Benjamin Mako Hill has up his FSF Appeal. I’m always very interested in what Mr. Hill talks about, not only is he on the FSF Board of Directors, but he also serves on the Ubuntu Community Council (and in a host of other advisory positions for that matter).
FSF Appeal
Since one of my main areas of interest is the conflicting intersection of Free Software and Open Source, Mr. Hill’s thoughts are often very illuminating for me – even when I don’t agree with him I never feel like he makes his argument poorly.
In his FSF appeal, I’m glad to say Mr. Hill delivers and makes a point I am in strong agreement with:
Free software is not really about software in this fundamental sense; it’s about bringing freedom to users through software.
Just like open source is necessary but not sufficient for Free Software, Free Software in turn is necessary but not sufficient for “users to take control of their technology”.
Mr. Hill mentions the Defective by Design and End Software Patents initatives as examples of the FSF reaching out beyond its historical base - things that also serve as extra-licensing restrictions placed on users.
I appreciate this very much, because I see attacks on Free Software and even Open Source by corporate interests in the form of finding and exploiting loopholes. The Solid Gold Star example of such trickery being the Novell/Microsoft deal. Perhaps one day commercial vendors will stop trying to lock-in, restrict, and control users – until that day, though, we need organizations like the FSF.
Antifeatures
While we are on the topic of Mr. Hill, I’d like to point out the Antifeatures wiki. Mr. Hill has been quite successful conveying the concept of “antifeatures” and how Free Software effectively combats these ways of controlling users.
Next time someone spouts off the old “users don’t care about Freedom”, take a gander at the long list of antifeatures and see if you can’t find one or two a hypothetical user might care about.
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