75 lines
4.3 KiB
HTML
75 lines
4.3 KiB
HTML
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<ul>
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<li>Freedom 0: to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.</li>
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<li>Freedom 1: to study how the program works, and change it so it
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does your computing as you wish.</li>
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<li>Freedom 2: to redistribute copies so you can help your
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neighbor.</li>
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<li>Freedom 3: to distribute copies of your modified versions to
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others.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>These are the four freedoms that a program must legally provide in
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order for it to be considered Free Software. Often times, when trying to
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convince non-techies of the advantages of Free Software, these freedoms
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seem very abstract and, to be honest, useless to them. They may see the
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advantages of freedom 0, but freedoms 1-3 all seem to either be for
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programmers or something they would just never use, and don't need
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others to have the ability to use. However, those of us who are
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familiarized with Free Software know that even non-programmers can
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benefit greatly from using Free Software, or (what's the same) avoiding
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proprietary software. And for this, I like to use a little anecdote of
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when I first started to advocate for Free Software, when I wasn't even
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an avid programmer.</p>
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<p>I believe I've mentioned this story twice now, but never in this
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context (usually always in my criticisms of Apple). The story goes that
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when I was 16 I had my own laptop which was a hand-me-down, my father's
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old work computer. It was a Dell Latitude - I can't remember
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specifically which model, but it had a port to connect to a dial-up
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modem. The laptop was rather old, so it couldn't run Windows, and so I
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began to use GNU/Linux. This was, at the time, a purely pragmatic
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choice, not a conviction. However, my family (aside from my father)
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generally used Apple products, so my music player was an Apple iPod. For
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a year I synced my music with the family macbook, until I decided to
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move my music to my own laptop so as to become fully independent of the
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family computer. So I migrated all my music to my laptop, installed
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Banshee (a program to manage music libraries, like iTunes), and synced
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my music to the iPod. Or so I thought. When Banshee told me the music
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had finished syncing I ejected and unplugged the iPod, scrolled through
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the music catalogue and found that... nothing had changed. As if it
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hadn't synced. I won't bother you with the details of my troubleshooting
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this problem, but eventually I found out that the filesystem that Apple
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uses on their iPods has a journaling feature enabled that was not
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supported by the drivers that Linux had at the time, but luckily I could
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turn off the journaling from a Mac computer. So I did that, came back,
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synced my music and it worked... for a time. Then, another day, the
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battery on my iPod was low so I turned it off. I came back home, charged
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it, turned it on. Then later I tried to sync some new music on to the
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iPod and, wouldn't you know it, the journaling system was back on. Every
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time the iPod got restarted the journaling system would be enabled.
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Which meant that every time the iPod got restarted I had to plug it back
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into the macbook in order to turn of the journaling.</p>
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<p>At a first glance, many non-techies may assume that this is the fault
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of Linux for not fully supporting the filesystem. But it is in fact the
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fault of Apple, who did not wish to disclose documentation on how to
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write the drivers to interact with the filesystem. Where the filesystem
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used on the iPod documented, and the source for its usage available, any
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driver developer could have (and would have) been able to create a fully
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functional driver.</p>
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<p>The injustice here is that despite having bought an iPod, I was not
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the real owner of that iPod. Apple was. I was simply renting it. For
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Apple was able to tell me what kind of software I can use their product
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with, despite it being my property. And this isn't something that
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affected me because I'm a programmer, but rather it's something that
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affects anyone who uses proprietary products. They tell you what to do
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with your property because it's beneficial for their business.</p>
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<p>Since then, I aimed to eliminate all proprietary software from my
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life (with varying degrees of success). I always looked for the software
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which would grant me the most control over my system. I aimed to be the
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one true owner of my system in its entirety. And this can only be
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accomplished by using Free Software.</p>
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