Free as in what?

October 27, 2011 by limako

This morning, I saw a post making fun of Richard Stallman's Rider -- a lengthy document in which he tries to forestall all of the things that might produce conflict when he's giving a talk. And since he's been supporting himself by giving talks for a long time (and is obviously a prickly and detail-oriented sort of character) the document is byzantine in its complexity. But, other than asking people not to give him parrots, its really just a very thoughtful analysis to help people get stuff right and be able to know ahead of time what's likely to cause problems. Calling Richard Stallman an "open source advocate" would be like calling Barack Obama the "President of America". He takes great pains to help people, for whom the distinction between "Free Software" and everything else, is vague and fuzzy get it right. And not just in broad strokes, but in the details too: Don't try to post video files of Richard Stallman using a non-free codec! Don't use any logos of penguins! Don't try to get him to use a browser to check his email! He does seem to still be willing to fly in air-craft operated with non-free software. But that's about it.

I really have great respect for Stallman: I think he's fundamentally right. We all ought to think about how our actions empower the people who are trying to restrict our freedom in order to profit from us. We should invest in systems that enable us to collaborate and refuse to be snared by the delusions offered up by our would-be corporate overlords. Minimally, we need to educate ourselves regarding the alternatives and make thoughtful choices. Stallman embodies the struggle to live in accordance with his values.

That said, I have to admit that figuring out what's really "Free Software" is often pretty hard. I think Ubuntu works pretty hard to make sure the base install doesn't include non-free software and that when people choose software to help them understand whether it's free or not and why. And yet, in his rider, he specifically calls out Ubuntu as being one of the distros that cannot be mentioned because it isn't free enough. And today, I was looking for a better font for writing with in Ubuntu (I need a serifed, monospaced font that looks good at 9 or 10 pts that includes the utf-8 Esperanto characters.) I found this site which talks about free versus non-free fonts and wanted to look at Luxi, but when I tried to install it in Ubuntu, it says it's non-free.

Richard Stallman really can see black and white where most people only see beige. Yeah, I can agree that there is black, but its pretty wicked hard to tell white from light shades of taupe, putty, and ecru. I wouldn't imagine trying to convince Stallman, but personally, I'd rather have us focus on avoiding the black, rather than trying to gerrymander which alternative is purest. Even Ivory was only 99 and 44/100ths pure.