As I’ve delved deeper into politics I’ve been struck by just how many activists on the left who might otherwise self-identify as anti-capitalist, socialist or defenders of personal freedom, are quite willing to accept corporate control over the technology they rely on. Having been involved in the free software movement for the past six years, I have noticed a strange cognitive dissonance with regards to this issue; one I feel needs to be tackled with education on the alternatives.
You may have heard of ‘open source’ or ‘free software’ before. In fact you’re most likely already making use of it, whether you realise it or not. Free software powers internet giants such as Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. The Firefox browser is used by around 30% of web users around the world. Free software is also becoming more widely used in consumer devices, like mobile phones running Android.
So what is free software? And why should something which might be more at home in the basement of The IT Crowd concern those of us on the left?
Without wishing to become entangled in boring technical jargon, for software to be classed as ‘free,’ it must meet four essential criteria of freedom. Users should have the freedom to run the program for any purpose, the freedom to study how the program works and change it to make it do what they wish, the freedom to redistribute copies so they can help their neighbour, and finally the freedom to distribute copies of modified versions to others.
The free software movement was established during the early 1980s by MIT academic Richard Stallman. Stallman had become frustrated with the creeping restrictions on software development, which had historically been open to everybody. Large corporations ceased the distribution of underlying computer source code, which prevented users from tweaking the program to meet their needs or to fix bugs themselves. The extension of copyright law to software in the 1980s also acted as an additional restriction.
(If this all still sounds a little confusing, perhaps I should let free-software advocate - and national treasure - Stephen Fry explain it a little further, in a fantastic video he recorded for the 25th birthday of the free software foundation.)
Many are initially confused by the term ‘free’ in this context, assuming that it means gratis: without financial cost. It does, but the issue of cost barely scratches the surface when it comes to understanding free software. The constitutional scholar and professor of law at Harvard Law School, Lawrence Lessig, argues:
[Free Software is] not free as in costless, but free as in limited in its control by others. Free software is control that is transparent, and open to change, just as free laws, or the laws of a “free society,” are free when they make their control knowable, and open to change. The aim of Stallman’s “free software movement” is to make as much code as it can transparent, and subject to change, by rendering it “free.”
Lessig compares the methods by which free software contributes to society to that of a legal brief: a free and open document which can be copied and integrated into future briefs or judicial opinion; the outcome of which being the evolution of law via continual improvement, revision and cooperation.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, proprietary software (such as that produced by Apple, Adobe or Microsoft) could be compared to cooking with a recipe book which is both carved in stone and chained to a single kitchen. It leaves users helpless, unable to adapt the package to their needs, banned from sharing and creating derivative works, and unable to fix problems themselves.
One of the most compelling reasons for free software adoption is that it fits into a left-leaning, ethical and economic framework of sharing and cooperation. It is - in short - socialism for computing.
So what exactly is so bad about us using an Apple iPhone or purchasing a computer with Microsoft Windows installed?
A special problem occurs when activists for social change use proprietary software, because its developers, who control it, may be companies they wish to protest—or that work hand in glove with the states whose policies they oppose. Control of our software by a proprietary software company, whether it be Microsoft, Apple, Adobe or Skype, means control of what we can say, and to whom. This threatens our freedom in all areas of life.
Richard Stallman - Your Freedom Needs Free Software
As technology has evolved, the corporate stranglehold which Stallman first observed in the 1980s has increased exponentially and so has the abuse of this power.
For example, Microsoft has been involved in several high profile anti-trust cases, and was convicted of monopolistic behaviour by the EU in 2004 with a fine totalling $730m. Amazingly. Microsoft chose to disregard this decision and subsequently received a further $1.4bn fine in 2008. This was the first time a corporation had wilfully ignored an anti-trust ruling in over 50 years of EU competition policy.
Apple and other large technology companies also partake in some ethically questionable behaviour in the production of their equipment. Apple was targeted by Greenpeace in 2007 over the toxic chemicals found within the iPhone, following founder Steve Jobs’ earlier dismissal of environmental concerns as ‘bullshit’.
The recent rise of corporately controlled cloud computing , where your personal data is stored not on your own PC or laptop but in the data centres of a company such as Google, Amazon or Dropbox, presents a new and unexplored set of dangers to technological freedom. The privacy implications of cloud computing could be massive, with providers able to - lawfully or unlawfully - access data, or supply it with ease to law enforcement agencies, a massive concern for anyone involved in protest or direct action. Similarly, the emergence of e-books represents an additional threat, as Amazon proved by remotely deleting copies of books (which ironically included George Orwell’s 1984) from their customer’s Kindle devices in 2009.
Well, the Internet, like most technology, is a very double-edged sword. Like any technology, including printing, it has a liberatory potential, but it also has a repressive potential, and there’s a battle going on about which way it’s going to go, as there was for radio, and television, and so on.
So what are the alternatives? Whilst some popular free software is also available for proprietary platforms such as Windows or Mac, this simply doesn’t compare to the benefits of moving to an entirely free system.
GNU/Linux is a completely open computing platform with many variants, perhaps the most well-known of which being Ubuntu and Debian. Removing proprietary software from your machine and installing an operating system such as Ubuntu is the simplest way to experience full software freedom. It supports all the latest technology you’d expect from your computer and provides easy access to thousands of open applications developed by teams of volunteers from around the globe.
A great many Latin American countries including Cuba, Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela are already making heavy use of GNU/Linux, as are other governments in Europe. However, the freedom which free software enables is far from limited to consumer technology.
Sukey is a perfect example of free software’s liberating potential. The developers built the web based anti-kettling tool making heavy use of existing free software and the developers plan to release Sukey itself under a free software licence once it is stable, allowing activists around the world to adopt and adapt Sukey for their own needs. It is almost impossible to conceive that Sukey could have been so speedily written during the student protests of 2010 if an existing wealth of free software hadn’t existed for them to derive from.
Free software is politically neutral, but is theoretically open for any group or party to support. Yet the left seems strangely quiet on its potential benefits, whereas the right seems to have taken full advantage.
George Osborne has espoused the advantages of free software - using its corporate-friendly incarnation ‘open source’ - claiming in a speech to the Royal Society in 2007 that the British Government could save £600m a year by making the switch. No doubt Osborne sees in free software yet another opportunity to privatise the provision of IT services to friendly third-party contractors, however the initial sentiment is encouraging. Sadly, the Conservatives - and to a similar extent the Greens - are the only UK political parties which wholeheartedly encourage the use of free software in government within their party policy. Labour has made some moves to encouraging free software adoption, but these appear to be quite hollow and fairly limited in scope.
We desperately need to hear more from politicians and political activists on this issue. Free software represents a fantastic tool at our disposal to take back control over our technology from corporations and governments who might otherwise continue to violate our rights in ways as innovative as the new technology.
So do bear in mind, when you set out to purchase your next Apple iPhone or Windows 7 computer, the system of oppressive restrictions you are propping up by doing so. I hope you’ll pause to consider whether free software might offer you a cheaper, more ethical, secure and user-friendly alternative.
Jonathan Davis is editor of Passing Nightmare
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8 Comments on "Free Software: Socialism for Computing"
By Steve C, on 19 August 2011 - 08:02 |
I’ve been using Xubuntu and before that Ubunti for nearly a year now and does everything Windows XP does except crash. Its an old machine and can’t cope with Vista or 7 but with Xubuntu its great.
By MJ Ray, on 19 August 2011 - 12:14 |
Nice introduction and already a good comment made above, but I’m a bit surprised that you didn’t mention the tech co-ops that support Free and Open Source Software for end users. If you get stuck, you still don’t have to succumb to private corporate control.
(Disclosure: I’m a member of a tech co-op, but I post this in a personal capacity.)
By Peter M., on 19 August 2011 - 12:56 |
Thank you for this. I’m going to have to look into reinstalling Linux on my computers, it has been a long time.You might also read the following article from Monthly Review, which first turned me on to the dangers and problems of corporate hegemony over internet technologies. I’ve taken a lot of talking points from it, and I’ve forwarded it to both IT and socialist friends.
http://monthlyreview.org/2011/03/01/the-internets-unholy-marriage-to-capitalism
By Jonas, on 20 August 2011 - 13:22 |
Nice writeup!
I’m on a long term transition plan from Windows to GNU/Linux, specifically Ubuntu. I think step by step transition is a good recommendation to regular users who are getting curious about free operating systems. Don’t switch overnight. Get some experience over a time first and plan to make the transition.
Let me add a few tips I’ve found very helpful when moving towards open source applications and operating systems myself.
Good tools for that: install Virtualbox , http://www.virtualbox.org/ . That lets you make virtual installations of any number of Linux versions inside Windows. It is much like having a version of Linux installed as an application in Windows. After installing it, download one or more Linux ISO files. http://www.ubuntu.com/ is a good start. That way you can testdrive Linux without having to change anything in your regular Windows installation. It works just like a real installation, you can test all the available programs, install new programs inside the virtual operatiing system and learn about practical similarities and differences between versions of Linux and Windows.
Another good thing when transitioning is to think in terms of functions. What Windows programs do you rely on for private and/or work use? What alternatives are available? http://www.osalt.com/ and http://alternativeto.net/ are both good sources open source alternatives. Make a list of Windows programs you use and search for and get used to replacements one at a time.
When you have enough experience with Linux and already know many programs to use then you can make the switch without much effort. Even after switching there are often ways to run particular Windows programs inside a Linux environment, using Virtualbox or similar virtualization programs.
By John Doe, on 22 August 2011 - 07:38 |
I’m sorry, but your examples are too weak to convince me of anything. Have you actually read the stories on the links you put up? Specifically, the one under “bullshit”? It has nothing to do with what you are writing about. Please be more careful with your links. I would also appreciate a few more explicit examples of the abuse of power by these big software companies.
By Steve C, on 22 August 2011 - 10:11 |
Re:abuse of power. Well the practice of manufacturing items which become obsolete over a few years is not new. The Windows operating system has grown into a monster. People upgrade to the new versions only to find they also have to upgrade their computer because for example the graphics card doesn’t come up to scratch. So tons of computer hardware is scrapped for no good reason other than “progress”. Then of course because you have a new operating system you have to get new versions of the software you were using. More expense! This is how they make money.
But for me the practical side of things outweigh the political. I was using Nero with Windows but now I use K3B and DVD Styler. Instead of Adobe Premier Plus video editing software I use Openshot. The Linux version of GIMP is much more advanced than the Windows version and does just about anything that Photoshop can do or at least anything I’m likely to use it for, Liberoffice suite is virtually the same as Microsoft Office but I don’t have to pay for it. In fact there a very few Linux apps you DO have to pay for. They’re free and they’re all in the same place, a repository which is pre-linked via the Ubuntu Software Center. And there are thousands of downloads available each given a star rating by users. So it’s a community based system that works brilliantly because the source is free. People (with the know-how) can tweak the software to their liking and this way the bugs are eventually ironed out.
With Linux it ain’t so. True you need a fast machine to run some distros but there are still linux based operating systems which will run on older machines. I bought my computer a Dell on ebay for £150 about 4 years ago. It had Windows XP professional installed on it but no discs. Error messages kept popping up asking for the original discs in order to repair. Was I going to fork out money for a new OS disc? No way! So I opted for Linux, but not after borrowing some Dell OEM XP discs from a friemd.
Linux has advance rapidly over the last 5 years. When I first started using it there were problems with certain hardware. I use 3 mobile broadband and for a long time I was forced to go back to Windows XP until Ubuntu caught up, which it did about a year ago. Of course the recent Ubuntu upgrade went above the specs of my computer with the introduction of Unity: a piece of fancy desktop shenanigans. So I opted for Xubuntu - a low spec alternative.
By Jonas, on 24 August 2011 - 21:06 |
John Doe: The two key arguments against proprietary software are in my view costs and loss of freedom. Microsofts operating system and application suits are very expensive. So expensive that hundreds of millions computer users globally cannot afford them today. But Microsoft is at the same time a de facto standard in many work environments. Experience with Microsoft software can be an important factor when competing for a job. That amounts to one more disadvantage for poorer people. And yet those harmful costs are unneccessary. We could change the de facto standards to open source operating systems and applictions. Thye would work as well or better and everyone with a computer would have access to them. The community of volunteers contributing code would also grow as the userbase expanded. Any funding needed can be done through (progressive) taxation.
By Michal, on 05 September 2011 - 17:39 |
I agree with the cause you are advancing but your arguments are not too great.
The Microsoft anti-trust case is hardly related to your proposition. You cannot just throw any case of corporate abuse by a large corporation. Free software is not going to free the world from those issues. Compare for example how Oracle uses it’s owenrship of Java (free software by many means) for patent trolling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation#Lawsuit_against_Google
Apple questionable practices as hardware manufacturer? Surely a bad thing, but Linux still has to be run on some hardware and making sure that this hardware has not been manufactures in an environmentally damaging manner or using exploited labour is a different issue to running Linux on it’s own.
Cloud computing and privacy? First the issue of privacy and data security are hardly new. Email is as old as the internet and authorities asking corporate providers for access to email accounts of activists was, is and will surely remain key issue. As someone said highlighting the work of groups like riseup or aktivix would be more than appropriate here. This is not solved by Linux. I can use Dropbox on Ubuntu and acces Gmail, Facebook and Twitter via Firefox and it’s great that I can, those packages would never gain mainstream adoption if they didn’t work with what majority of people use, but I am still handing over as much to corporations and authorities as I was on my Windows or Apple.
The issues of privacy and security are much more complex than ‘run Linux on your PC’. They involve understanding network security issues like need to use HTTPS, email security like signing and encryption, understanding of privacy controls of social networking sites and many many more. You can do it using Linux but you can do it on Windows and Mac too.
Finally to call free software ‘socialism for computing’ is simply untrue. A large number of popular free software projects are owned by regular for-profit corporations, Open Office and MySQL are owned by Oracle, PHP is owned by Zend Technologies, Ubuntu is owned by a UK company Canonical and so on. Corporations use free software to their advantage. Large websites like Facebook run on Linux, PHP and MySQL. Google, hardly the vanguard of the revolution, uses Linux both on their servers as a base of their mobile phone system Android. In many ways free software movement has been very useful for the IT industry at large as a way or reducing costs.
The liberatory potential of free sotware is unquestionable, but it takes more than running Linux to achieve ‘socialism for computing’.