Chrisoft::Blog(r#"Ideology vs Pragmatism &c.")

2018-05-18
#sophistry #garbage

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Preface

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-Born in the 90s, when almost every piece of software around was -proprietary, I felt *exteremely* lucky that I can now power my life using -(mostly) free software. Still, I might never be able to understand the case -in the 70s, in which, according to Richard Stallman, every piece of software -is basically free. -

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Ideology vs Pragmatism

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-There are Linux distros[1] -whose software repository contains free software only (e.g. Trisquel & -Parabola). There are also distros that doesn't care much about licenses -(e.g. ArchLinux). Some distros falls between the two extremes: Debian -has a main section which is entirely made up of free software, -but it also has contrib and non-free -[2] sections in their repository, which can be added to the system -quite easily. -

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-To most of us who do not have a requirement on every single piece of -software being free, we still have to use non-free components -- even to -make the toaster[3] fully working. For -example, non-free blobs in the Linux kernel and drivers. Using "free" distros -on these computers essentially cripple the core functionality of that -computer. If most users require non-free components, it makes sense that -the distro providers include them in the software repository. As a matter -of fact, I haven't met any user of a "free" distro outside of GNU. -[4] -

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-Using a distro that provides proprietary software should not be considered -a sin to free software. -Actually it's a huge step towards freedom in today's world dominated by -proprietary software. In order to remind the user of this, it is the -responsibitliy for the distro provider to tell the user about the benefits -of free software and advocate them contributing to it. -

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-Since I've got no mysophobia of proprietary software personally, I don't -really care about installing proprietary software on my mostly free system. -I prefer using free software whenever one is available. But if the use of -free software results in crippling the core functionality (e.g. removing -firmware blobs from the kernel causing WLAN cards made by Intel not -working), I may compromise and install a few pieces of proprietary software -(instead of using an external WLAN card like RMS). -[5] -

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Free Software vs "Normies"

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-The idea of free software won't spread widely if it fails on the "normies". -Everything about free software is a circlejerk of us hackers -if we ignore the "normies". Sadly that is just the case right now. -

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-The major reason that free software fail to become daily driver of most -people is that probably most free software targets at "mega-nerds" instead -of the vast amount of computer "normies". These "normies" just use their -computers either to get their office work done or to browse the web -(sometimes both). In this sense, free software often offer terrible -experience: Linux distributions, if not pre-installed by device vendor, -often have bad out-of-box experience (either missing driver or firmware, -or the software requiring too much tweaks to make it actually usable). -Another example is window manager: the most popular window manager used -by desktop Linux users is i3, whose default interface is obscure to new -users and needs a lot of configuration before it suits the user. Only -people that are really keen on tweaking would do that. -

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-Things are changing though. Some free software makers, for example the -GNOME Fundation, are striving to make free software more user-friendly -and fool-proof. They recently removed the ability to run executables -directly in the file manager to prevent the user from accently running -a malicious script that destroys their computer. -[6] -But in my opinion the components should remain customizable for the users -who "knows what they are doing". -

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"Free" vs "Open Source"

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-Richard Stallman has made multiple statements on how he dislikes the term -"Open Source". I pretty much simply repeat one of his points here. -

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-"Free" and "Open Source" has a large part in common: in fact, being "free" -requires the software to be "open source". However the idea laying below -is very different: The term "open source" is currently being abused by -gigantic companies as a weasel word to avoid using "free". They often use -free component in their proprietary products and doesn't want to remind the -user that there is a free counterpart that doesn't take the freedom from -them. A famous example of this is Google Chrome and -Chromium. [7] Similarly, Microsoft "loves" Linux because it is "open source", -not because it is "free".[8] -

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-On the other hand, Linus seems to be at the opposite end of it. -[9] -Pleased to learn that this world is never lack of diversity. -

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Free software in China

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-Free software is not having a good time in China: -

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-As Chinese use two distinct words for "free" as in beer and "free" as in -freedom, we should have faced less problems than the English-speaking -community. Sadly, almost all tranlators used the word for free beer when -translating "free software". -
-"Thanks" to the crappy copyright law in China, pirating software and -reverse engineering is explictly allowed with some restrictions, making -free software a lot less known to the general public -[10]. -That same crappy copyright law also gave chance to massive GPL violations. -Examples: AllWinner, -XiaoMi -and MediaTek [11]. -
-As China wasn't actually involved in the software industry until proprietary -software has almost taken the whole thing, there are misconceptions -regarding free software in the Chinese community. For example, the -definition of 'source code' in A Dictionary of Current Chinese -claims "protecting the source code helps to lower the chance of being -hacked". -
-Software engineering college in China only teach the process of proprietary -software engineering. Although they utilize free software a lot through -out the college, they do not promote the use of free software for 'serious -work', often putting an emphasis on the strengths of proprietary software. -

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-As currently the entire Chinese software industry is really addicted (and -devoted) to AI, ML, IoT and their 'made in China' nonsense, chance of -solving these problems seems bleak. Also Chinese doesn't do stuff that -makes no money, but ... -

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Monetization of Free Software

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-... free software can make money. Ethically. -

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-By saying ethically I am not promoting the act of getting a maga-sponsor -and just doing anything they requested. The only ethical way for free -software to monetize is probably paid support and donation. Red Hat is a -well-known company that made sheer amount of money out of free software. -^{Sarcasm. You should have known it.} -However, not everyone would succeed following that route (even Microsoft -failed to figure out how to make it work /s). Thus the choice for the vast -number of smaller free software projects would be donation. So why is -accepting donation a good idea? -

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The user donates what ever they want (money, hardware, code, -translation etc.) voluntarily, and...
There's no cap on donation amount, so those who got the fortune may -donate a good deal of stuff.
Those who don't yet have the ability to donate would not be triggered. -More over, the spirit of "free as in freedom" remains intact. -

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-But when things come to money, people starts getting greedy. -Don't let your greed ruin the entire project. -

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Final words

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-This article is full of my immature thoughts and rants. Fortunately due to -the low popularity of this site, they would not be exposed too much. -Writing such a long article is really a pain in my ass though. -

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-If you have different opinions, please consider -telling me about it and probably correcting me if I -made a mistake. -

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[1]: By saying "Linux distros" in this article, -I am refering to GNU/Linux distributions, except Alpine Linux.
[2]: They use their very own guideline (DFSG) to determine whether -a piece of software is free or not. The most famous difference between -DFSG and GNU's guideline is that according to DFSG, GFDL is a nonfree -license, which, in my opinion, is pretty ridiculous. -Such ideology, much hilarious. -
[3]: i.e. computer
[4]: There's one exception: Pure OS from Purism, which is tailored for -their Librem devices. So it runs without proprietary software on their -devices just find. Of course I haven't seen one of those either because -I live in China. But I expect my next laptop to be a Librem 13 as long as -they improve the battery life and make it thinner -- at least on par with the -ThinkPad X line products.
[5]: Yup I may never program OpenGL on a libreboot-ed ThinkPad T400 -or X200. Those ThinkPads were a classic but perform pretty bad whenever -I do CPU-intense jobs. -
[6]: -This is half truth, half sarcasm. It does make nautilus fool-proof -(kind of). -GNOME is always removing customizability from their desktop environment -recently, which I can't tell is good or not. This indeed reveals the -dictatorial decision-making process inside the development cycle. -However, -this change has been reverted a week ago. Cringy. -
[7]: Chromium is actually a pretty nasty example of free -software: it contains tracking code from Google. Efforts have been made to -strip those from the browser. The resulting product is called "Iridium". -
[8]: Probably because Microsoft doesn't know -how to make profit with free software.
[9]: -a -b -
[10]: also making China an ideal place to reverse engineer something /s. -
[11]: Taiwan (whether a part of -China or not. No politics here.) has better environment for free software in -general, but still horrible.

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