I hope the irony of asking about the Free Software "Freedom Zero" and then only talking about Open Source was not lost on Atwood.
People don't care about Freedom Zero for the same reason why Open Source took over Free Software. Because the vast majority developers and businesses embrace it only for their only self-interest, by reducing development time and costs. They don't give a single fuck about user freedom, as it's well shown by the number of companies who release open source backend tools but keep their customer-facing applications proprietary.
In fact, this is no secret: the whole point of creating Open Source as an alternative to Free Software was to keep the code sharing parts while shedding the ethical positions of the GNU philosophy, such as Freedom Zero, which were unpleasant to the money makers in the industry.
Different people and organizations have widely varying reasons for wanting to share source code. Some of these reasons are selfish, and some are completely altruistic. Many are both selfish and altruistic- one could easily argue that the FSF falls into that category, not that there's anything wrong with that.
The whole point of creating Open Source was to acknowledge that. The GNU philosophy is very, very, very specific in its means and goals and presents a very specific worldview, and plenty of people (maybe even the majority?) who are interested sharing code don't agree with much of it.
You state that Open Source was created "to keep the code sharing parts while shedding the ethical positions of the GNU philosophy", and many of the people who were instrumental in creating the concept would agree with you. But the reason the concept has stuck around has nothing to do with that. It's just a very, very useful concept. It's very handy to have some way to refer to software for which source code is available, redistributable, and reuseable, and not instantly imply all of the metric ton of legal or philosophical baggage associated with FSF-approved projects.
Someone who doesn't agree with the ethical portions of the GNU philosophy isn't unethical, they just have a different point of view. Yet, that's what you imply in your phrasing. Tons of people who contribute greatly to Open Source (or even Free Software!) consider certain elements of the GNU philosophy to be unethical. This whole "with us or against us" attitude is what turns off so many people to the FSF and RMS in the first place. It's like PETA saying that you are either 100% on board with them and everything they do, or you are in favor of murdering puppies, and there's no middle ground or room for more nuanced perspectives or alternative philosophies.
I'm not arguing against the GNU philosophy; I agree with much of it and strongly disagree with some other parts of it. As always, I'm just strongly in favor of a world where people think for themselves, come to their own conclusions, cooperate with others when they have overlapping goals, and don't go out of their way to continually villainize people who aren't 100% on board with every single line item in one guy's personal doctrine.
By the same token 99.9% of consumers don't care about the legalities and 'freedoms' that Atwood talks about - only what they can do with their computers and the ease with which they can do it.
This should not be news, though, right? Consumers can only be trusted to be concerned for their own best interests. More than that -- only about their own immediate and simple best interests (i.e. we consumers will totally vote for a destructive political initiative, if it promises short-term gain for us personally, while crippling the economy for decades).
So, any advocacy of free software ideology which is aimed at the 'masses' and the 'people' is doomed to fail. It has to be aimed at the minority of more responsible and educated agents - who, in turn, can (and should!) care about these more distant and noble and sophisticated goals, while not being angry or judgmental toward the 'consumer', who isn't championing such lofty goals.
You have to walk alone, and should expect isolation and hardship, essentially. Wasn't it always the case?
I just hope that some day some popular software developer would become bored with everything to the extent that he would really consider fucking their users with EULA as hard as possible.
No, "what a hypothetical user could do, potentially, given unlimited skill in the computing domain" is the whole point of freedom zero.
All everyday users give a shit about is what they actually can do easily, given their shallow understanding of computing devices, to get the shit they need doing done.
This rarely taxes or even approaches the limit of commercial, closed software, so they perforce give zero shits about hypothetical freedoms that for all intents and purposes do not exist for them given their time and skill constraints.
You think the average computer user rarely approaches the limits imposed by proprietary software? You must have never met someone who:
* Wanted to rip a video DVD
* Wanted to copy songs from one iPod to another
* Wanted to use Remote Desktop while another user is logged in
* Tried to deal with HDCP problems between a cable receiver and television
These are all software problems, all imposed by artificial restrictions, and all violations of Freedom 0. You seem to think Freedom 0 is about technical competence; yet weak technical skills are what proprietary software vendors take advantage of when they impose these sorts of restrictions.
> These are all software problems, all imposed by artificial restrictions, and all violations of Freedom 0.
Those problems can not be separated out and analyzed independently like this.
> Wanted to rip a video DVD
> Wanted to copy songs from one iPod to another
Without those two limitations you wouldn't have either DVDs and iPods, as the economics of these technologies wouldn't made sense for companies which created them.
> Wanted to use Remote Desktop while another user is logged in
This sound like an accidental technical limitation.
> Tried to deal with HDCP problems between a cable receiver and television
This is, again, the limit that allows you to have those movies in the first place.
I'm all for the open source and Freedom 0, but please don't forget that it's not about Freedom 0 being violated or not. It's about it being violated or not having anything at all.
You seriously think that DVDs wouldn't exist if they couldn't have their little ROT-13? Well I don't think this is going to be a very fruitful conversation.
Oh but while you're here how about you explain the popularity of DRM-free mp3 downloads :)
I thought that was because better formats came out... With no improvement on the 'encryption' end as far as I can tell, because I can find bluray rips for any movie that's come out on bluray.
He was being sarcastic. CSS (the pathetic 40-bit "encryption" used on DVDs) was cracked in 1999. Blu-ray wasn't commonplace until 8-10 years later.
Blu-ray's AACS actually is much better than CSS ever was, and as far as I know it hasn't been attacked in either a brute-force or break-the-algorithm sense. But like all other DRM, there are inherent flaws it can't work around. You need only extract a player key and you can freely decrypt the data.
First, to clarify, the remote desktop limitation was never accidental. It was a deliberate obstruction built into Windows XP that was meant to stop people from using the OS as a multiuser server. It is no different from Maltab contacting a license server to determine if there are too many people using the program at a time (as was the case at my undergrad university) or a parking garage refusing to release anyone's car because a license expired. The Windows Server version supported multiple simultaneous remote desktop sessions (with an artificial limit imposed by the software, that depended on the license; Windows XP Home/Professional simply had this limit hard-coded).
I think you are lacking citations needed to prove your point that we would not have movie and music players if they were not deliberately restricted. There were digital music players prior to the iPod that were not so restricted. CDs never had any restrictions built in; what makes you think DVDs would never have happened without the restrictions? I know for a fact that you are wrong about HDCP, because the same cable receiver had HD component outputs that had no HDCP requirements.
To put it another way, if people demanded Freedom 0, they would have it -- and there would still have been DVDs and iPods. The MPAA is not going to give up a multi-billion dollar market. They obviously want to restrict how people use their computers, because it increases their advantage in the market, but that market would not disappear if they did not have that increased advantage (if they only had all their other advantages). The same is true of the software market, the music industry, etc.
It is not a choice between Freedom 0 and "some kind of empty void;" it is choice between Freedom 0, and not having Freedom 0, with everything else remaining largely the same.
How is "what a hypothetical user could do, potentially, given unlimited skill in the computing domain" the whole point of Freedom Zero? You think that someone with "unlimited skill in the computing domain" can't run Mac OS X without an non-Apple manufactured computer or replace their gaming console OS with Linux? That's silly. It's all been done before with far less than "unlimited skill."
The point of Freedom Zero is exactly the opposite: It's about eliminating bullshit restrictions that, while given enough time and effort can easily be broken by a smart group of people educated in the field, only prevent the regular user from using their property how they want to.
No; the software is almost the same, since almost all Open Source licenses are also Free Software, and vice versa. But the philosophy and goals of the projects are very different.
I don't quite understand Jeff's point in the article. Is Windows really that much more open than OSX?
I got my (first) Next^H^H^H^H Mac about a year ago. I don't want to stop running Linux yet, but the Mac works much better than any Windows machine I have ever been forced to endure. While the Mac might not have open hardware, it at least lets me load a wide variety of open software onto it: Libre Office, Groovy, Go-lang, Ruby, etc. (Windows does also, but the BSD personality on the Mac makes the experience more frictionless)
I do care about freedom, but the platform which often simply does not work well enough to be playable is no freedom at all.
I should probably add that my first programming job was back in '85 working on (dead language) under MS-DOS, so I have a long history of abuse at the hands of Microsoft. I'll agree that the Apple II, and also the C64, were nice little machines to tinker with, though.
You cannot control or change the OS according to Jeff. Which means that you are as free as the OS allows you and not as free as the hardware allows you.
I do agree that OS that allows you to run self signed code and unsigned code and have root access is almost on the top of the freedom ladder.
You have exactly as much technical control over Mac OS X as you do over Windows. You can execute arbitrary code and modify any system file you wish, even the kernel.
I'm not clear why people don't know this. Do non-Mac users really think OS X has to be "jailbroken" like an iPhone?
OSX, as a software, is significantly more "unfree" than almost anything out there (in the computer world) since you can't run it on custom hardware. Not because it doesn't work, as the hardware is essentially the same, but because you aren't allowed to.
"After I install Ubuntu, how come I can't immediately tell it about my schedule for the coming week?"
Personally, I install KOrganizer.
I take your point, there is a need for a fully functioning productivity desktop oriented GNU/Linux. As Shuttleworth has said, Ubuntu may not be that distribution as the goals are different.
Freedom is a multi-axis thing. While it's freedom to be allowed to use the software for anything. There is also the freedom of not having to fight with your computer and go to the park instead. Sometimes those freedoms coincide. Often for regular uses, they conflict.
Because nobody can exercise it anyway. Freedom 0 is really just a corollary of freedom 1, "The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish." If you can't change a program, you can't run it for any purpose, you can only run it for the purpose intended by the original author.
Freedom 1 is pretty hard to exercise too. For any given bit of technology, there are very few people outside of the original authors that are capable of changing it in meaningful and useful ways, and even they will need to put in a lot of effort do so.
It may be apocryphal, but the Apple II discussed in the article is said to be the last computer designed entirely by one person. Modern computers are just too complex for any one person to entirely understand. We can only answer questions, fix bugs and add features in a narrow speciality. In order to use a computer system we have to rely on other people to handle issues outside our areas of competence. Those people might be part of communities that help each other for free, or might work for companies that provide support to their customers.
So freedom 0 is a bit like the freedom to go to the moon. Having it is better than not, but most people don't benefit from it.
It is worth keeping mind that Freedom 0 can be denied to a greater extent than just preventing you from modifying the software. I first understood this when I was an undergrad, and my EE professors assigned us homework involving Matlab. The school had a license that allowed 50 concurrent users, and the software enforced that, which was a big problem when 80 students had homework to do. Yes, the freedom to modify the software would have allowed anyone to circumvent this restriction, but the inability to modify the software does not imply that such a restriction must exist.
All of the four freedoms complement each other. In a world without Freedom 0, you might be denied the freedom to modify your software, because you might not be able to run the software needed to modify other software (e.g. imagine a simple world where all software is distributed as Python source, but where your text editor is designed to not be able to edit such source, and where your OS is designed to not run any other text editors -- modifying your software suddenly becomes much harder).
Not totally true. If I, as a programmer, can excercise Freedom 1 to write a new programme, then I can give it to you, and you can excersice Freedom 0 to run it on your device. If the Overlords™ don't want that type of programme to run on your device, there's nothing they can do about it.
Plenty of people care about Freedom Zero. Millions or tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. That's great; that's their prerogative. Jeff seems to be really saying "why doesn't everyone care about Freedom Zero?", and that's a very different and much more interesting question.
Unfortunately for him (but not for humanity as a whole), the answer is that everyone has their own Freedom Zero that they care about, and one of them might be, "I want to use the hardware and software that I want to use, that works for me, rather than be restricted to what Jeff Atwood personally approves of and claims to do so for moral and ethical reasons that I don't necessarily agree with."
I'm not saying he's wrong. It's just much more interesting to live in a world where tons of different philosophies perpetually collide and mutate and influence each other, rather than one in which we've collectively decided that there's one and only one way to do something, and there's no room for debate or people just doing whatever the heck they want to do provided they don't hurt anyone else.
Variants of this come up from time to time, and that alone rather undercuts the question in the article title -- if no one gave a crap about "Freedom Zero," then people wouldn't keep asking the question.
My biggest problem with Atwood's specific argument is that claiming that Macs are "dongles" for OS X is that it's essentially an argument that platform incompatibilities violate Freedom Zero, which is, with all respect to Atwood, a little nutty. I owned a TRS-80 in the late 1980s, and I'm pretty sure that my inability to run Apple II software on it could not be accurately blamed on hardware-based copy protection. The Mac is not a dongle for OS X any more than OS X is a dongle for Cocoa software. Or are we seriously going to argue that it's harmful for consumers if we can't run all applications on all platforms, and that the differentiation should only be a matter of aesthetics? (Which, all platforms followed Freedom Zero, would be easily changeable anyway, right?)
The thing I'd really like to see more focus on is data freedom. Maybe what I'm using to read ebooks, play music, watch videos, create word processing documents and spreadsheets, write code, and edit photos in is open source, maybe it isn't -- but switching to something else to do those things in shouldn't require me to lose fidelity/functionality in a conversion process, let alone require me to either re-buy something due to DRM (or crack the DRM). Yes, if I had the freedom and the ability to modify every application on every platform, I would theoretically have complete data freedom -- but I should be able to have that even if I'm using 100% closed source software.
This is again a case of apathy. How many users care about DRM and the integrity of their data, let alone its freedom and exportability?
Most users are not power users (else the term would be redundant). Most people who use computer that I know simply log on, surf the web, check email, etc. In fact, most users spend almost all of their time on a web browser, to the point that different systems seem pretty much the same.
Most users cannot quantify the difference between Mac OS X or Windows beyond the hardware differences, and even that's just a momentary thought. They don't care about data because it's not relevant to their lifestyles.
Corollary to this point is the fact that many hackers attribute malice and spite to companies that don't allow data freedom. But honestly, it's not profitable for most companies to serve that small subset of users in the mass market because their voices aren't loud enough. They have more profitable things to worry about - their users couldn't explain what RAID is or DRM to save their lives.
So they don't invest in you - the customers who want these features (or lack) because it's not relevant to mass producing machines for everyone. This goes hand in hand with perpetuating the ubiquity or proprietary software.
It's not just architectural differences; Apple goes out of their way to make OS X break on the hardware they don't sell. This is a definite violation of freedom zero.
My understanding was that it's less malevolence on Apple's part than Macs not being quite like PCs architecturally, particularly with respect to firmware -- but it's somewhat orthogonal to both my (strained) analogy and my point. :)
I like both OS X and Apple hardware. But we're living in the future, compared to back when I first got into computing, and data is a lot more easily transportable between platforms. If at some point I decide that I don't like that combination enough to pay the price differential between a new Mac laptop and a comparable PC laptop[1], switching platforms will suck a little, but it won't be a nightmare. I simply don't agree with the assertion that my freedom is cruelly curtailed if I can't run OS X on a cheaper Acer laptop.
[1]: Please nobody tell me that I'm paying three times as much for "exactly the same thing," or conversely argue that Macs are cheaper than PCs if you only look at it the right way. No, I'm not. No, they're not.
I love this post intellectually, but I believe it has a fairly simple answer - convenience and design. @patio11 also discussed these on his blog[1], which I'll get into:
Most people (users/customers) don't give a crap about freedom zero because most people aren't hackers. Most people want things to "just work." Most people don't want to tinker and screw around hunched in front of a lit screen for a few hours just to set up their drivers in a specific way.
On the other side, most employees don't care about perpetuating freedom zero or that philosophy because it's not as rewarding. I mean, yeah, it feels good to have open source projects and contribute to the community. But let's be honest, it doesn't pay the bills as well as working at, say, Microsoft does. Proprietary software attracts the more highly skilled engineers (usually - obviously some people are possessed of such personal conviction in software freedom that they will give up high salaries for their hacker community, but this is not the norm).
Here's a few examples to illustrate my point:
My mother is barely computer literate. If I presented her with Banshee instead of iTunes, she'd freak out. It would either gray out, become non-responsive, and subsequently close on her while syncing, or she wouldn't have all the features that a coordinated group of engineers in a multinational company built and designed for mass production.
As a programmer, I'm the same way. I want things to just work. Just because I know how to do things most other people don't using a computer doesn't automatically mean I'm invested in the free software movement. I dual-boot linux on my Mac, but I only use it for technical reasons. I don't honestly believe it's applicable or relevant to most people's uses of a computer. It doesn't "just work" a lot of the time - enough for it to be annoying. There's a "feel good" euphoria that occurs in an intellectually superior sort of way when you install linux, but it quickly drops off when it's a hassle just to get YouTube videos to play properly.
Secondly, and just as importantly - design. Do rhythmbox or banshee have as sexy a design as iTunes? Could they, with the resources they have? No, and no. Sure, they have accomplished something impressive, and in some respects, they have higher utility than iTunes. But overall, it's not an attractive interface. As Dave Wiskus would say, it isn't relevant and it doesn't match - a program needs to look like it belongs in the system it's designed under in order for it to be liked by a user many times. This doesn't just mean that software has to look like Windows or Mac, but that it has to understand the user and take out cumbersome decisions while preserving features in a way that is similarly intuitive to the system it resides in - that's very hard. It's also why UI and UX designers are as well paid as programmers.
We see this with apps all the time. When an app doesn't look like it matches the sleekness of iPhone's design i.e. it's clunky or looks "themed" with no custom overhead, it has a verifiable impact on the marketability of the app. The same applies to software. patio11's Bingo Card Creator competes with open source by being better because he has higher motivation. It's easier to obtain proprietary software (read: not cheaper, easier) because there's no hierarchy of betas and alphas and complicated names. There's a simple "download" or "install" button. The design has full teams of people behind it, knowing which hundred things to take out for which one thing to keep. Open source can't afford that.
This is why freedom zero isn't popular. I love free software, and I have a good advantage over "normal" (non-technical) users in utilizing it, but it's just not practical if you desire convenience and utility.
Most people (users/customers) don't give a crap about freedom zero because most people aren't hackers. Most people want things to "just work." Most people don't want to tinker and screw around hunched in front of a lit screen for a few hours just to set up their drivers in a specific way.
Oh, please, not this outdated crap. As long as you don't choose a particularly hostile machine, nowadays GNU Linux distros don't require almost any manual driver installation, and even restricted drivers can be installed with a couple of clicks.
Linux just doesn't offer anything that most users can appreciate. How hard it is to install or run doesn't even enter the picture.
My mother is barely computer literate. If I presented her with Banshee instead of iTunes, she'd freak out. It would either gray out, become non-responsive, and subsequently close on her while syncing, or she wouldn't have all the features that a coordinated group of engineers in a multinational company built and designed for mass production.
Clearly you haven't used the Windows version of that marvel of technology. It features all of that plus randomly not detecting the iPod, being bloated as hell and slow as molasses.
I agree that Free Software is not as convenient as proprietary software, though, and I frankly have no interest in convincing any of my relatives to use Linux instead of Windows.
> Oh, please, not this outdated crap. As long as you don't choose a particularly hostile machine, nowadays GNU Linux distros don't require almost any manual driver installation, and even restricted drivers can be installed with a couple of clicks.
That a user is expected to know what restricted drivers are--that the user is expected to know what drivers are--is the core of the problem.
When my mom turns on her Mac, she is never bothered by that.
Why would I bother buying a System76 computer? The point of Linux to consumers isn't "freedom", it's "free". As in, zero-cost. You install it on what you already have. It sucks at doing that.
Restricted drivers. Shitty iDevice support. A mass of stupid UX decisions that are kicked down to the user to deal with. I keep a Linux desktop because I am knowledgeable enough to deal with the issues that arise (like my Xorg getting inexplicably hosed two weeks ago, that was cool). Expecting normals to ever, ever waste their time with it is silliness.
No computer lasts forever. So whenever the time comes to buy the next computer, whether for ourselves or for our relatives, we should choose Linux-friendly hardware.
As for poor iOS device support, that is hardly the fault of Linux developers, since the protocol between iOS and iTunes is proprietary.
Or I'll just buy a Mac, which I do. I'll spend a grand on an Air for a relative so they aren't asking me either how to disinfect their machines or why their applications don't make sense. And regarding iOS: it is entirely the Linux community's fault. Consumers don't care that it's hard. Consumers expect it because everyone else has it.
Users aren't developers. Users don't care about freedom. Users care that their shit works. If it doesn't, it's not the user's fault.
The only restricted driver I have ever installed is Nvidia, which is completely unnecessary unless you are playing modern 3D games or doing GPGPU development (as I was).
>There are companies who sell Ubuntu computer pre configured with drivers etc installed. System76 for example.
Why should Linux be compared as "pre-installed"?
Even a plain user can install OS X himself. And then upgrade it himself.
Also, what happens to the pre-installed Linux after 2 years? When the user needs to do some multimedia work? Does it play Netflix fine? Does Flash works ok in major browsers? What happens when he installs some new gizmo which doesn't have a Linux driver?
>Curious argument, given that Apple is trying to kill flash.
Nothing curious about it. I'd like to see Flash killed myself. But when I need it, I need it, and on OS X or Windows I can install and use it in all major browsers, officially supported by Adobe. On Linux they have called it quites.
>The same thing that happens when that new gizmo doesn't have an OSX driver.
Only the second case happens far less often, whereas the first is the norm, especially for any multimedia etc work.
You mustn't have used linux in quite some time. It is not 'the norm' for things to have no linux drivers these days, unless you're using bleeding edge hardware. Yes, you'll run into more driver issues if you're using a philosophically-restricted version of linux like Debian, but for the most part, stuff just works these days.
especially for any multimedia etc work
Tell me, how well does OSX do with the latest nvidia and AMD graphics cards? Linux does a decent job of them, though the bleeding edge ones usually suck (especially on AMD, though there are proprietary drivers). If they're not latest-gen, then they definitely work fine. Linux supports a much wider variety of 'multimedia' gizmos than OSX does.
I mean, nvidia offers drivers for Solaris for download and yet not any for OSX.
Or were you just picking and choosing to make OSX sound better? If we're talking about stuff people like to use, then GPUs are far more popular than ADC cards (of which there's plenty of linux support anyway).
> Even a plain user can install OS X himself. And then upgrade it himself.
And struggle with drivers, too. I bet, OS X still uses them, not magic pixie dust, to work with hardware. So, if you use hardware except for pre-configured one (i.e. one having drivers pre-bundled with OS), you have to figure out what drivers are and where to get them (if they exist).
>And struggle with drivers, too. I bet, OS X still uses them, not magic pixie dust, to work with hardware.
It uses a magic pixie dust system called "GUI installer". Click, next, done.
It's not the figuring out "where to get them" that's the hard part -- even my dad knows how to Google for them. It's the installation ease, vs half-finished instructions about "make" and "tar.gz" and configuring.
You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Most drivers in Ubuntu (and other distros) are pre-installed; but even the restricted drivers are completely installed with GUIs. You don't even need to "Google for them", since Linux has had for a long time this thing called "repositories", which come with thousands of software packages, including drivers.
A popup appears, you click it, a GUI installer lets you install them with a couple of clicks more.
> That a user is expected to know what restricted drivers are--that the user is expected to know what drivers are--is the core of the problem.
That wasn't true at all the last time I did an Ubuntu installation. The process went to great pains to give plain-language explanations of any choices required by the user.
What you said about drivers is defensible; it was just the first thought that popped into my head. Nowadays linux has progressed enough to bypass that usually - but what about being required to use the terminal just to install?
Most users don't know what sudo, wget, make, or apt-get commands are, just to start. Most users don't know what commands are, in fact. They don't care about root access or custom options. They need and expect a graphical wizard to walk them through the core basics of their programs, and even then they shouldn't try to perform anything other than the checked box "basic installation". Perhaps that's a better example?
Now, you can blame this on third party developers not packaging their applications as handily as they do for Mac or Windows, forcing people to gather and compile sources themselves. But this doesn't change the bottom-line - linux is not convenient (which we agree on).
And I have used iTunes on Windows, and I found it wasn't bloated. It seems to be more or less on par with my Mac to be honest, though frankly I haven't used it for that platform except to help other people in the past year.
To be fair, if you use a friendly distro like Ubuntu you don't have to touch the command line unless you want to or you're trying to do something reasonably advanced.
Ironically I also find that I can often get things to work much more easily too.
Tried to setup a printer the other day under Windows 7 and went through a process of faffing around with HP drivers, updates and weird dialog boxes.
Under Ubuntu I told it to print and it basically said "on this printer?" , I said "yes" and it printed.
Also trying to share files between 2 computers on a LAN is an order of magnitude easier.
The bigger problem is that lack of strong options for certain types of software (e.g Music editing, Graphics editing, Games) under Linux and also support for some types of hardware. Though these would be quickly rectified if it had marketshare.
The problem with marketshare is that it's a cycle. Getting marketshare requires those kinds of features (generally), which requires paying your engineers a better salary (again, generally, there are exceptions). But that won't happen without a marketshare to bankroll better engineers. And at that point, you might as well be proprietary.
Not sure what salaries Canonical pay , but I assume that they are competitive enough. I have heard that the perks are good, work from home etc. So I doubt that they have a problem attracting good talent, I would wager that their average level of developer skill is significantly higher than the average devshop.
Of course they are a smaller company (than say Apple), so may not have the resources to build every single program people want. OTOH third party vendors can certainly fill this gap, but then you hit the chicken and egg problem that third party vendors don't want to develop for it (at least desktop software) because marketshare is low.
Web based and cross platform software alleviates this problem significantly though.
Of course it depends if you are Richard Stallman and must use 100% GPL software for everything, or whether you are happy with certain compromises. I would say that having your core OS as 100% open source software even if you run proprietary apps on top is a significant step forward.
Only the most terrible of (graphical) distros would require you to use a command line to install things. I'm not aware of any. So no, it's not a better example. You open up your designated package manager and pick what you want, like an app store where everything is free.
All the third party software I've seen for ubuntu has had a PPA, and those are simple to install via GUI.
If an application is so fringe that it's source-only you might need the command line, but that's nothing compared to the pain of compiling programs with dependencies on windows.
Often it's just a case of downloading and double clicking a .deb.
Though I do agree that the UI for the software store as well as the process for adding third party repos could be made a lot smoother and the release codenames are confusing,
>Most users don't know what sudo, wget, make, or apt-get commands are, just to start.
Have you used Ubuntu recently? Or Mint? They've made a lot of strides in that direction, including fancy graphical package installers.
On the other hand, when I use any Linux, I typically drop to the shell and edit config files, but that's because I'm always trying to do something unusual. Otherwise I wouldn't be on Linux to begin with. But for the 95th percentile of what typical people use a computer for (basic email, web browsing, maybe basic text editing), Linux is as easy to use as a Mac or Windows. In fact, Windows and OS X only recently are catching up to how easy it was to get software on the popular Linux desktop distributions: It was a matter of running the software installer app and selecting the programs you wanted. Now Windows and OS X each have their own "app stores", but Linux had that bit of convenience first. The only thing that prevents Linux from being on more personal computers is the fact that it doesn't ship on them. Consider Android, which is a Linux fork, is on millions of devices (a million a day are shipping now), so there's nothing wrong with Linux that can't be fixed with a few apps to smooth the edges.
No, being a power user is what keeps me on Windows. There are no sufficiently good replacements for:
* Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom (and Creative Suite in general)
* Sony Vegas Video
* Corel Draw Suite
* FL Studio
* Visual Studio
* Microsoft Word & Excel (don't get me started on how badly OpenOffice sucks...I've tried to use it for years, and they just can't get even close to "It Just Works.")
* Netflix and Amazon streaming
Any one of these would require I keep at least a virtual Windows instance around, and some (like FL Studio) really need you to be running on the raw hardware.
I've tried, again and again, to use free versions of all of the above, and the usability and feature set is nowhere near what I need in the free offerings. I've given up at this point; there are just too many critical apps on Windows for me to jump ship.
>And I have used iTunes on Windows, and I found it wasn't bloated.
In my experience, iTunes on Windows is one of the most hated pieces of software around; probably second only to QuickTime. I hate it with a passion, and I hate the fact that I can't use other software instead. I'm running 16Gb of RAM, an i7 with 8 threads, and a fast SSD hard drive, and yet it's still slow and frustrating, not to mention awkwardly designed and buggy. Not sure what you're running that it doesn't seem bloated, but it absolutely (and frequently) screws up in talking to iPads. And the fact that it considers every new upgrade a "new computer install", threatening to lock me out of my content and devices if I don't "uninstall" it first from the older computers (that have been reformatted) is absolutely infuriating.
I think VirtualDub is open-source and exists on Linux. Good grief, it's been nearly a decade since I did serious video editing...but I'm sure Linux has something.
> Visual Studio
Eclipse, NetBeans, Emacs, KDevelop, ...there are plenty of Linux development suites
> don't get me started on how badly OpenOffice sucks
I've never had any problems; it does what it's supposed to do for me. What are you doing?
> Netflix and Amazon streaming
Linux has VLC, Totem, and Flash Just Works on Linux Mint.
> I can't use other software instead
Why not? Did you make the mistake of buying official Apple hardware? That's your bad, since generic MP3 players and Android phones do everything iJunk does, and are a lot cheaper.
I love both of these dearly, but they're a joke (feature-wise; Inkscape has a pretty sweet interface) compared to Adobe products. It's not that Gimp & Inkscape are feature-poor; Photoshop really does have that many more features.
> Eclipse, NetBeans, Emacs, KDevelop, ...there are plenty of Linux development suites
that are integrated with .Net? Almost certainly not.
> I've never had any problems [with OpenOffice]; it does what it's supposed to do for me.
OpenOffice's hit rate for correctly displaying MS-generated files is about 50%. I have to run a damn Windows VM at work to read .doc-formatted shit because it doesn't display correctly under OOo.
> Linux has VLC, Totem, and Flash Just Works on Linux Mint.
Not a single one of those supports Amazon streaming video (and I suspect not Netflix either, but I don't have a Netflix subscription). We have to use my wife's computer to watch Amazon videos because they don't work under Linux Flash.
Note that in my daily personal life, none of these (except for the Amazon thing) affect me in the slightest – I love Inkscape; I code C and Erlang in a cheesy simple editor; I write documents in LyX; I can even watch The Daily Show in mplayer (compared to which Flash's playback quality is a joke). Hence I use open-source software and love it. But I'm not 99% of the population.
> that are integrated with .Net? Almost certainly not.
There is MonoDevelop (http://monodevelop.com), of course. But speaking more generally, if you're working in .Net, you've already chosen to lock yourself into a proprietary vendor's trunk. I wouldn't advise waiting for free software developers to come up with things to make your stay there more pleasant.
> Not a single one of those supports Amazon streaming video (and I suspect not Netflix either, but I don't have a Netflix subscription). We have to use my wife's computer to watch Amazon videos because they don't work under Linux Flash.
Amazon video has worked fine in Firefox for me on Ubuntu forever. If you're trying to access it via Chrome, it won't work because Google removed DRM support from the Chrome Flash plugin (see http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&...). God help me for saying this, but that's one you can't blame Adobe for.
Netflix doesn't work, but that's because Netflix uses Silverlight rather than Flash, and Silverlight has never been Linux-friendly.
For the record, I've avoided .net and C#, so I'm not locked in that box.
I said Visual Studio because the C/C++ development features are pretty much unequaled. I've tried. At some level I hate Microsoft AND Apple, and would love to be a Linux user and get away from The Man. But I don't love the idea so much that I am willing to do even 20% more work to be on Linux full time, and honestly it would be far more than that.
Some things would be absolute showstoppers, like reading Photoshop files -- so I'd have to have Windows running in a VM. And while I'm sure that's getting better, the integration never seems to be quite as clean as you'd like.
>Amazon video has worked fine in Firefox for me on Ubuntu forever.
Good to know. Strike one thing off of my list. I expected that with that many items I'd likely get one wrong. The rest stands, though. ;)
Though colanderman made some excellent replies, I have a few things to add.
>What about Gimp and Inkscape?
colanderman was right: Adobe products are That Much Better. Gimp doesn't stand a chance. Nor does Inkscape.
Not to mention the fact that I get .psd and .ai files from artists that I have to open. Gimp can sometimes, maybe, barely, open a .psd file correctly. If it's just got an image layer in it, sure, Gimp will work fine. But if they have 30 layers that include tons of complex filters? Almost no chance it will be exactly as Photoshop will render it.
>I think VirtualDub is open-source and exists on Linux.
If I want to spend 200x longer getting feedback on simple edits, then sure, I could use VirtualDub. I've used VirtualDub in scripts to hack videos in an automated way. It's not a replacement for an awesome video editor.
Vegas uses DirectX to render a preview in real time. I can do edits and see a reasonable approximation of the result almost instantly.
>it does what it's supposed to do for me. What are you doing?
Things like expecting the defaults to be sane, which in OO they rarely are. I even have trouble with really basic things sometimes, like styled bullet lists, where something will just randomly get messed up. And the default bullet is this dot smaller than a period. What's up with that?
Again, though, the killer is getting .docx files from people and having them be Completely Broken in OO. I tried working with OO for several years, but finally gave up in frustration. I'm sure I wasted more than 40 hours fighting with it, which would have paid for my Windows AND Office licenses several times over.
>Eclipse, NetBeans, Emacs, KDevelop
Eclipse is about the worst development environment I've ever been cursed to need to use (for Android development -- thank all that's holy they're officially supporting IntelliJ now). And none of the rest do nearly the job that Visual Studio does at being a really good, well-integrated development environment. Debugging an app? Oops, need to make a change. Edit and continue? Bing! Recompiled in place. Stepping...
Aside from the fact that I'm developing software for Windows (in part), in C/C++, not Java. I know KDevelop can do that, but GDB just doesn't hold a candle to the Visual Studio debugger. I know, because I'm forced to use GDB on other platforms. Just like the Adobe products above: Visual Studio is That Much Better.
>Linux has VLC, Totem, and Flash Just Works on Linux Mint.
Answering the wrong question. Neither Netflix nor Amazon streaming works through Flash, VLC, or Totem. Also, IIRC Flash Linux either had its support pulled, or it was announced that would happen, so that's not going to help for long.
The point is I have a Netflix account and an Amazon Prime account. I get thousands of movies that I can stream for free -- on Windows or Mac. Maybe you pirate your movies? Sorry, not my style.
> Did you make the mistake of buying official Apple hardware?
Not a mistake. I develop apps for iOS and Android. Actually my brother sold me my first iPad used, and gave me my second iPad, but I needed them regardless, despite not really being happy with the Apple walled garden.
>generic MP3 players and Android phones do everything iJunk does
Sorry, even though I'm with you philosophically, that's not correct. I play a lot of board games, and (until recently) almost all of the board game companies that make games for iPad have been ignoring Android. A few interesting board games have been coming out for Android recently, but it's still a fraction of what's available on iOS. I'm sure the broader game market is similar, though.
My day-to-day phone is an Android, but I have and occasionally use iOS products (even when I'm not developing for them). So I'm cursed with needing to use iTunes from time to time. I also have generic MP3 players (well, I only buy ones that play OGG files, but you know what I mean), but those are gathering dust since my Android phone with 16G of RAM can hold enough music to keep me happy -- and it can stream from Google Music anything I've let Google know I own.
I know ALL the apps you've referenced, and many more options besides. I've even used most of them. They all are severely lacking compared to what I use on Windows. It's golden handcuffs: I know I could leave, but I know I'd be worse off if I did. So I stay.
As long as you don't choose a particularly hostile machine, nowadays GNU Linux distros don't require almost any manual driver installation, and even restricted drivers can be installed with a couple of clicks.
But is it the software you really want? That's the problem.
Freedom Zero isn't just about avoiding lock-in. It's about software that does what the user wants, not what the designer thinks the user wants. The problem (and I know this is going to sound offensive to some people, but I can't help that) is that most users don't know what they want, because most users have no idea what is actually possible with a computer. Their sense of what is possible is dictated by what comes with the devices they're used to.
What makes hackers different is that we do have an idea of the possibilities. We understand that you don't have to be stuck with what the vendor gives you. But that's because, if push comes to shove, we can program it ourselves, so we don't feel bound by what the vendor gives you. And that also means we have an alternative when the vendor does not give you what you want.
Free Software is not as convenient as proprietary software
As long as you're doing things that the designers of the proprietary software anticipated, I more or less agree with this. But no designer can anticipate everything. With any piece of software, sooner or later there comes a point when a user wants something that the proprietary software can't do. What then?
If you're a programmer, and the software is open source, you at least have a chance to do something with it. Or, if its API is at least open, and its data is in an open format, you can write something that's functionally equivalent.
If you're not a programmer (or can't convince one to help you, either for love or money), or if the software is proprietary, you're screwed. That is why Freedom Zero is important.
This expands on my point really well. Designers, more than anything else, have to 1) know the problem better than the user, and 2) interpret what users say they want/need to ascertain what they really want/need.
They also know how to differentiate between what users want, what users need, and what users think they want/need, but which they really don't. It's a practical difference that goes beyond what's merely possible in programming. It also includes what's feasible and targets the problem most successfully.
Designers have the burden of preserving coveted features, furthering a competitive advantage, and removing features that confuse users.
It doesn't help users to give them everything they need, it only obfuscates software for them. A minimalist program that perfectly achieves what one group of users wants is superior to large software loaded with every feature requested ever catering for the entire market.
It's like buying a suit. It's better to get one tailored to your exact measurements (needs) than to buy a suit mass produced in the most popular, requested sizes.
In theory, proprietary software cannot fulfill this function as well as open source, because a programmer could just identify his own problem using his own experience and solve it. But in practice, this doesn't scale to anything larger than an individual, so proprietary software comes in, where skilled designers are paid heaps of money to do all of the aforementioned.
If there's one thing that kills open source software, it's the amount of decision making it places on users. Good designers (which cost money) know which decisions to make themselves so they don't confuse users.
This also goes hand in hand with freedom zero. Users don't want freedom because they don't want to make decisions. They want a problem solved but they don't care if they're "free" while it's done. They just want it accomplished so they can be on their merry way.
Designers, more than anything else, have to 1) know the problem better than the user, and 2) interpret what users say they want/need to ascertain what they really want/need.
I agree that this is what designers have to do in a perfect world, but in many cases in the real world it doesn't happen that way. Also, that kind of specialized design costs money:
It's like buying a suit. It's better to get one tailored to your exact measurements (needs) than to buy a suit mass produced in the most popular, requested sizes.
Yes, this is an apt analogy: many people can't afford custom-tailored software any more than they can afford custom-tailored clothes. In fact, custom-tailored software is harder to come by.
a programmer could just identify his own problem using his own experience and solve it. But in practice, this doesn't scale to anything larger than an individual
This is just as true of proprietary software as it is of open source. As you note, the problem is a simple matter of scaling. Specialized expertise in general doesn't scale.
proprietary software ... where skilled designers are paid heaps of money to do all of the aforementioned.
Many people never get to use any software that's been custom-designed this way, whether it's proprietary or open source. Even in a corporate environment, from what I've seen, most custom-designed software is not designed by skilled designers who do all the great things you've described.
But the point the OP was making about Freedom Zero isn't really about a corporate environment; it's about things like Facebook. See further comments below.
If there's one thing that kills open source software, it's the amount of decision making it places on users.
And if there's one thing that makes proprietary software suck, it's the amount of decision making it doesn't allow users to do even when they want to.
Good designers (which cost money) know which decisions to make themselves so they don't confuse users.
The (which cost money) qualifier is key. See above.
Users don't want freedom because they don't want to make decisions. They want a problem solved but they don't care if they're "free" while it's done. They just want it accomplished so they can be on their merry way.
Yes, that's true, but that doesn't mean that's always a smart position to take in the long run. Sure, buy an iDevice--and be prepared to cough up more cash whenever Apple decides, for reasons best known to itself, that you need to upgrade. Sure, use Facebook--and be prepared to have your surfing habits sold to the highest bidder.
That said, I think you have the right answer to the question the OP asked: people don't care about Freedom Zero because they don't care about the long-term consequences of their decisions. They just want a problem solved, now, and they will take the path of least resistance to get it solved.
You will certainly find a programmer to help you with money, provided you offer enough of it.
I have had situations where people have come to me and asked for modifications to some proprietary software and they are sometimes confused when I explain that this is not possible.
It is certainly true that non technical people have difficulty understanding (or at least explaining) their own requirements when it comes to software.
dude, an ubuntu point upgrade hosed wifi on a coworker's thinkpad within the last 6 months or so. These are not invalid concerns even for software developers.
Honestly, a better way to describe freedom zero is perhaps maslow's hierarchy of needs for computing.
works / performs required task is the bottom of the pyramid. So-called freedom zero is much higher.
As Dave Wiskus would say, it isn't relevant and it doesn't match - a program needs to look like it belongs in the system it's designed under in order for it to be liked by a user many times.
I haven't used iTunes for many years, but one of the specific things I hated about it back then was that on Windows, is specifically didn't look like it belonged. It ignored your window dressing choices. Screw you if you need big icons for poor vision. Screw you if what Apple thought looked good (beige!) clashed with your setup. It was quite unsexy software. And it forced things on you. I know this file is a TV show, but it won't let me put it into 'TV shows', because it has the "wrong extension", so it goes into 'movies'.
iTunes was far from "sexy" and "just works", back in the day.
Edit: Another doesn't "just work" from back then: "I want to get this song off my ipod. I can read my ipa\od in the file browser and... oh, I can't. It's all gobbledigook. But it's a free song that I put there. Why can't I 'just do this'?"
That's funny, I've got a VM of OSX that I keep around for...actually not sure why I still have it, but it's there, taking up 10-odd gigs of disk space.
However, agreed, for the general user, Macs are a great call.
"There's a "feel good" euphoria that occurs in an intellectually superior sort of way when you install linux"
Actually, as a programmer, the euphoria is more in shedding over priced hardware with application crashing spinning beach balls and a cluster f*ck of layered windows for a PC (of your choosing) with a Linux distro (of your choosing) with/without a Desktop Environment (of your choosing) and Window Manager (of your choosing).
The notion that shit is all broken in Linux and a bed of roses in OSX is nonsense. Spent 3 years on OSX, was great at first, but over time I grew to detest: iTunes, that spinning beach ball (bullshit, it just works, my a$$), flaky VPN, Finder, layers upon layers of non-maximizable windows and the Mickey Mouse-reliant interface in general.
I wasn't trying to imply OS X or Windows are a "bed of roses" - frankly, they're not.
I agree with you that the euphoria comes with freedom of a linux distribution. That sentence was a bit of dry humor on my part.
But my point still stands, and it's not black and white. Windows and OS X aren't perfect at all despite being proprietary, and linux isn't terrible for being so open. In fact, I'd recommend every programmer be comfortable with linux and navigating the more complex advantages it presents, especially server-side.
But I really can't honestly say it's more convenient, or that the software you run on linux will typically be as well-designed and as useful as a proprietary system. It just isn't. And that's okay, but it's a self-perpetuating cycle because people don't want to break into linux and make it better without higher benefits and salaries, but those won't come without associating linux with quality, open software (and getting past the whole non-profit issue).
>The notion that shit is all broken in Linux and a bed of roses in OSX is nonsense.
No. Stuff just works 80% good in OS X and 60% good in Linux.
And there's stuff like video editing, audio editing, multimedia work, etc, that works 90% good in OS X and 20% in Linux.
On the other hand, on the CLI, Linux works 95% and OS X works 60%.
The numbers are pulled out of my ass, but are what I subjective feel as a long time UNIX (Sun OS, HPUX), Windows (3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, 7), Linux (RedHat 5.2 IIRC, Mandrake, Debian 3+, now Ubuntu and Centos 6.x) and OS X (10.3 onwards) user.
So that's that.
And don't get me started with the continuous move to different libs, infrastructure changes underneath, multimedia frameworks, general brokeness and projects that start with high hopes only to be abandoned after 1 year, Gnome 3 and KDE 4, etc etc.
Wouldn't expect much of a modern desktop experience from RedHat or CentOS, and Debian isn't exactly up-to-speed either: Stonehenge for stability ;-)
Not a problem, for the multimedia deficiencies you mention, Windows VM does the trick here, and no need for dual boot (although I have that as well to flash BIOS or do other Windows required hardware mod'ing).
Of course, if you're a musician, video editor, or designer, you'd be more inclined to work on a Mac anyway (or perhaps PC/Windows) -- Linux would be the last choice more than likely.
I agree completely that Gnome 3 is far from a joy; it's pushing me toward a DE-less stack actually.
Your argument fails when you realize that the freedom zero doesn't prevent Apple from pre-installing iTunes (etc.) with the operating system. Your mother doesn't need to actually use freedom zero and install other software, she could continue to use the pre-installed applications.
The whole idea that "fredom zero = no pre-installed programs" doesn't really make sense.
I'm not really sure where you got this from...? In fact, whether or not it's pre-installed is irrelevant altogether.
Ubuntu comes pre-installed with Rhythmbox. Mac OS X comes pre-installed with iTunes.
But iTunes > Rhythmbox, still. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's easy to install, that's one small fragment of what I said about open source being hard to figure out which string of letters/numbers version to install.
Pre-installing packages so the user doesn't have the find and compile them on their own helps, but the utility and design of one program is still superior to the other regardless of whether it's pre-installed or not.
And what does this have to do with freedom zero? Apple can provide it's customers the freedom zero and pre-install iTunes. Freedom zero simply doesn't make software less good, it's irrelevant to software quality.
As a small counter-point, my mother (and the rest of my family) were lifelong Mac users, but their last desktop ran Ubuntu.
They barely noticed the difference, Firefox looks the same, and they never paid close enough attention to the other details to make it a big issue. There was a teeny bit of minor 're-training,' but they already asked questions about how things worked, so they didn't perceive it as any different.
The whole argument is a non sequitur. The products and companies the author is hoping people defer too, are not prevalent in mainstream society yet. Ubuntu and Arch Linux do not have stores in the mall. Sparkfun is not making arduino based mp3 players and phones down by the food court.
I think this highlights an interesting point, but we aren't there yet as a culture, globally.
I've always been interested in maintaining the ability to perform general computation. To me, that's being able to run any program I construct on my hardware. I don't demand that the program be able to interact with other systems, but I do demand that I be able to execute the instructions I want.
That generalizes freedom 0 to the set of programs the user constructs.
If a general-purpose program has to pass an authentication protocol before it's allowed to run, the surrounding environment is an attack on the construction of free speech by more efficient means.
People don't care about Freedom Zero for the same reason why Open Source took over Free Software. Because the vast majority developers and businesses embrace it only for their only self-interest, by reducing development time and costs. They don't give a single fuck about user freedom, as it's well shown by the number of companies who release open source backend tools but keep their customer-facing applications proprietary.
In fact, this is no secret: the whole point of creating Open Source as an alternative to Free Software was to keep the code sharing parts while shedding the ethical positions of the GNU philosophy, such as Freedom Zero, which were unpleasant to the money makers in the industry.