Free Software

Your Property, Your Rights, and Modern Technology

Imagine if you bought a house, and the basement was locked. And only the original building contractor had the key. If you needed to make any change – repair anything – you’d have to go to him. And if he was too busy doing something else, he’d tell you to get lost, and you’d be stuck.

– Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation, 1985

You have a right to control your own property, to use it as you wish, to study how it works, to share it if you choose, to modify it and improve it.

But what happens when your property is not really your property, when someone else uses it to control you? In the age of information technology, your rights are in danger.

According to the history that we are told, primitive (wo)man couldn’t control the laws of nature, but (s)he had the power to improve his (her) situation by developing tools, constructing shelter, and collaborating with friends and neighbours. An axe or a wheel or a system of writing was a tool for getting work done, an extension of a (wo)man’s abilities. (S)he could develop these tools independently or as a member of a small group, and his (her) contribution was meaningful and of direct importance to the outcome, so (s)he retained his (her) autonomy. Primitive tools could be used, studied, shared, and improved freely; the user was in control.

Since the Industrial Revolution, rapid technological progress has had a much more negative effect on human freedom and autonomy. The wide adoption of some technologies, such as telephones and similar communication tools, all but forces one to use such technology in order to communicate. Other technologies, such as the automobile, have resulted in drastic changes to the design of civilisations, which are now designed with users of the technology in mind, making life unnecessarily difficult for abstainers. These more “advanced” (complex) technologies are also beyond the average user’s ability to manufacture or repair, making the user dependent upon (and indeed at the mercy of) Babylon. Instead of the technology extending people’s freedom to control their environment, it creates an artificial environment which restricts people’s freedom. Instead of the people controlling the technology, the technology controls the people.

Information technology has pervaded every aspect of many people’s lives, and with ubiquity comes enormous potential for harm through surveillance, fraud, malfunctions, and above all, the sacrifice of one’s freedom and dignity in exchange for use of the technology.

Imagine…

• You want to use a copy machine to make many copies of a pamphlet for you and your friends to distribute, but the software in the copy machine detects that the pamphlet criticises electronics manufacturers for the pollution that they produce, and the machine will not copy your pamphlet.
• You use a digital weather station for monitoring small changes in temperature and humidity as you and your neighbours reforest the area. You want to set the machine to export data to a spreadsheet file that you can read offline on other devices, but the data collection software does not give you this option. When you try to edit the software, you see only a very long string of 0s and 1s; you cannot see how the software works.
• One of the volunteers at your project has a computer program for creating interactive landscape designs and generating 3D models. The volunteer gives you a copy of the program so that you can use the software even after the volunteer has moved on, but the new copy of the program will not run on your laptop; it only displays an error message about being an unlicensed copy.

The way to avoid ALL of these problems is to exclusively use Free Software; that is, software that respects your freedom.

What is Free Software?

Free software puts its users in control of their own computing. Non-free software puts its users under the power of the software’s developer.

“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”

More precisely, free software means that users of a program have the four essential freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Developments in technology and internet use have made these freedoms more important now than ever before.

Importance of Free Software

You have a right to privacy. If someone gains access to your property or your personal information without your consent, they are violating your rights. But non-free operating systems with built-in government backdoors, office software and “social” smartphone apps developed by governments for mass surveillance, and any other software with secret functions controlled only by the developer can (and all too often do) gather and transmit information about you without your consent. One of the many detrimental effects is that this allows whoever controls the software to monitor your use and disable software on your machine when you do something that the controller doesn’t like. Another is that they can sell information about you to anyone willing to pay for it. Non-free programs can even be used to locate you and kill you.

Developers of non-free software are generally the only ones who know exactly what their programs do, and this gives them the ability to deceive the user of the software into thinking that the program does one thing while it is really doing another. This is fraud. If you install a program that is advertised as an image editor, and that program is not free, it could send your vacation photos to “the prince of Nigeria” or to an advertising company in Mumbai, and you would be none the wiser. The deception could also take the form of lying to users about the technical capabilities of the software by displaying a message that their installed version is not capable of X (where X is some task that is slightly more advanced) and encouraging them to upgrade to the latest version which does possess this feature (and not-so-coincidentally costs twice as much).

Fraud such as this would be very difficult, if not impossible, to pull off using free software only; anyone with knowledge of the programming language could examine the source code and discover the treachery. For example, the maintainers of the Audacity audio editor planned to add telemetry – tracking of user activity – in 2021, and some users saw the new code, publicly protested it, and forked the program before the new version was even finished.

In addition to intentional fraud, the obfuscation of the true workings of a program can conceal unintentional security flaws that, if discovered by someone with malicious intentions, could allow a malicious actor to gain access to the user’s data (or even control of their whole system) without consent. For undercover journalists, “controversial” public figures, or businesses developing new products, such a breach of security could be disastrous. The program being non-free means that no one but the program’s developer has the opportunity to fix these vulnerabilities, creating a dangerous dependency on someone who would have no incentive to fix the problem until someone else has exploited it. Free software allows many more eyes to inspect the program for vulnerabilities and to fix those vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. (If the computer system on BP’s infamous oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico had run a free operating system, someone most likely would have discovered and fixed the crucial vulnerability before it allowed the “Flame” virus to crash the system.)

More general malfunctions – the software not working properly – due to bugs or design flaws are another problem which affects free software and non-free software differently. In a free program, malfunctions can be easily fixed; the entire userbase has access to the source code and can change it and share their fix with others. In a non-free program, the author of the software is (typically) the only one with access to the source code, and only they can fix the problem. This dependence on the centralised authority of the software’s developer creates an unjust power dynamic; the user of the software must accept a defective product and appeal to the developer to fix it, but the developer can simply choose to ignore the problem, or charge an exorbitant amount of money for a new version of the product without the defect that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. If bugs in non-free software go unfixed by the developer, then the software remains broken forever, and all users are stuck with a tool that is unfit for their job.

Sometimes a piece of software is simply incompatible with this or that file type or media format. With free programs, if the community of users wants compatibility with a new format, someone will add it. The file and media formats created by free programs also tend to be well-documented open standards that anyone can use, ensuring that if a particular program becomes obsolete, some newer program can still open the files that it created, and that data will not be lost. Conversely, non-free software often uses deliberate incompatibility to the developer’s advantage. By creating output files in a proprietary format, a non-free program ensures that any recipient of the file must also install the same non-free program. When newer versions of a non-free program break compatibility with the older versions, the users are forced to upgrade in order to keep up – even if the new version comes with more restrictive and invasive licence terms.

By not adhering to vendor- and platform-independent standards, non-free software creates divides between users and non-users of the software, such that those using particular non-free software will only be able to exchange information with other users of that software, not with those using free software or some other non-free software. This again creates an unjust dependence on the developer of the non-free program, an inability of the users to modify the software or migrate to other software, and the ability of the developer to exploit the userbase and manipulate the information that they get to see. (This is not only hypothetical; a certain Redmond-based software company, for example, has deliberately broken compatibility with standard formats and thereby forced users to adopt the company’s own, introduced bugs in one version of their software only to fix them in a later version in order to entice users to upgrade, and censored certain websites by modifying them when viewed in the company’s web browser.)

The inequity created by non-free software is not compatible with a free world or the free exchange of information. While free software empowers the users to share and improve it, non-free software creates dependence and in effect domesticates the users for the benefit of the developer. It is this system of bondage that is fundamentally unjust. If we value and desire freedom, then we must insist that all software that we use is free.

Free software is essential for cooperation in a world increasingly dependent on technology. Just as we share machetes and shovels and seeds, we must be able to share all of the tools at our disposal if we are to restore the forest and create a viable alternative to Babylon. Non-free software divides us; free software stays out of our way.

Technology should exist to benefit the users, not to restrict their freedom or to violate their rights. For that reason, all software should be free.

Technology for A Free World

In the fruit forest world that we envision, most technologies that exist today would be abandoned as unnecessary. The tools needed in a free world would be those relevant to communicating with others across time and space, maintaining one’s own habitat, and genuinely improving the quality of life of those that the technology touches.

As more and more fruiterrarists begin to reforest, it would be useful to collect data on the changing ecosystem, to monitor the climate over time, and to share this data with other fruiterrarists in other regions. Free software developed by fruiterrarists for fruiterrarists, running on energy-efficient free and open hardware, would enable this objectivity in measuring results and adjusting reforestation strategies to the local conditions.

Similar technologies could also be used for understanding the intricate workings of ecosystems in order to improve them for the benefit of those who live in them. Fruit forests could be designed and re-designed for peaceful and abundant living, free from famine, predators, and extreme weather. Comfortable living in a natural environment could become the new normal.

Technology can help fruiterrarists in different parts of the world to communicate, sharing information and coordinating their efforts. Radio and similar technologies require only the transmitter/receiver, which the user owns and controls. For exchanging non-spoken information, or for ensuring privacy, devices running free software can enable many more avenues for collaboration. Climate data can be uploaded to a shared database for world-wide monitoring, seeds and other useful items can be distributed to where they are most needed, and improvements to the design of any technology can be freely shared, all while personal chats and other sensitive information remain private.

Of course, in a post-Babylon world, we would all be less dependent on technology, and it would be relegated to more specialised uses for most people. With designs fully documented and tools freely shareable, technologies would always be available for everyone to use whenever the need should arise.