[GNU-linux-libre] A call to free software, and its users

[Sam Geeraerts]

I've been following the "Freedom issues" thread from a distance. It was 
also brought up in a conversation with Paul O'Malley (one of the guys 
who set up gNewSense). We concluded that it'd be useful to look at the 
basics to provide some clarity.

We're all familiar with the four freedoms:
[0] The freedom to run the program as you wish.
[1] The freedom to study it and change it the way you want.
[2] The freedom to give copies to others.
[3] The freedom to give your own improvements to others.

We value and promote these freedoms and so recognize that non-free 
software oppresses the user.

Let us try to understand this whole "suggesting non-free software" and 
what it means to a user. If one was to suggest a fully proprietary 
system, all people on this list would be in shock. So let's not do that. 
Let's look at the field of endeavour. In a lot of GNU/Linux 
distributions there is a lack of understanding of what a Free Software 
system is, at least if we are to judge it by the FSF's four freedoms.

How can I prove this? There are programs that should not be in some 
systems, and they were not put there by users, they were put there by 
developers. For instance: Downloader for X (a.k.a. d4x) and Ivman.

Now it is the case that even Wikipedia has notes on why some of these 
programs are non-free. So we understand that a license which is vague or 
non-existent is not free. For reference, see gNewSense and GLX. It took 
a lot of work, but that software is now fully free after being removed 
from gNewSense.

So what is it that means that a distribution should action the removal 
of software? Most GNU/Linux distributions don't do a lot of navel 
gazing. Paul told me that gNewSense was formed with that in mind. When 
Brian and Paul were putting gNewSense together, they were almost ready 
for release in their initial view when they removed the "restricted 
modules" and the Multiverse component of Ubuntu. The matter was raised 
on IRC and a Dutch developer pointed out to them that work needed to be 
done on the Linux kernel too. No further reference was made to this. 
They started digging through the source and found binary blobs (Binary 
Large Objects). They started to remove these from the kernel. Then they 
released their first release with the caveat that the only bugs they 
want are Freedom bugs.

So why were these blobs bad? Simply put: they had no source code. As you 
should be able to "edit" and most people can't parse blobs, Brian and 
Paul felt that these had to go (see the deblobbing script, which became 
linux-libre). However, more issues occured.

Let's look at Firefox. The issue with it has nothing to do with 
trademarks, because they don't make software free or non-free. They just 
restrict what you can call it. Software is about users having 
functionality, not about having the same name as upstream while changing 
the program time and again. So Firefox has an "API" called "addons". 
When we examine this, a lot of the software that addons "add" is not 
Free. So, if we freedom lovers include Firefox in our distributions, 
then we have a problem: we are including software which suggests to 
people that installing any addon is OK. We know that some of this 
software is not good, so this is a bad idea because it encourages 
non-free installations. It makes it harder to explain what Free Software 
is when we compromise for a popular program, or code that enables some 
non free software. Therefore we should abandon these paths. By all means 
reverse engineer it and provide a free version.

So if we suggest these addons, by having that code included, then we are 
saying to users that it's OK to install the addons. To discourage this 
behaviour, the code that points to the addons is removed. Because of the 
trademark, the name had to be different. In version 1 of gNewSense there 
was Burning Dog. In version 2 there's a pointer to GNU Icecat. So this 
addon behaviour is no longer an issue for users.

If a user comes to us and says "I use XYZ", we can then explain how 
non-free software takes their freedom away. So suggesting non-free 
software at kernel level or in the packages is not OK, because it 
oppresses our users. Perhaps it is better to lead by example than to be 
tainted? At least we get to have a relevant conversation with people.

We can all approach this as rational human beings supporting Free 
Software. Some people suggest that you should really proclaim your view 
as being supreme, and justify it using the 4 freedoms to prove your 
case. You should never, ever encourage someone to install non-free 
software. People have the freedom to do what they want, but we hackers 
should never oppress our users!

A casual observation of the list suggests that people are not making 
allowances for the fact that we do not all speak the same native 
language, (blame that on history  ;-)  ) please make calm claims and 
calmer counter claims of each other, it does nothing for the cause to be 
emotional about your views or other peoples views. This only creates 
misunderstanding and division. It does not help our community in its 
battle for the universal adoption of Free Software. We are attacked from 
the outside enough without presuming to make enemies of each other, 
which are most likely minor misunderstandings.

It may be useful to remember the other person may not be able to express 
the view they want to as accurately as they might want, and you may not 
be understanding that communication as well as you think, in particular 
if the message was not sent with 100% accuracy, which although we strive 
for it, English is buggy and there is no upstream to fix it.

Happy Software Freedom Day Every Day!

Kind regards,

Sam Geeraerts