New (better) naming scheme.

blog/posts/0103-why-non-techies-should-use-free-software.html

@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+<ul>
+	<li>Freedom 0: to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.</li>
+	<li>Freedom 1: to study how the program works, and change it so it
+		does your computing as you wish.</li>
+	<li>Freedom 2: to redistribute copies so you can help your
+		neighbor.</li>
+	<li>Freedom 3: to distribute copies of your modified versions to
+		others.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>These are the four freedoms that a program must legally provide in
+order for it to be considered Free Software. Often times, when trying to
+convince non-techies of the advantages of Free Software, these freedoms
+seem very abstract and, to be honest, useless to them. They may see the
+advantages of freedom 0, but freedoms 1-3 all seem to either be for
+programmers or something they would just never use, and don't need
+others to have the ability to use. However, those of us who are
+familiarized with Free Software know that even non-programmers can
+benefit greatly from using Free Software, or (what's the same) avoiding
+proprietary software. And for this, I like to use a little anecdote of
+when I first started to advocate for Free Software, when I wasn't even
+an avid programmer.</p>
+
+<p>I believe I've mentioned this story twice now, but never in this
+context (usually always in my criticisms of Apple). The story goes that
+when I was 16 I had my own laptop which was a hand-me-down, my father's
+old work computer. It was a Dell Latitude - I can't remember
+specifically which model, but it had a port to connect to a dial-up
+modem. The laptop was rather old, so it couldn't run Windows, and so I
+began to use GNU/Linux. This was, at the time, a purely pragmatic
+choice, not a conviction. However, my family (aside from my father)
+generally used Apple products, so my music player was an Apple iPod. For
+a year I synced my music with the family macbook, until I decided to
+move my music to my own laptop so as to become fully independent of the
+family computer. So I migrated all my music to my laptop, installed
+Banshee (a program to manage music libraries, like iTunes), and synced
+my music to the iPod. Or so I thought. When Banshee told me the music
+had finished syncing I ejected and unplugged the iPod, scrolled through
+the music catalogue and found that... nothing had changed. As if it
+hadn't synced. I won't bother you with the details of my troubleshooting
+this problem, but eventually I found out that the filesystem that Apple
+uses on their iPods has a journaling feature enabled that was not
+supported by the drivers that Linux had at the time, but luckily I could
+turn off the journaling from a Mac computer. So I did that, came back,
+synced my music and it worked... for a time. Then, another day, the
+battery on my iPod was low so I turned it off. I came back home, charged
+it, turned it on. Then later I tried to sync some new music on to the
+iPod and, wouldn't you know it, the journaling system was back on. Every
+time the iPod got restarted the journaling system would be enabled.
+Which meant that every time the iPod got restarted I had to plug it back
+into the macbook in order to turn of the journaling.</p>
+
+<p>At a first glance, many non-techies may assume that this is the fault
+of Linux for not fully supporting the filesystem. But it is in fact the
+fault of Apple, who did not wish to disclose documentation on how to
+write the drivers to interact with the filesystem. Where the filesystem
+used on the iPod documented, and the source for its usage available, any
+driver developer could have (and would have) been able to create a fully
+functional driver.</p>
+
+<p>The injustice here is that despite having bought an iPod, I was not
+the real owner of that iPod. Apple was. I was simply renting it. For
+Apple was able to tell me what kind of software I can use their product
+with, despite it being my property. And this isn't something that
+affected me because I'm a programmer, but rather it's something that
+affects anyone who uses proprietary products. They tell you what to do
+with your property because it's beneficial for their business.</p>
+
+<p>Since then, I aimed to eliminate all proprietary software from my
+life (with varying degrees of success). I always looked for the software
+which would grant me the most control over my system. I aimed to be the
+one true owner of my system in its entirety. And this can only be
+accomplished by using Free Software.</p>
+