The main punchlines of the article: If your approach to releasing free software is merely to ensure that it has an approved license and throw it over the wall, you're doing it wrong. We need to design software from the ground up in such a way that those freedoms provide immediate and real benefits to our users. Anything else is a failure.
I see Sugar project as indicative of missing elements that keep free software from being able to properly empower. When we write software, it should expose pieces of itself. Part B, we should have systems for watching software run that everyday users can begin to get accustomed to.
I don't disagree with your statements, but I don't think the answer is to march lower and lower, to work purely to target further ends of end user and to help them. I am certain we can find meta-level approaches, find ways to make all software that is run easier to see, to make all software have common, high level touchpoints that users acclimate to and can use as a starting place for understanding. Telling each piece of software that it needs to fulfill these obligations of use for all users is hopeless, it's a waste of time and effort. We need high level systems for giving viewports to see software actually running at a high level.
In this regard, Sugar tried nobly. It used an interesting innovative IPC to orchestrate among the Activities, the runtime snooped on that IPC and could report back to users, giving them a journal of the things they were doing or show them how their system was interacting with itself. This was designed for the most vital audience in the world: preteens. There's no hope if you introduce the technical world latter, except for those who opt in. But if we can build, at a young age, the idea that these things are visible, if softwares have high level crosscutting means of interaction, then any software that we do write can help make us free.
I see this as a systems problem. This post seems to put end-developers, those building things that do stuff, into the crosshairs for not helping end-users. I'd turn that around and say that we just need better platform development efforts such that everyday product of end-developers is generally accessible to the public. We need to hack systems, not the wares on the system.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Meta-system, extrospection
Date: 2014-09-24 05:49 pm (UTC)If your approach to releasing free software is merely to ensure that it has an approved license and throw it over the wall, you're doing it wrong. We need to design software from the ground up in such a way that those freedoms provide immediate and real benefits to our users. Anything else is a failure.
I see Sugar project as indicative of missing elements that keep free software from being able to properly empower. When we write software, it should expose pieces of itself. Part B, we should have systems for watching software run that everyday users can begin to get accustomed to.
I don't disagree with your statements, but I don't think the answer is to march lower and lower, to work purely to target further ends of end user and to help them. I am certain we can find meta-level approaches, find ways to make all software that is run easier to see, to make all software have common, high level touchpoints that users acclimate to and can use as a starting place for understanding. Telling each piece of software that it needs to fulfill these obligations of use for all users is hopeless, it's a waste of time and effort. We need high level systems for giving viewports to see software actually running at a high level.
In this regard, Sugar tried nobly. It used an interesting innovative IPC to orchestrate among the Activities, the runtime snooped on that IPC and could report back to users, giving them a journal of the things they were doing or show them how their system was interacting with itself. This was designed for the most vital audience in the world: preteens. There's no hope if you introduce the technical world latter, except for those who opt in. But if we can build, at a young age, the idea that these things are visible, if softwares have high level crosscutting means of interaction, then any software that we do write can help make us free.
I see this as a systems problem. This post seems to put end-developers, those building things that do stuff, into the crosshairs for not helping end-users. I'd turn that around and say that we just need better platform development efforts such that everyday product of end-developers is generally accessible to the public. We need to hack systems, not the wares on the system.