I think you make an important observation that I agree with: the four freedoms can be worthless because free software can abuse users too! I find your examples convincing.
But I'm not sure that describing the issue in terms of "the entire population" and who is privileged works to capture this idea. The tension is here: > The four freedoms are only meaningful if they result in real-world benefits to the entire population, not a privileged minority. [snip] > 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.
Some free software that only serves a privileged minority seems very important to me.
If my users are operators of large networks, my software might be criticizable because it only benefits the small minority that operates such complex networks. On the other hand, many university network engineers have released free software to help one another operate complex networks without inflexible, proprietary tools. (Non-bullshit examples: tools like mrtg/cacti/etc, nfsen/flow-tools/softflowd/etc, zebra/quagga/bird/etc, kerberos/ldap/etc)
If my users are professional mathematicians, my software might be criticizable because it performs a function that most people don't even have the background to understand. On the other hand, it's clearly better for mathematicians to have free alternatives to work on their research. (Non-bullshit examples: octave, R, various logic programming systems, etc)
Other examples might include software tools useful in medicine, industrial design, or science. If software helps these users, it seems like non-bullshit to me even if it doesn't provide benefits for everyone.
Maybe one could say that helping these privileged folks with specialized real-world problems indirectly helps everyone, but I'm sceptical of that claim. It seems better to focus in on the relevant class of users and ask two questions: 1) Is the software free? 2) Does the software respect the user?
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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"The entire population"?
Date: 2014-09-24 11:16 pm (UTC)But I'm not sure that describing the issue in terms of "the entire population" and who is privileged works to capture this idea. The tension is here:
> The four freedoms are only meaningful if they result in real-world benefits to the entire population, not a privileged minority.
[snip]
> 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.
Some free software that only serves a privileged minority seems very important to me.
If my users are operators of large networks, my software might be criticizable because it only benefits the small minority that operates such complex networks. On the other hand, many university network engineers have released free software to help one another operate complex networks without inflexible, proprietary tools. (Non-bullshit examples: tools like mrtg/cacti/etc, nfsen/flow-tools/softflowd/etc, zebra/quagga/bird/etc, kerberos/ldap/etc)
If my users are professional mathematicians, my software might be criticizable because it performs a function that most people don't even have the background to understand. On the other hand, it's clearly better for mathematicians to have free alternatives to work on their research. (Non-bullshit examples: octave, R, various logic programming systems, etc)
Other examples might include software tools useful in medicine, industrial design, or science. If software helps these users, it seems like non-bullshit to me even if it doesn't provide benefits for everyone.
Maybe one could say that helping these privileged folks with specialized real-world problems indirectly helps everyone, but I'm sceptical of that claim. It seems better to focus in on the relevant class of users and ask two questions:
1) Is the software free?
2) Does the software respect the user?