Free Software Documentary “Software Wars” in Need of Support

http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/01/free-software-documentary-software-wars-in-need-of-support/

by glazemaster • 14 years ago

35 12 14 years ago

jack57• 14 years ago

The sensationalist "* Wars" name certainly is not helping it within the technical community.

If this film were instead about how proprietary software people, who are never, ever going to disappear, and free software people, who really want them to, could get along and work together for the betterment of computing over ideals, I'd donate 1% of the funding goal right now. I'm 100% serious and have the $1,500 ready to draw a check upon to put my money where my mouth is.

As it stands, it's instead about digging in to the trenches and going to war against proprietary, making proprietary evil, brushing aside the genuine problems with free software to laud it as the one true path; because of that, I hope the funding fails and it goes nowhere. It's just more of the same rhetoric that hasn't worked, and that free software cried foul about when it was turned upon them ("Linux is communism", "Gmail can suspend you and you disappear", different FUD, same tactic).

Watching proprietary/free slug back and forth at each other for most of my adult life has been just as tiring as watching red/blue snipe back and forth in U.S. politics at the expense of progress. Just look at the fiscal cliff drama and the numerous partisan battlegrounds before that. There is no progress in a war[1]. Period. Full stop. You make this fight, you impede the very progress you seek to suddenly enable. It's just a contradictory position. You get one or the other. You get progress or a battle. Pick one. Spoiler: if you pick the battle, it's never going to be won by either side.

It's why I voted for Obama, because he promised to bring each side together -- naturally, he hit Washington politics and couldn't do diddly-squat of what he promised, but I still had hope. I think working together between these two camps is much more realizable, and the time for "it's us or them" is long since past. The book makes the claim that free software will pave the way of progress, but to get there it has to defeat proprietary software first, which is also capable of its own progress in a way.

I already hear you slamming "reply" to tell me why moderate is not an acceptable position in this fight, and I fully expect the talking points from either side on why. Just know that I realize them to be talking points even before you've typed them.

[1]: Except for those making guns.

jhuni2• 14 years ago

I want my computer to be my own personal property and not the private property of a corporate tyranny like Microsoft or Apple. I will never take away control over my personal computer by installing a proprietary program and there are many others like me that will never go away.

jspthrowaway24• 14 years ago

What's in your BIOS? What's in your NIC's firmware? What's in the firmware of the router you're wire{d,lessly connected} to? What's in the microcode of your CPU? What's in your south and north bridges? What's in your USB controller? What's in your display's firmware, if you're running with monitors? Every single chip in your machine? The design of the motherboard itself? The architecture of the system?

What's in your modem? What's in your Xbox? What's in your cable box? What's in your car? What's in your microwave? What's in your automated toll tag and the receiver that processes your payment? What's in your digital thermostat? What's in your mobile phone? What's in the baseband of your mobile phone? In the cell tower that's talking to your mobile phone? In the computer systems routing your calls? In the SCADA systems in the factory that built your mobile phone?

What's in the systems keeping you alive right now in your apartment building, home, or neighborhood? In the power grid? At the power station? In the water system? In the computer flying the aircraft? In the computers tracking the aircraft so they don't collide? In the mail system? In the traffic light system? On the Mars rovers? In the systems watching for a tornado headed for you? Or a nuclear missile? Or an Iranian flotilla?

What's running on Blogger, who's hosting your blog?

Sure, you can come back to me and say that some of those have examples of free software or utilize free software in some way; I noticed in particular that the trailer mentions a lot of the power grid runs on Linux. But I don't see "Power Grid v2.0" on Savannah, because the vast majority of planet Earth is built upon a proprietary model. To dispense with all of that and say that free software is the only way is an incredibly myopic view that focuses only upon the personal computer. The personal computer is not the only software in the universe -- not even close. To conquer proprietary software to benefit the personal computer, you're also dispensing with millions, perhaps billions or even trillions of man hours to build the life that we know today. For what? An ideal? It's ironic, too, because free software is built upon collaboration of the whole, but they can't dream of collaborating with the proprietary whole.

Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say free software is the absolute best thing in the world. IPv6 might be the best Internet protocol in the world. There will be private networks using IPv4 until all of us are dust in the ground. Metric might be the best measurement system in the world. Americans and, to a lesser extent the British, will be using imperial units until all of us are dust in the ground. Momentum is a powerful force, and when we're talking about the mind-bogglingly enormous portfolio of human innovation that was paid for by proprietary organizations, that's a huge fucking aircraft carrier worth of momentum to stop on a dime.

What do you want, as a free software proponent? Do you want proprietary software gone? Okay, organize reinventing planet Earth. I've given you a small list to get started. You can't win on the personal computer alone. There will always be compromises. I'm saying you should compromise more. I guarantee you that Siemens is never going to wake up one day and say, "gee, we should write that new SCADA controller using a completely free software model; there's no need to provide any competitive advantage to our company". Shareholders would bust down the door in minutes. Companies have given you the life you know today because of the system given to us before you and I were even born. Maybe they're inherently evil; then, I pose to you the question, what is evil? Keeping my lights on with proprietary grid management might be evil. Shit, then, I like evil.

We have the system we have. Many of the world's economies are capitalist. You operate in the system you are given and take full advantage of it. If the world wasn't wired the way it was, perhaps you'd have a shot at the utopia that you're envisioning; really, I do see the benefit. I promise. I see the benefit of a world without violence, as well, but it's just never going to happen and we have to cope as well as we can. The only world without violence will be a world without living creatures.

I don't know if you can tell from this minor essay that I wrote to you (and, I apologize for drowning you in it), but people working together for the common good is the single most important thing to me as a person. It makes me feel horrible that humans default not to getting along. Life is really, really confusing and partisanship like this confuses me even more. I'll never understand why humans can't agree on the simplest things and do everything in their power to discredit and mock the other side, and it's something that tortures me as a human being on occasion. When I see Obama and Boehner go toe-to-toe on what should be a pretty simple governmental decision, and the full weight of rhetoric and disagreement gets thrown behind each side for days of our precious time, I just want to grab them and shake them and say "we're all humans trying to figure out this existence together! Is this fight really worth it in the long run? What have you gained?"

I hope, after death, I get an answer. Otherwise, wow. What a weird existence.

Shorel2• 14 years ago

I'm happy with you running OSS in your box, as long as you don't do anything to prevent me from selling software or installing whatever software I want in my Linux boxes.

lewispollard• 14 years ago

I watched the mentioned 'Revolution OS' film on Netflix recently and it was extremely painful for exactly this reason. The icing on the cake was an excessively dramatic voice reading a fairly innocent letter from Bill Gates to a background of excessively dramatic music, it was enough to make me want to stop watching.

Shorel2• 14 years ago

That's why I'm very happy about Steam running in Ubuntu.

I also run Skype and Opera in the Ubuntu box. I would probably install Chromium, but Firefox is gone and not welcome in my box.

Proprietary and quality software running in an open OS is to me the best of both worlds, and I'm sure the über-pragmatic Linus Torvalds would agree with me.

BUGHUNTER• 14 years ago

The Indiegogo Project Site gives you a deep insight about the trustworthiness of the producers.

http://www.indiegogo.com/SoftwareWars/

For $1000 Dollar they are offering product placement.

Independent journalism != advertising.

Very disappointing.

Free Software Documentary “Software Wars” in Need of Support

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