On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 03:49:07PM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > Thus, the risk of leading people to use a non-free system by making a > free program run on it is small. However, it is our practice when > doing this to remind people that the non-free system is unethical and > bad for your freedom. If the pages about the Emacs binaries for Windows > don't say this, I'll make sure to add it.
If all the free software and very good things like firefox, and so on, are always available to people using proprietary operating systems, what would be the incentive for them to change then ? Having good software spread is good for everyone. It does improve security (openssh everywhere including in proprietary products) and standards (firefox everywhere and not only compilable on linux and bsd-systems). A few years ago I did thought that our best programs like firefox and so on should be kept only for free-operating systems so this would make people move there. But after reflexion, it's just wrong. Freedom is letting people choose. And if they choose proprietary, so be it. Some will change their minds if you explain to them, some won't. But once you talk people about why they could/should adopt a free operating system, that's done. Having good software spread even in proprietary systems is a good thing. Because when you talk to non-technically oriented people about replacing their windows by a linux or bsd, you can tell them : yes, firefox is there too. thunderbird too. what you use everyday will be there, upon a free operating system. This is a very good tool to convince people to replace the lower-layer (their operating system) by something free and not proprietary. Much more than talking of politics. This change will not benefit them directly. But people that have to maintain the computers where they work and Internet itself if we can replace zombie-prone machines by something better. People that are not interested in becoming computer experts will very fast get annoyed by talks about why they should change and politics discussions about freedom and such, because they just see you talk of freedom while underneath all you want is them to do another choice compared to another one, which they did (knowing or not why). I do understand a part of your point of view, Richard. Some people are not interested in freedom as in fighting proprietary software. So you imagine a world where we could move people to free software, even by force, for their good. Where I work right now, we have bsd and debian on servers. All user computers run debian or mandrake right now (and we're going to move those to debian). We dont let them choose. It is mandatory. We use bsd and some debian on servers, and they will use free software on computers. The main reason is not freedom or fighting proprietary software. It is (1) getting work done and (2) when we got unix-alike everywhere it makes our job as system admins and network admins easier. If you do really want a world without proprietary software, you must not let people choose. Thus, realize you are not doing it for freedom but for another goal. Things might be better in this new world, but the path to this world will not be freedom. Here, I have to admit I do understand your point of view of forcing people to use free software. Okay. But I disagree when you explain it's because of freedom we have to force this on them. And everything doesnt need to be democratic and open to discussion. In a company, network and system ingeneers are in charge of geting work done when it's related to computer systems. If they put free operating systems everywhere, their main concern wont be political of freedom-based but to improve their work, the security, ease of management... This is the first place to target : the work environment. And changes there are not freedom based. I like free operating systems. Having sources, a real freedom. But all that talk about politics or freedom in a fantasy-world, no. If you really want that world which does not exist, where people would only use free operating sytems and free programs upon those, you will have to force it down their throats because a lot, lot of people don't care about why it should be that way, and don't care of the big picture. Target the work world where this can be forced upon people if you really want it. Have this done by people who install and take care of the tools those people use. Dont let them choose. Treat them like sheep for their own good, why not. I dont talk to people about how it improves their freedom by having them work from Unix or Linux. They do not care. It does improve the techies life, our work. It gets things done, and that's all about it. It removed and keeps out the chains our grandpas working in the same field had with all their proprietary hardware and softare in their hands. -- unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
