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

[Per von Zweigbergk]

29 jan 2009 kl. 15.32 skrev Richard M Stallman:

>    Personally, I think that it's perfectly healthy to have competition
>    between Free and proprietary software,
>
> To speak of competition between freedom and subjugation is to assume
> subjugation is morally acceptable.


True, but I happen not to believe that proprietary software equals  
subjugation, and it is not the policy as far as I'm aware of any  
pirate party. It is as far as I'm aware definitely *not* the position  
of the Swedish Pirate Party.

In my perspective, subjugation comes from vendor lock-in, secret file  
formats and other proprietary standards, Digital Restrictions  
Management, overreaching enforcement of copyright law and software  
patents -- not from the fact that the source code of the software  
isn't Free.

In other words, proprietary software equals subjugation only when  
there are no free alternatives and when it prevents interoperation  
with Free Software.

For example, I have the choice of whether to use a web browser which  
is proprietary, like Opera or Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), a  
web browser that's semi-proprietary like Safari (the Webkit HTML  
rendering engine is Free Software, originating from KDE), and one that  
is Free Software, like Firefox or Konqueror or Google Chrome.

The problem from my point of view has always been vendor lock-in (some  
sites require plugins from certain vendors, like Macromedia Flash),  
secret file formats (Macromedia Flash again), and the fact that MSIE  
is dominant in the market means that some web sites (that fortunately  
are very rare these days) will not work properly in anything but MSIE  
because of MSIEs failure to follow some parts of the web standards.

The fact that I might use a web browser like Opera or Safari doesn't  
really restrict my freedom, in my view, merely because there *is* a  
free alternative. I know that if at any time I believe Opera or Safari  
feels too restrictive, I can always use Firefox instead. In the  
meantime, I'm content to browse web sites.

Now, I used GNU/Linux back when the only sensible web browser for GNU/ 
Linux out there was Netscape 4. I still have nightmares about the  
crashing, the tiny fonts, the craptastic Motif GUI (also proprietary),  
the eventually outdated HTML engine (because development stalled), and  
the fact that nobody could make it any better because it was  
proprietary, but most of all - because there was no viable alternative  
at the time.

Because, in my opinion, therein lies the real freedom as a user, to be  
able to choose between different solutions. And as long as a Free  
Software solution exists to do what I need to do, I always have the  
option to either add a feature that a proprietary software vendor  
won't add myself to the alternative Free software, or to hire somebody  
to do it for me.

Maybe that's wanting to have the cake and eat it too. I don't know. I  
just like cake, the more the better.
-- 
Per von Zweigbergk

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