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The Free Software Movement is Barking Up the Wrong Tree

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday December 26 2017, @07:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the interesting-viewpoints dept.

canopic jug writes:

Joseph Graham has written a very short blog post about software freedom and the direction we might take to achieve it.

The free software movement, founded in the 80s by Richard Stallman and supported by the Free Software Foundations 1, 2, 3, 4, preaches that we need software that gives us access to the code and the copyright permissions to study, modify and redistribute. While I feel this is entirely true, I think it's not the best way to explain Free Software to people.

I think the problem we have is better explained more like this:

"Computer technology is complicated and new. Education about computers is extremely poor among all age groups. Technology companies have taken advantage of this lack of education to brainwash people into accepting absurd abuses of their rights."

Source : The Free Software movement is Barking up the wrong tree

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:46PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:46PM (#614430)

    I'll grant you the second sentence (in bold) but the first is utter nonsense.

    It's not. Most people can use Facebook and Microsoft Office, but they can't do anything even remotely complex. Education about computers is very poor, and you must have a very low bar to think otherwise.

    The point is that well designed technology doesn't require people to understand the guts of how it works.

    A total lack of understanding of the details about how computers work is kind of a hindrance when you're trying to explain source code and Free Software.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday December 26 2017, @09:42PM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday December 26 2017, @09:42PM (#614463) Journal

    My wife is considered the 'tech' person at her school because she knows enough to wiggle or push in the mouse connection to the computer if the mouse stops working.....but ask her to open up a tab in her browser and wtf?

    She still uses the click the link then click the back button to go forwards and back on pages. Tab? Nope, even though I've explained it takes less time.

    Oh well, at least the young kids have learned at least this much.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:31AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:31AM (#614654) Journal

      I use tabs a lot, and yet I often do use the click link/back button interface (well, except that instead of using the button, I use the keyboard shortcut). Because in some cases it simply is the most efficient. And in the rare cases where I misjudged and find only afterwards that I want to have both open at the same time, I simply duplicate the tab before going back.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.