[Fsfe-uk] Gnu/Linux and freedom (was Linux in Thailand.)

[Nick]

Peter wrote:
> Nick,
>
> Yes, anything to try to maintain their monopoly.  Still, it appears to be
> failing in Thailand.  At worst, it looks like the Thais have found a good
> way of driving down Microsoft's price - 85%!!  I think this is a model that
> many more could follow.


If the motivation is simply to drive down price, it will run out of 
steam at some point - £0. Also, framing it simply in terms of price 
means we are not adding to our community mindshare.

It may be easier to frame it in Thai than English, Thailand having a 
long history of freedom and (relative to UK) substantial social liberalism.

Freedom is the key. If you use non-free software, you are binding 
yourself to secret proprietary interfaces. The user interface is a small 
facet of this. Bigger facets are secret data formats. Secret file 
formats, secret authentication protocols, encoding your personal 
documents in a form only one organisation knows how to or has the right 
to decode. Extending control from one platform (eg desktop to server or 
to PDA) by making the desktop clients only talk the secret language when 
communication is needed.

If you want freedom from being controlled by a proprietary software 
vendor, the only way is to avoid non-free software, even if it is 
supplied at a zero financial price. Proprietary software is supplied in 
binary form and not source code form. Source code is the blueprint which 
 humans can understand. Binary is not understandable by humans but is 
used by the computer of the day. The unique property of proprietary 
software is that it is information which only computers understand and 
only the vendor has the key to. This in turn converts your information 
into a form which only the vendor has the key to.

When you share your information in proprietary form, you are obliging 
the person you are sharing with to relinquish their freedoms.

The proprietary software you have at the time lends you a key for as 
long as you have that licensed copy. In the computer world, the life 
cycle tends to be just a few years.

With free software, everyone is given the key, and is given permission 
to use the key. Anyone can look at the blueprint to understand the data 
format of the information you have written to a file then write a 
program to make use of it.