Chrisoft::Blog

2018-05-18
#sophistry #garbage

+

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. +

+

Ideology vs Pragmatism

+

+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. +

+

+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] +

+

+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. +

+

+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] +

+

Free Software vs "Normies"

+

+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. +

+

+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. +

+

+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". +

+

"Free" vs "Open Source"

+

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

+

+"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] +

+

+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. +

+

Free software in China

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

+

+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. +

+

+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 ... +

+

Monetization of Free Software

+

+... free software can make money. Ethically. +

+

+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? +

+

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. +

+

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

+

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. +

+

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

+

+ +

[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.

+

Chrisoft

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