I went along to a lecture given by the eminent founder of GNU and the school of Free software which was timetables for an hour and a half... or an hour depending on which site you read. If I am being kind, I would have to agree with the filibusters calling for the free software movement to find a new voice.
Introduction to Merchandising
'Dr' Richard Stallman, with honorary doctorates from several universities, began the talk by selling free software badges and memorabilia, such as "don't SaaS me" badges, for between £2 and £8 pounds. OK, he is taking advantage of the capitalist movement to further his cause for free software. Fine, I have no problem with that, since that is somewhat the way I would go on a crusade. He went on to espouse his already familiar belief that software should be free to anyone and that software should be inclusive.As part of his request to put videos or audio of his talk on sites running only free software and in a free software format (such as .ogg files instead of .mp3), he mentioned that Facebook is a surveillance engine.
Interesting point of view I thought. To me, Facebook is a site offering a service, which gathers data and one of the ways that this data 'could' be used would be 'surveillance' but you could equally argue that is also building useful marketing trends, usage stats to improve Facebook and optimise specific areas of the site amongst a host of other things. I happen to agree with the marketing edict that "If you are getting a service for free, then you are the product not the service", so I can see where this could be pertinent, but in reality, in the basic form it is just 'data' (and remember kids, data is just data until meaning is attached to it and in that that case and that case only, it becomes 'information').
He also went on to criticise Windows for destroying the resource that is you. It destroys the people and the freedom of the people. The reasons he stated this are not 100% clear, but he attempted to state that it blocks access for that resources to software and mass computing and so are spoiling the resource that is you.
To me, this was the point at which I figured this was going to be an abysmal talk. But I initially did the respectful thing and stayed for an hour and 10 minutes before having to walk out in disgust.
Thought: Cultural Tech Knowledge As A Sliding Window
I have had many a discussion on various types of technology over the years and have come to the conclusion that technology shifts cultural knowledge along as a kind of 'sliding window' over time. For example, the introduction of the calculator, made the populus as a whole less able to do arithmetic, but we gained how to use a calculator or anything with a numeric keypad... including the numeric keypad. The introduction of computers with WIMP/WYSIWYG editors, means people lost the understanding of formatting syntax, an understanding of command consoles and to some degree typing skills. Those buying computers with GUIs made people program less. In all case, feeding the apparent human need to find the path of least resistance meant we got to learn these 'labour saving' devices and forget the harder ways of doing the same job, sometimes to our detriment in the 'intermediate years' of each.Stallman started to talk through 9 threats to freedom and free software. He went on to mention surveillance as a recurring theme throughout the talk, citing Facebook's compliance in handing over your data to the authorities on request, the anti-copyright lobby initiating a propaganda campaign against free software, human rights abuses in the iPhone/iPad factories etc.
He mentioned that proprietary software logs usage data on people, so companies can keep tabs on what you do (there was certainly machine code disassembled in the Windows 3.x environment that indicated that if a network was present, certain information could be passed back to a host).
4 Levels of Freedom
He stated that Free software allows you four levels of freedom (0 to 3) which included freedom 0, running the software as you wish, which would apply like freedom 1 to individuals, but also freedoms 2 and 3 exist would would allow you to build a community with people "if they cooperate" (which I thought was a very authoritarian stance to take for someone with his standpoint).He claimed 'the community' would tell you if there was something wrong, 'the community' would give you support and help. He identified that not everyone is a programmer or has the skills to program, so the community could do that for them.
Please Sir Linus, can I have my ball back?
Stallman started to point out that whilst working on the Kernel for his Free software OS, he discovered that him and his team were in for a long-haul and thought that they would be around for years trying to get the kernel done. Then along came Linus Torvalds and slotted in his Linux kernel into the middle of all the other things that Stallman and his team had created and so the platform had become 'Linux'. So he would like us to call Linux GNU/Linux and give him and his team equal credit.This happens to be a story I have heard from other sources, so I am not actually miffed about it.
The Digital Divide
Stallman went on to state that proprietary software creates a society who are divided and helpless. They either can or can't program and can't modify the software. Aside from that being complete rubbish (you can modify almost any at the machine code level/IL if you work hard enough at it. Let's not forget this is how crackers make it happen), using free software doesn't solve this problem at all. In fact, it makes the divide much worse, as less people from this time or at any time in computing history would be able to program their own software, so most would be both divided from those that can program and are experts and be helpless to deal with a problem without the support of those people. If he is arguing that writing software should be part of the fabric of society, then making free software available in the sense he means it would be wholly counter-productive.He criticised Steve Jobs on his passing last year and drew a lot of criticism for it. Indeed, as other bloggers have already pointed out, Steve Jobs brought computing to the masses and changed the game fundamentally. Something Stallman has failed to do since 1983. I agree that very little of Apple/Jobs' work was new, however, what he did was identify the profile in society which needed a particular device, created a market for it, and then sold to that market. Stallman has failed to do this at any point, preferring his stance to come from a purely technocratic crusade when all people want is the labour saving device to save them time, keep in touch, same them space, get online, share things etc. Stallman fundamentally failed to show the world there was a problem and offer a solution like Apple (and indeed a lot of proprietary software did). Apple happened to identify the problem at the right time and marketed in the right way. Even though I personally don't like their products much at all, I have to commend the marketing skills that Apple had under Steve Jobs. The had their finger on the pulse at all points, their market and brand awareness were exemplary and very few companies have matched them since. Maybe Samsung since, but they obviously were no the first.
The supply of proprietary desktops to the classroom was another issue that he went on to target. My counter argument is that schools are woefully under prepared should anything goes wrong. Generally the UK public sector ICT jobs are incredibly low paid relative to the private sector. As such, won't appeal to the very highly skilled who can earn 6 times as much. So the support isn't there. People often purchase support for piece of mind and IT retail businesses know that. That is why the "extended 3 year warrantee" is often purchased by those not in the know. They want that piece of mind.
Similarly, schools need the support contract and they need it with people who know the infrastructure in detail (usually having fitted it), understand the platform and are reliable. Free software doesn't have that one person/organisation they can turn to. So understandably, they are worried. After all, if 999 didn't exist (it celebrates it's 75th birthday this month), who would you call in a major emergency? Your mum? Your mate the badge selling Dick-Stall man?... sorry, typo :-S
Hypocrisy
He said words to the effect of "Proprietary software is supplied to schools in the same way drugs are supplied to children!" and then in his pitch about "the war on sharing" (copyright and legislative frameworks designed to stop it) several minutes later, made the comment about anti-copyright propaganda."WTF!?!?!" I hear you ask "Did he honestly make the connection between school kids and drugs, then complain about a propaganda campaign against him and his organisation?" Yes, I can confirm, he definitely did! That was the point at which the man lost all credibility with me and reduced him to a a giant, hairy blob of hypocrisy.
Don't SaaS Me!!
His 9 threats to freedom then included a criticism of SaaS services such as file storage apps (implying the likes of dropbox and G-Drive) and referred to how the "Pat Riot Act" (Patriot act) gives the US authorities access to your data from a provider without needing a court order. He also criticised PaaS/SaaS environments because the user effectively has to upload their data onto the service to run... which in my mind is the same as punch cards/mainframe system of days of yore. Mainframes can still store data or pipe it to a PC to be stored on disk and yet he kept exclaiming that any systems which the user has no control over is a threat to [the] free software [movement]. In any case, there is no difference in security risk as both mainframes and SaaS introduce a system that the 'resource' has no control over.In reality, people would struggle. For example, how many people in your friends list are not programmers? Given you are reading this blog, there is a good chance the figure you came to is overstating it, as being nerds/geeks we tend to stick arond our ilk. We are the people too many others turn to when they have computer problems. Indeed, some geeks have developed coming strategies, so that when asked what they do for a living the reply is "erm... I am a refuse collector. I collect refuse!"
Don't Vote On Computer!
Cool! Thanks! I won't vote for you Stallman, whomever the Free Software Foundation decide should be their next voice, I will attempt to vote for them. I don't care who it is! Torvalds, Gates, Balmer, Cook whoever! Just get the chair from under that guy!I used to have a certain respect for the free software foundation several years ago. The FSF/OSS movement brought the battle to the Windows/UNIX platforms in the enterprise, at one point making up 60% of company servers and caused Microsoft to really look again at its server platforms. Indeed, I was in a focus group in London in 2001 where Linux was brought up in a question by the facilitator.
Summary
The Open Source community were right to splinter off from him and his ethos. Myself, having held the free software movement in fairly high regard for its achievements in pushing well in to proprietary software territory in the server space, I was sorely disappointed with Stallman's contradictory, hypocritical and nonsensical rantings which seemed somewhat detached from the way the market dynamics have worked. It is not that a lot of his sourced statements were wrong, but the meaning he attached to that 'data' was so far off it bordered on, dare I say, lunacy!I finished my working day 30 minutes early to drag myself and a poor unfortunate to see this guy. I lost income due to this and I am very definitely not going to recommend seeing Stallman talk. I have to say, I should have heeded the advice of others who had experienced his one man 'cult' at work (I am afraid that is how I see it) and I can't say I can recommend this at all. The FSF need to find a better voice to take them to the next level. This has to happen to keep their crusade alive and give consumers options, as the more Stallman talks, the worse it will get.
I can imagine some free software veterans saying "God MAN! Shut-up SHUT-UP SHUT-UUUUPPP!" and frankly, 70 minutes into the lecture, I really wished he would too!
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