: it vilifies the wrong people. In particular, it is not necessarily immoral to develop proprietary software. The issues are about perpetuating the system of injustice, a crime of the people in business, marketing, and so on. Indeed, I pity many proprietary developers, since often their bosses are the ones at fault; they are slaves to the system. Unfortunately, the FSF not only disagrees with this view, but they also create an toxic us-versus-them mentality which makes the cause of free software unpalatable to many.
Point #2 is a bigger issue: software is not special. It is true that there are freedom issues layered on top of software, like privacy and free speech, although these are tangential [^tor]. Proprietary software is not wrong because it denies the "freedom to modify your devices". It is about so much more: freedom to be in control of your life, a belief in equality, a love for copyleft, a need for free knowledge, and so on. Those are what matter, and they apply just as well to free music, art, and prose.
It is doublethink to advocate openly for free software games with proprietary assets. Perhaps proprietary games with free assets are preferable: while code and art are on equal footing, code may be easier to replace in a game than art. The FSF, as well as Stallman himself, generally makes this arbitrary distinction, causing problems for free culture and free hardware. The fact remains that free software does not exist in a nutshell. Digital Restrictions Management is not defeated by lobbying Hollywood; it is defeated by licensing our own works under the CC BY-SA, so that the "protections" are irrelevant. Similarly, proprietary drivers are not freed by begging the manufacturer; the problem is solved by instead supporting free hardware, controllable by default. It is all connected, and I see that. I realise it is not possible to be free in all areas, but rather than ignore everything but software, I make small compromises across all of the areas, to maximise freedom over all. It is not zero sum.
The bottom line is simple: thirty years ago, Stallman acquired a love for free software -- and a hate for proprietary software -- for a specific reason, relevant to him at the time. He has since dedicated himself to free software; now that his original reasons for free software are not relevant, the new justification has become "free software is good and proprietary is bad". It is off-putting to outsiders -- without 30 years of context, it is an absurd conclusion. However, this is an issue, as free software is justifiable to the masses in today's environment. Unfortunately, Stallman continues to use his reasoning from the 80s, which nobody except the people from the 80s (and those who wish they were!) really get. His motto is "Join us hackers, come share in the software". Mine is "Join us people, come share in the culture"
[^tor]: Revolutionary projects, like Tor, could not exist as proprietary software. It is essential that operating systems and bootloaders are free to maintain these digital liberties; however, this does not provide an imperative for freeing programs like games.