Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Free Software Movement is Barking Up the Wrong Tree | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 73 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:25PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:25PM (#614771) Journal

    "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."

    I'll grant you the second sentence (in bold) but the first is utter nonsense. General use computers have been ubiquitous for several decades, and with smart phones are nearly universal. "Complicated" ceased to be true around the launch of the Mac and Windows. Pretty much anyone today can sit down in front a GUI computer and make it do what they need. The point is that well designed technology doesn't require people to understand the guts of how it works.

    Being able to use a computer is not the same as being educated about computers. And the fact that the UI can be made simple does not mean the technology driving it is not complicated.

    Sure, any idiot can use a smartphone. But unless you know how that device actually works, you aren't going to be able to effectively protect your rights while using that device. *That* is the education that is missing. If you don't understand the functional, technical difference between online speech processors like Siri compared to offline ones like Dragon NaturallySpeaking, then you can't understand the privacy or reliability implications of choosing one over the other. Instead, you're going to pick the one that costs less, or the one that's more popular, or the one that works best in some limited demo. And when the servers are shut down, or your personal information leaks, or your license gets revoked, or it fails because your internet went down...you won't know why it failed, and you won't know how to do anything about it. Because you don't understand the technology, you've just been trained to use a specific interface pushed by a specific company.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2