Is the Free Software Movement Doomed?
Lately I’ve been wondering about the viability of the Free Software Movement. The only person I’ve met so far who runs 100% Free Software is Richard Stallman, who started the whole thing.
I started using GNU+Linux back in 2000, when I found out how amazing and convenient the Debian ‘apt’ system is, and I wanted to learn more about Unix operating systems. But I didn’t think twice about using Opera or Java or Microsoft’s Web Fonts or other proprietary software, especially since it was available in the official Debian system.
At the time I was studying Art and Sociolinguistics in school, instead of courses that naturally lead to a Computer Science degree, because I wanted to understand something other than computers. Bringing my interest in computers and visual art together, I started a Graphic Design degree at Ravensbourne in 2002.
In 2003 my computer was getting very old and slow, and I starting using an Apple Powerbook laptop as my main computer, for the Adobe design applications. I had no problems with this because it was a Unix computer, and I could run (slowly) all the Free Software I was familiar with.
But during my studies I learned about the history of Free Software, and began to feel the restrictions imposed by the proprietary design software, especially regarding font design. I started to understand why it is important to value freedom over features or convenience.
So started to try and extract myself from proprietary software this summer, when my Powerbook packed in a few days after graduating. I bought a IBM Thinkpad X31 on eBay because it was the most similar laptop to my Powerbook that worked really well with GNU+Linux. I installed Ubuntu and stripped out the included proprietary software with one simple command so that I can say I am also using 100% Free Software.
Yet I spend almost all of my time using proprietary web applications, that have slick functionality that desktop software struggles to provide at all:
- Google Mail: Slick user interface for dealing with tons of email. A well heeled spool index and a large quota. Integrated AJAX instant messenger, unifying logs with spool. Insanely fast. Mobile phone access with well thought out interaction design. Spam filtration.
- Google Calendar: Two way editing and public sharing is very useful; my sister and I live apart and we planned our Christmas holiday using it in a way we couldn’t have with anything else I’m aware of.
- Flickr. I’m actually already using a Free Software application, Menalto Gallery, to share my digital photos with my friends. But I’ve been eying up Flickr: It provides real community features beyond public comments - like if I go out with my friends, we can pool our photos together.
So the stuff that Free Software is meant to be about in 1984 - community, sharing with friends - seems better catered for by proprietary web applications in 2006. Desktop software in general provides a functionally richer way to manage email or calendars or photos, but it feels empty in terms of sharing and community.
However there are real problems with hosted web applications. The tyranny of proprietary desktop software is worse - you are forced to run the latest version, even if the old one works better for you and you’d rather wait for the new one to get the bugs worked out. There are important privacy issues. As a simple example of why freedom matters to ‘normal’ people, Flickr can’t be themed to fit into the look of your personal or business website.
Running your own web applications may go some way to fix these problems, but it is much more complicated than running desktop software. There’s also a new kind of application that can only be provided in a proprietary way, and it comes as both web application and desktop software. I’m not sure what its called, but Google Maps and Google Earth are the best examples.
And my ‘100% Free Software’ status is a privileged one because I’ve just been taking time off over the summer. Now Understanding Design is running, I’ll need proprietary fonts to do graphic design, even though GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus are able to meet my application needs.
I’ll also have to deal with the specialist graphic design file formats from the entrenched proprietary vendors like Adobe and Quark. Whereas a lot of effort has been put into understanding the Microsoft Office file formats, the design ones may never be reverse engineered as they’re so specialist. So I’ll need a proprietary OS and those applications handy, licensed at great expense and loss of liberty, even if I do all my own work using Free Software.
And a lot of my friends are starting to adopt Skype, so if I want to VOIP with them, I have to use Skype. There are Free Software alternatives, but no Free implementation of Skype itself.
I’m planning to buy a new computer before the end of the year. Probably I’ll get an Apple computer and run all 3 OS, so I can promote Free Software by demonstrating it on all operating systems, and use proprietary software where I need to. This seems unprincipled, compromised. Yet the only person I’ve met who doesn’t already make such compromises is Richard.
Will this ever change? If it doesn’t, I suspect the Free Software Movement is doomed.
The Is the Free Software Movement Doomed? by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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6 Responses to “Is the Free Software Movement Doomed?”
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How can it mean that free software is ‘doomed’, just because you occasionally have to use proprietary software? Was to goal to force all software into being free?
There’s room for both kids on the block, IMHO. There will always be proprietary software unless the Constitution is amended (copyright protection actually comes before the Bill of Rights). So unless everyone voluntarily makes software free, there will always be those who will excersize their rights to keep some of their information private. How does that mean that free software is dead?
Just a thought.
Kuriharu: Was the goal to force all software into being free? Yes it is.
I suspect you are confusing price with freedom. If all software was free, engineers would still get paid, just as lawyers are, says Lessig.
One of my best success stories with introducing Free Software to a client has been with Audacity. The FAQ says “Some of us do it for moral reasons, because we feel that all software should be free.”
And Ubuntu founder Shuttleworth has said “I believe that all software should be free.” - although much of Ubuntu’s infrastructure exists as proprietary web applications.
[…] Fravia makes a great point on his messageboard that actually the YouTube deal is not as interesting as the ‘Google OS’ that is emerging (and that I feel may doom the Free Software Movement) Everytime you turn your head… […]
http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2006-11-02 explains the way the Google OS is going to really cut deep into Microsoft.
I don’t have answers but it’s good to see the right questions being asked. I’ll be watching for wise replies.
After spending the last few weeks since writing this getting more involved in the Free Software Movement, a couple of funny things happened that suggest that the future of Free Software is not so gloomy. First, Forbes published an article - http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1030/104_print.html - that is full of lies, deceit about GPLv3 and Free Software, and mostly a personal attack on Richard Stallman. This suggests to me that he and GPLv3 are doing something right, to be perceived as needing such an attack. The other thing is that yesterday, Novell and Microsoft announced a patent portfolio agreement. This is also bound to get more interesting when GPLv3 is finalised next year - see Eben Moglens comments at http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-6132156.html - and suggests that Microsoft is finally admitting defeat. I think a lot of businesses have looked at Vista’s licensing terms and price - £500 for Office 2007 Ultimate! - and said, “We’re jumping ship to Free Software wherever we can, thanks”. Top satirical coverage is at http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2006/11/ive-got-cutest-little-skirt-for-you.html :-)