Technology Fundamentalists

I've noticed a recent surge in activity I'll call technology fundamentalism. It's a strange phenomenon. There are two major groups here - those that feel that all software should be free and  that people should favorite it despite it's practicality, and those that feel that software shouldn't be free.

So let's discuss this organization - fsf.org. Recently, they launched a web site called BadVista.org to spread word of the supposed evils of Microsoft's new Vista desktop operating system that is launching in January. In the second paragraph of their press release they write “Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall  regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does." My question to these people is this - does the average computer user really care about "your control over what it does?" My feeling is that people PAY money for computers to do what they're supposed to do. They buy the hardware, not the operating system. As an example, a non-technical person, say a doctor, wants to buy a computer for his home. He doesn't want to "control the computer". He wants to plug it and have it just work.  Apparently, fsf.org feels there's a overwhelming demand by people to have some level of deeper control.

Check out this classic clip with Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF (I love how he starts at 0 instead of 1 - because I, like any average person, start with 0 when making a list). Clearly, he feels it's important for my mom to modify source code and that George W. Bush is in charge of the evil empire (no politics, here!). And FSF - they are the defenders of my freedom. Let me say this - my freedom is my time and the time of many others who don't know how to get a command prompt and type "vi httpd.conf".

I say let innovation rule instead of singling out Microsoft, an easy target because they do have the largest share of the operating system market. Let someone make an operating system (ok, I'm alluding to Linux) that's as easy to use and does what people need without having to be technical. I challenge one of these FSF "freedom fighters" to forget for one day that they've memorized the httpd.conf file and can modify it in their brains. Let them pretend that they are the average computer user just wants things to work as they expect and let them do it with "free software".

Once they finally set up Linux (because it's so easy and intuitive for non-technical people) and rely only on "free software" and see how far they go. Limit them to their own directory of "free software"
and see how far they get. E-mail? Sure, let's go with "Anguly, a lightweight client written in C and GTK+" (can someone tell me what GTK+ is?). Then onto GNU Cash, because Quickbooks is too expensive. Along the way we'll need to go over the user-friendly tarball installation system.

Just because something may be "free" in terms of hard dollars, it's not "free" in the currency of time, effort, and support. And then the final question - Why? Just to say that you've beaten Microsoft? What's the monetary value in that?

Should software be free? Could software be free? Absolutely! As soon as someone wants to put forth the effort into developing products that  match the ease of use of Microsoft's products, and Intuit's products, and Autodesk's products, they can give away all the software they want...if people want it, that is. And then that someone has to figure out what is the economic value of doing this. Of course for the thousands of people who have nothing better to do then to code 24/7 for free this might make sense. But I'm sure they will want something in return and ask for "donations".

To be clear, I fully support the open source model but I don't view it as the same thing as "free software". The open source world is leading innovation, in my opinion. Look at Zimbra, SugarCRM,  Alfresco, Novell, Red Hat, and even Oracle. There is value in all these products. Something that they all have in common is that they all provide versions of their software for "free", meaning that a certain version can be downloaded and used free of cost. They even provide you with source code. And there are various business models that make economic sense. Red Hat, for example, gives away Red Hat Enterprise Linux but if you want support and updates you pay a nominal fee. Zimbra has an open source edition for free but charges for a more advanced and support version called network edition. There's economic sense and economic incentive for these companies to make these products available for free.

In FSF's world, as it seems to me, people should expend the energy developing quality software for the good of others without thought to economics. Does that really make sense? What is really outrageous is that they're picking a battle with Microsoft. Why not pick a battle with Novell over their SLED product? Or Red Hat over the "imperialistic" approach to charging for updates to their stack? FSF has been around since 1985, long before Microsoft Windows was a household name. Seems to me like they have yet to evolve.

At moment I feel that there are two real competitors to Vista - Apple Computer - the definition of innovation, and either Novell or Ubuntu. Novell's SLED and Ubuntu (Ubuntu is, well, "free"), although Novell definitely has an edge. In fact if anyone can take away market share from Microsoft it's Novell because of their ties to corporate America and their support infrastructure. So we'll check back again this time next year and see where we will be. Let freedom rule!

Happy holidays!