Now, when I say "Linux", just apply it in your mind to all of GNU, Linux, BSD, Open Solaris, Darwin (if it ever comes back), Plan 9, et cetera encompassing all of Free and Open Source software.
So, why the zealotry? It's hard for the non-geek population to wrap their minds around the zealot factor. It's just a computer, isn't it? Why all the fuss? We geeks know how we are. We take a simple thing like playing a song and turn it into an anti-DRM crusade. Show us an RFID chip and we set off into a rant about rights to privacy. Write a web page for IE-only and watch the indignant geeks line up to decry the injustice.
Are we really serious, or are we just putting everybody on? Is it really so important to spread Linux? What do we have against proprietary software?
The answer is that it's not at all just about Linux or just about DRM. Those are each just one tree in a vast forest. I have no idea if it's been set down before - please link me in the comments if you find a similar declaration ℵ - but let me here (in a sweeping act of hubris) set down what I have come to think of as...
"The Four Pillars of Technology Freedom"
1. Technology permeates every aspect of our lives.
Consider not only the device on which you're reading this. Look at how you cook your food with a programmable microwave, pay for everything with your credit and debit card, stay in touch with the world with your cell phone, and on and on. Even if you've never seen a computer, lots of data about you is stored on several of them. Even if the only thing you read is words printed on paper, that newspaper or book was laid out on a monitor. Even if you're a monk wearing only natural fibers and meditating on a mountain top, you can be sure there's a picture of you on Google Earth. When you have a health problem, there you go to a hospital where they will use every high-tech gizmo at their disposal to keep you going.
2. The role of technology in our lives will only increase.
Hardly a day goes by when a new breakthrough isn't announced. We've figured out more and more technology applications. Particularly, two areas promising more growth are health and space exploration. To go on, we will have to advance science in such areas as power generation, transportation, and eventually space colonization. So far, there is no evidence that our Earth or our solar system will last forever and ever, so figuring out how to exist entirely in space or on some terraformed planet is just one future challenge we will have to meet. Then there is the extension of the pitifully short human lifespan. Be all the purist you want, that's fine with me, but somewhere, sometime, there will be someone who wants to live forever and will do anything they can to do it. Even if they have to clone themselves, regenerate from stem cells, or merge with machines until they are cyborgs. The only alternative, eventually, will be to simply die out, and most of the people I know are far too fond of our species to allow that to happen. Thus, it is our destiny to merge technology into ourselves, until we eat, breathe, and sleep it.
3. Given 1 and 2, we do not dare let one power-mad despot control all of technology.
Because that is too much power to trust to one person. We've never allowed one tyrant to be king of the world; we've never settled for a unified global religion under one Pope or Bishop or Buddha or what-have-you. But right now, something like 95% of all the computers in the world are either controlled by or at least limited by Microsoft corporation, and almost nobody seems to mind. But in the past, whenever a new product of the industrial age has rolled out, be it the printed word or steel or oil or automobiles, a temporary monopoly - more-or-less - has formed based on it. Eventually it was thrown. And while the public might have once been concerned with the monopoly of the auto industry or the telephone system, today both cars and phones have gone digital, so computing technology, if it continues as it has, stands to be the biggest monopoly of all. The monopoly that encompasses all others. The biggest mass total control and domination of the human race that has ever been seen. The human race has never stood for such massive power in one set of hands, and it never will.
4. The only alternative to power in the hands of one is power in the hands of many.
Here in America, we have founded a government based on the idea that it's better to rule ourselves with the tools of democracy than to answer to a monarch. But with that freedom comes responsibility. Elections mean nothing unless we-them-fabled-peoples get out there and vote. We wanted our own government, and so we have to know who our representative is and study the records of our congressman and vote on propositions. In other countries, all through history, the people have banded together and had a revolution to throw off those in power and replace it with what they at least perceived to be distributed power in its place.
So it will be with technology. Distributed power will also mean distributed responsibility and distributed knowledge. Either you trust your life from cradle to grave to computers made by the global dictator, or you overthrow that dictator - and then resolve to master those machines yourself, so that no other dictator can ever take that position again.
"I hold these truths to be self-evident!" - said the ranting man from his soapbox. But really, what can possibly refute them? Maybe it won't all apply today, but it will apply tomorrow.
One of my taglines - something I've been saying for years - is "The technology that you do not master, will master you." And that is why I care. I could give a rat's hat if you, as an individual, run Linux or listen to DRMed music or whatever way you exchange money with The Man in exchange for whatever convenience you want.
But I have chosen to preserve my freedom in as many ways as I can. I fix everything myself where I can. I fixed my own brakes for $50. in raw materials after the auto shop wanted to charge me $600. We cook a lot of our own meals out of healthier food than what we get at a fast-food joint. When my DVD-player quit reading discs, I thought nothing of taking it apart and swabbing the little optical read-head with a Qtip, cleaning the dust off of it which had persisted in spite of numerous blasts with the air-can. We take the time to supplement our children's public schooling with teaching them at home as well. And of course, I build my own computers out of free (or very cheap) second-hand hardware and run free operating systems on them. How much have you spent buying and maintaining a computer? I've spent almost nothing.
I'd do the same if I were a millionaire (well, except for the car. The mechanic can have my $600. if I'm a millionaire - anything to avoid mechanic work, which I loathe.). It isn't about money. If Microsoft gave all of its software away for free and Linux cost $50. per distro, I'd still use Linux. It is not, never was about, never will be about, the money.
It is about the liberty. I have chosen to preserve my freedom in as many ways as I can. And I am many times happier because of that. And I want to provide for others to be able to make that choice as well. Eventually, perhaps many generations down the line, but inevitably, everyone will choose their freedom. And when they do, I hope they will find the trail blazed for them to do so.
It's worth being a zealot about. It is a crusade.
ℵ - I already know about the 95 Theses of Geek Activism.
21 feedbacks
Comments:
"The key to any product is functionality for the average or even below average user. Until Linux distros become as easy to use a fax machine lots of luck."
You've completely missed Pete's point. Linux isn't necessarily the answer. Nor is BSD, Plan 9, Freedos, or whatever. It's certainly not Mac OS X.
Linux/BSD/yada yada is the Alternative. To what? To the day when someone comes up to your non-tech supported granny and says "nice computer you've got there. Be a shame if something happened to it," and then charges her, oh, $149.95 to get a "required" upgrade os that she can read the newest version of a DRM'ed .doc file. Assuming she doesn't need to shell out another $500 to get a computer that can actually run the new OS. If she doesn't upgrade, she'll be less "functional" on her computer than she would have been if she'd been forced to learn how to handle OpenOffice.org.
If enough people run Linux/BSD/etc., this can't happen, because there will be plenty of alternatives.
Right now, there aren't that many alternatives.
In many areas, you want to stay away from the zealots and all they represent. This isn't one of those areas.
you use free software when you want 4 fundamental freedoms .
freedom 0: freedom to use the software the way you want.
freedom 1: freedom to modify the program so that it does what you want.
freedom 2: freedom to help your hands by distributing copies of software you have.
freedom 3: freedom to publish the modification(improvements??) you have made to your friends ..
These freedoms are like north and south with free software and proprietary software and this is why "we" are against proprietary software ..you should know this by now..
is it important to spread linux? well, some people think it is, others think not ..what linux will bring is open standards, openness, collaboration and society can only benefit from these.
if all that i have said doesnt mean anything to you, then well, it brings choice and thats good enough of a reason for me.
Because of this greater understanding we can foresee where the widespread use restrictive technology may lead and what we might lose.
I think it is important to be a Zealot for open technology (not just Linux) in an effort to educate the uneducated otherwise corporations will control more and more aspects of our lives and the people won't even realise it is happening.
As zealots this quote from 'A Few Good Men' sums it up
"We're supposed to fight for people
who can't fight for themselves."
Should I be unable to read because my eye's are not certified by chapters?
Just my 2 cents.
Linux offers the "Freedom" to modify programs the way I want to. That's great, but most people can't do this. I don't want to "modify" programs to my heart's content -- I don't know how to do it! I just want it to work! Being able to modify programs is really worthless if the general public can't take advantage of it.
The problem with Linux is that it makes computing slowly creep back into elitism. As it is, most people can turn on a PC and do their work. They can download programs or get ones from their school, work, etc. Linux puts this in peril, as many programs fail to install or require significant time surfing BBS's for help. This takes power out of the hands of average users and puts it back in the hands of tech savvy people. Isn't this what most people accuse MS of doing? I thought taking control away from the masses and putting it in the hands of the few is what people hate about MS. Linux has the power to do just that, as most people will be powerless to decompress tarballs, modify config files, etc. Isn't this why they switched to Windows 95 in the first place?
What's more liberating than turning on your PC, doing your work, turning it off and enjoying your life? Not everyone wants to spend hours downloading drivers, tweaking /etc/X11/xorg.conf, etc.
For us techies, Linux is great. But I shudder to think what will happen if the general public tries to switch with Linux in its current state. And this is from a devout Debian user!
People like me use Linux the way we did 10 years ago, but I know Linux users that know nothing about command line or configuration files. The trick is to find the right distro for that kind of user.
The average user no longer needs to use Linux the way we hackers do.
And that goes right along with this great post by Penguin Pete -- digital freedom is hugely important and we want to make sure it isn't strangled in its crib, before people understand what's at stake here.
(Mr. Penguin, you've touched on something I've been planning on writing about myself: the charges of zealotry that get thrown out as epithets to try marginalizing those who care about essential freedom. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.)
And in the process you've said something that needed saying. It's true that there ARE true zealots in the world - but all the zealot namecalling against users of FOSS is, I hope people will remember, /from people who have a vested interest in seeing us go away!/ That includes the monopoly-building, DRM-loving people who don't give a fig about what happens when they and their technology is as dead as the dodo. (See my blog entry on the late Turkmen President-for-life for details).
The point of making software source free, kuriharu, is not just so that people who wouldn't know what to do with it can stare blindly at reams of C source code. It's so that when the people who make it tick are dead and gone, people who are still using it can make sense of it - or hire someone who can. The litany of dead OS's and computer systems that I personally have used is as long as my arm, and I only entered "the technology business", as a Sinclair-Spectrum using kid, 20 years ago or so.
If you're a "devoted Debian user", I seriously doubt that you don't realise what enormous leaps and bounds Linux in general has made from being a hacker's OS in the early days to being one useful to all kinds of people. The only thing we lack now is industry support for commercial apps /in some areas/, and we should keep pushing for that. Linux shoud and will continue to become easier and easier to use, for those that want/need that kind of system.
But it should NOT be made unavailable to techies in whatever capacity they want it to be available to them. And it should NOT fall into the hands of the DRM-loving control freaks.
May be we should make a habit of calling the people who call us zealots by their true names, despots, they seek to make laws and use any devices to curtail freedoms. We are led to believe they are all within distant systems on the planet, we have to endure them daily but not cave in - much to their dislike.
Unfortunately, there are people who aren't in our line of thinking. Like some people said earlier, they are basically the "sheep" of our revolution. They don't really know where they are going or why.
Fortunately though, I honestly believe that they want freedom too! And that they will go for it if they know it's there. But they don't want the freedoms you listed above, instead they would be much more interested in the side-effect freedoms that _no_one_ ever lists. What are those freedoms? I'm glad you asked:
-Freedom to choose any person or firm you want for tech support. (RH or local tech support)
-Freedom from vendor lock-in. (No hidden specs locking you onto a specific application. office)
-Freedom from forced application upgrades.(again office)
-Freedom to share software with friends and family _legally_.
-Freedom from proprietary backdoors.
-Freedom from viruses and spyware.
Many years ago the Renault car was a marketing and sales disaster in America.
The French is seemed who bought Renaults wanted a car that they could endlessly tinker with and pamper.
The American market it seemed wanted cars that you just got in and drove.
Areas of Linux can still be for programmers to tinker with.
However for the majority of computer users they simply want a very functional easy to use OS and software programs.
Until that day ( if it ever) comes with Linux Linux will remain as a fringe market in OS percentages and use.
???
/usr/bin/internets
-bash: internets: command not found
whereis internets
internets:
sudo apt-get internets
apt-get: package not found
Damn, I can't believe we forgot that!
Forced registration for something you buy or it won't work in 30 days. Ridiculous.
$150-300 to "upgrade" my computer, to a newer (with new bugs) version of the OS. Ridiculous.
No integrated, free IDE(s) coming with the OS. Ridiculous. (What I mean here is not that I want to re-code Windows. I want to do programming with C, VB, etc, but I have to pay an arm and a leg to get an IDE for Windows to do that. Not for Linux. For folks who feel Windows is for the "dumbed down" user, it's easy enough to just add a check-box on installation for "easy/advanced" setup. If you're an average Windows user, just check "Easy", and you get all the non-techie stuff installed w/o hassle. If you check "advanced" it should install more stuff, like IDE's and things. But no...Windows spawns more cash pay-out...for anti-virus, spyware scanning, IDE's, etc, etc.)
When I present the OS argument to others (who are usually non-programmer Windows regulars), I like to use the analogy of spoken language. Nobody charges you to speak English, or Spanish, or what-have-you. Nobody charges you to develop English, or Spanish, etc.
The languages form out of necessity of communication, and are expanded upon by current pop-culture as well as more structured purposes, like science, politics, etc which add their own lingo to the mix. But this is all done for free. However, someone CAN charge you to TEACH you the language. They CAN charge you if you want a book they wrote using the language. You see where I'm going...
I view OS's as languages. They should be out there, freely existing, freely used, and freely upgraded. Certain ones will come and go, and certain ones will become standards for certain aspects of life (EG: latin being the preference for Biology species names, English/Japanese being business languages, so forth). Some linguists have come up with "perfect" languages, but they don't catch on, either because nobody wants to learn something new, or because other languages already fit a specified role. It's difficult for something new, even if it's better to catch on when there's already a whole lot of people that know something mediocre that "works" even if not optimally.
Ok, back to my point. OS should be developed freely by communities, EG: Linux (for the most part). And they should be given away freely. They are foundations for technology. However, the hardware they're installed upon should still cost money. You pay for a book, which is like low-tech "hardware" for language communication, so it makes sense in the natural human business model. You should also pay if you want a professional to train you to "speak" the OS, or dialects (programming languages). But, you can still learn it yourself. It would probably take a week and $100 to get a Linux guru to help me learn Linux. Or, I can google around about it for free and learn, albeit slower on my own. Either way, it's my choice, but my choice is to support a foundation OS/language that is free, and not proprietarily controlled by one source.
This isn't intended to flame or complain, simply putting a different spin on the OS argument. Humans have an inherent, built-in instinct for what they think is the "right" and "wrong" way things should be done. Some of this comes from instinct and our "natural morals", other comes from how we were raised...what "business/transaction" models we were exposed to. A lot of us inherently know there is something wrong with the strong-arm tactics of Microsoft, because it goes against our nature or the way we were raised.
Sure, most of us live in capitalistic societies, where we're all trying to make a buck to survive, but we each have our own level of morality in doing so. And more and more folks are feeling that Microsoft is crossing that line when trying to make their buck. And for some, like me, we're rubbed wrong when companies don't have the customer's best interest at heart, but their profit margin instead, especially when it comes to something as encompassing as dictating where technology, the foundation of our future, is heading.
Honestly, do you want your grandmonther to have to pay .01 cent/word when she speaks English? We're not talking about the cell-phone, I mean paying just to speak. No, I don't think you want that for your dear grand-mother. And while that example sounds outrageous / outlandish, look at where MS is going with Windows and their other systems. They want to get folks hooked, and then move them from a "pay for a new upgrade/license" to "pay an ongoing subscription". You're hooked on their OS, you're hooked on their integrated software packages (that love to reinstall themselves...separate rant)...you're hooked on their own proprietary "language". You get to pay to "speak".
This concept rubs a lot of Americans the wrong way (and most humans in general, because we are by nature freedom-loving creatures). But, it's harder and harder for governments to dictate what big-businesses can do, since big businesses cover so many territories/governments. Just as some governments / countries are finding it hard to "legislate" the internet, they find it hard to "legislate" large companies like Microsoft from over-imposing.
I'm sure there's more to be said, but it's late, I have to work tomorrow, and I'm sure someone can say all this more eloquently then I have... In fact, I'm sure somebody has already said it all before.
I don't think it's that hard to regulate MS. We all have a choice. Give them money for their OS, or use another OS. No amount of legislation will save MS from loosing money if we choose not to buy it, because you can bet it will be a cold day in hell before the US subsidizes that monopoly.
Thanks for putting forth the effort on the article btw.
I honestly cant be f**ked with it anymore. I like things that work when you want to use them. IF I HAVE TO TYPE ONE MORE LINE OF CODE I SWEAR I'M GONNA WALK INTO MCDONALDS WITH AN UZI!!!
Heck while i'm at it:
F**K MICROSH*T for making a more expensive just as crap product and...
F**K LINUX NERDS who all have IQ's of 160 but can't make a single decent userfriendly os.
First, I'm going to retrive my linux / windows dual boot box from the pool
Then I'm just gonna bite the bullet and go buy a goddamn mac
Perhaps you are mistaken in assuming that Linux nerds have an IQ as high as 160?
Anyway, go ahead and buy your Mac. Mac OS X is based on BSD, which is the open-source Unix-based cousin to Linux anyway, so you won't be missing much.
Maybe you just plain don't like computers? That's OK; lots of people don't like computers - they end up with iPhones and Play-Stations instead.
Good luck - anything's better than shooting up a Mickey D's.
True there are devices that are silently rinning Linux and the user is unaware and as well does not need to know that it is running Linux. An example might be an older pre version 5 Linksys WRT54G router.
However Linux seems to a toy for software developers to play with.
Less space consuming than cars in the driveway I guess.
Just have a novice or even intermediate computer user try to do simple things - that are least simple in Windows - such as adding programs or wireless devices in Linux if it not already native.
True there are some anedoctal stories of "I switched my elderly parents to Ubuntu and they love it." What is unstated is that those elderly parents have tech support on call.
The key to any product is functionality for the average or even below average user. Until Linux distros become as easy to use a fax machine lots of luck.