True Freedom Manifesto on Software
A couple of month ago, I began to use Linux in a daily use, I started with Ubuntu, to finish embracing Arch Linux and its KISS principle, in my journey to find which distro was the better fit for me, I had the opportunity to test a lot of them, some was fine like Debian, meanwhile other was absolutely horrible a.k.a Elementary OS. Doing all this research made me realize one thing, the philosophy of free software is everywhere when you use Linux, you can fell it in any package you download or any application you use, in the beginning, it’s was fine, but something in me was disturbed, I tried to analyze what’s was the issue, and I think that I found the key of the problem, freedom, Real Freedom.
Proprietary Software
In the beginning of everything, it was the closed sources, big and small company working separately and individually to make the best software and in the same moment to preserve themselves of any possible problem with any competitors, and that was…. more or less good.
Company like Microsoft, Apple, Lotus and a lot more are of this era, a time were computers was just a black background with white text and where using a computer meant learning a thick manual an entire afternoon before to use it.
In that newborn industry (and technology) Software was a important piece of those machine, and so company like MIcrosoft saw the opportunity to take advantage of segment.
Open Source or Free Software, wasn’t part of the business of those company and saw as the devil, who dare you to give the source code of the program that give me 4 month to develop, it was inconceivable.
Program in this era was simple, very simple, thousand lines, maybe more, but less that one million for sure, MS-DOS or the command line interface of the Apple II, was the biggest program (OS) of this epoch, and compared to our standard today was relatively small program.
This smallness coupled by the fact that in the 70s, Internet was not a thing at all, and therefore had no standardization of code practice, make this business model rise up… When suddenly….
Free Software
We remember the words of Ballmer about Linux, but we often forget the letter in 80s than Bill Gates wrote about how the second hand retailers of Altair Basic was basically stealing its software, this aggressiveness of the beginning was something very clear… and when someone tries to limit freedom there is always a group willing to face it with the same ideals but totally inverted.
Ladies and Gentleman I have the honor to introduce you Richard Stallman and the Free Software Movement, here instead of seeing Software as a Product, we see it like a Kitchen Recipe, here instead of selling the software without any warranty, we give it to you for free without any warranty, here instead of closing source code and saying no no, it’s mine don’t look to much, we say hey can you give me some help for this recursive function.
Yes, I think you get it, Free Software was born has the black sheep of all the white closed source sheep that was existing in this era.
GNU, Gimp, GTK, Xorg etc… and well the most important but that I want to hold for my last part (Linux)
Free Software was invented more or less in the 90s , when communication was not that bad than in the 70s and so some hippies in a campus was able to share its opinions about which world they wanted to inherit.
When this movement start its was very small and so was absolutely neglected by the big companies (between 70s and 90s those small company was transformed in big corporation in a new and clean market). But more adepts was recruited more problematic its become until companies start to devilish them to make sure that they never to be has popular that their was, and here we come back to our Ballmer declaration and our loop is close.
2000s, Biggest Software, Internet
This epic galactic war between this two titans continue, and meanwhile the user was absolutely careless of all this shit, and all they want was to use this super exciting new technology to listen music, play games, write some text (ok… this one it’s not as fun as the previous two), so some buy the new IPod and complain about the battery, other buy Microsoft Me (Millennium) and complain about the buggy state of this amazing new Operating System (Millennials problem lol you understand the joke…. you know Millennials, Millennium, Me… whatever… sorry! French Joke :) )
Basically the 2000s was based in one principle, Internet, and here we see the second wave of company raising up from nowhere, to become one of the most powerful today’s companies. From this decade more or less are companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, so basically those company was born in a mix of culture between closed sources and free software, as the free software was in the university in 90s and mostly those companies hire people from there, or was the owners of this new empires, a merge begin to emerge in those company.
Meanwhile old company try they best to continue with they own resources and continuing demonizing the Free Software, but the cancer as Ballmer call it, was already on companies all around the world, as companies doesn’t care about ethic and just want money, that was a unfair battle, Ethics Principle against Nothing, the winner was clear… in the end none of them win, but as I say in my last paragraph it was merge of those two principle, a program that can be free in source but that can be sold
Ladies and Gentleman…
Open Source and XXI century
The complexity of today software is unimaginable, millions of lines of code, each of them working together to bring to you the possibility to go to Instagram, and like some photos of you actual crush, this piece of engineering was impossible in 90s or in the beginning of 2000s, why now is possible then? In one word…. Collaboration.
Open Source are the merge of Free Software and Closed Source, but what’s that merge means?
We say before than companies doesn’t have any ethics principle and philosophic school, but those companies was founded or had employees that like free software, so what’s happened? Simple, they dish the philosophy part and their kept the engineering part, in a pragmatic way, we not longer closed source software, but we are open source one but instead to have License that force everyone that use this software to distribute this software freely, we have License that let you the choose to do whatever you want with this software.
Quick Example, If we take the GIMP software that have a GPL License, if you modify it or you use it inside you own program for some reason, you must to have the same license for all the software that created just because you have the GIMP software in it, they force you, that why we say that free software are a philosophical/ethical way of making software License.
In comparison if we take React, that are a open source library, primarily developed by Facebook, if you modify it or you use it inside you own program , you can do whatever you want with it, you can even close the source of you software if you want. You see? no obligation and so no ethic or philosophy are in LIcense, only a pragmatical way of doing things.
Basically Open Source it’s Free Software adapted for Corporation, our reality, after all we live in a cyberpunk world.
Conclusion and my Personal Opinion
And we come back to our Linux in the beginning of this article, when I say that something disturb me, I was referring to this old war between closed software and free software, won by a third participant Open Source.
And for that I have the same opinion than Linus Torvalds, I don’t have a specific ethic manual in the way of how the software are licensed, and just want, one thing, freedom, and today with all our technology, for me the most free of the software license are not free software but open source, because I can do whatever I want with it, no License force me to do whatever a community of person say that was good for the world. I just want to program and be free to use all the open source library without any restriction for commercial use or not, with closed source or not, because each of us have our own circumstances, and I thing that a world that let you do whatever you want and let you learn by yourself responsibilities it’s better than a world that force me to do the correct thing without understanding it.
So this is why I prefer Open Source to Free Software, because I can be free to take actions, and be responsible of them, and therefore be a better adult.
P.D: Sorry for any grammatical problem I’m not English native so…
