[pp.int.general] Significance of use of Free and proprietary software in a political context

[Per von Zweigbergk]

26 jan 2009 kl. 05.22 skrev Richard M Stallman:

>    Could be, however Obama is a pragmatist - the election campaign  
> used
>    Linux and free software
>
> They couldn't use Linux by itself, since that's just a kernel and
> would not run by itself in a PC.  Surely what you mean is the
> GNU/Linux operating system.


In this specific case, the usage of the term Linux was not incorrect,  
because the addition of "and free software" recognized the presence of  
free software from other sources than the operating system kernel.

By the way, not all unix-like operating systems using Linux as the  
kernel are necessarily GNU. I have seen a lot of embedded systems  
which are based around Linux and busybox. (In embedded systems, this  
is much more common than running GNU/Linux.) It is not at all  
impossible that somebody might make an internet server platform using  
Linux but not using GNU.

I'm not saying that's what the Obama campaign used (rather unlikely in  
fact), but I would just like to point out that there are other ways to  
run Linux than with a GNU toolchain.

That said, I don't put much significance in the fact that Obama used  
Free software in its election campaign. It all boils down to what the  
guy in charge of the technical stuff is used to.

For example, the first iteration of our entire party infrastructure in  
the Swedish (pp) was entirely based on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server.  
That's mainly because our party leader at the time, (who unlike Barack  
Obama actually ran the servers himself out of his apartment to start  
with), had much more experience running Windows and programming  
in .NET than he had developing a solution based on GNU/Linux.

That's changed now. Some of the vital (pp) operations still run on  
Windows (our membership roster and our web forums, for example). But  
most of our operations and a lot of our custom code has been migrated  
to Ubuntu -- the C# code by running using the Mono runtime, our web  
site running on Apache and Drupal, our e-mail running Postfix and  
Courier, and this mailing list run by Mailman. There is an active  
effort to move as much of our infrastructure as possible off  
proprietary software, but it's not a big priority -- it's more  
important to work on actual politics.

So -- the Swedish Pirate Party uses some proprietary software in its  
infrastructure, and Barack Obama's campaign used some Free Software.  
So what? That's just under the hood technology, not what's important  
for actual political policy. I prefer to judge political entities on  
their policies and their actions, rather than the software running  
their web sites. :-)

I'd like to add, that to my knowledge, all proprietary software in use  
by the Swedish (pp) is properly licensed and in applicable cases paid  
for. Swedish (pp) doesn't condone violation of Imaginary Property laws.

And I'd also like to add that I don't see the Swedish (pp) as part of  
the Free software movement. The Free software movement is a good  
example that draconian Imaginary Property laws are not neccessary to  
encourage creativity, not an ideal I expect everyone to adhere to.

Personally, I think that it's perfectly healthy to have competition  
between Free and proprietary software, as long as that doesn't mean  
vendor lock-in, secret file format standards and software patent  
mindfields[1]. Otherwise we might still be stuck with xterm, xeyes and  
xclock running on twm. ;-)

[1] Hm, that term was just a typo originally that I caught when  
reading through the e-mail before sending. I left it in, because I  
think it might actually be a good term to use in this context.
-- 
Per von Zweigbergk

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