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Re: [fsf-community-team] A first exercise


From: Κ∀miL ΛbΤ
Subject: Re: [fsf-community-team] A first exercise
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:06:33 +1030
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Macintosh/20090812)

Holmes Wilson wrote:
Hey everyone,

Here's a good example of something we'd like this list to respond to. People often send FSF emails pointing to blog posts that require some kind of response from the free software community.

This is a particularly good example, because it's not even the case that somebody's especially antagonistic to the ideas of free software-- they're just kinda lost ;)

Have a look this article and propose a response to the list.  I think in this case it would be good to draft both a comment and a short note to the author to his own email address or through a contact form (can somebody get this?).

Try to keep it clear, concise, and polite.  No cruft!  Let's discuss the best response here first before sending it through... we'd like to do things this way while we're getting started.

Also, some pretty heavy discussion kicked up over the weekend and we've had some unsubscribe requests.  I think that's natural since this will be a very active list (and people will obviously have their own questions and ideas about how best to explain free software, for example) but we should be careful to keep things productive.  This will be a lot easier when we have more work to do :)

So let's focus on this dry run and see how it goes.

-Holmes

> *CNet blog Network* writer Dennis O'Reilly makes several erroneous
> statements in his 20 Oct 2009
> article<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13880_3-10378605-68.html>  titled
> 'Finding the Catch in Free Software'. Most glaring among his mis-statements
> is:
>> The GNU GPL stipulates that the software can be used, copied, and
>> distributed verbatim without limitation, though it cannot be changed.
>
> The guy claims to have been writing about tech since 1985,&  will
> presumably continue writing for some time. Would FSF be interested in
> undertaking an effort to improve O'Reilly's understanding of FLOSS?
>


It seems like he is advocating for download.com and oss. He seems to realise that 'free' does not mean that free software necessarily costs nothing; regarding open source he states that "the software can be redistributed—whether sold or given away—without limitation". So I don't think he agrees with the way that the term 'free' is actually used in relation to free software, and thus his argument seems to be along the lines of, 'free software is not really free because it costs money, and therefore it sounds like a dodgy trick to exploit people economically, and thus one should use open source software, because it is more honest in the sense that it does not imply being something which it is not (i.e. free in terms of cost)'. Despite his errors regarding GNU GPL, he's more concerned with the term "free" I think; that its use is misleading and causes the proliferation of bad marketing practices.

As far as strategy goes to address this article, I reckon that the issue is one of hegemony: O'Reilly supports economic signification of "free", so that he is implicitly and perhaps unwittingly supporting the hegemony of a particular way of using language. His argument is one which allows the appropriation of freedom by economics, and therefore justifies a discourse (economic) which makes the things he is trying to get rid of, actually more likely (i.e. bad marketing and "cons). In other words, by agreeing that 'free' means 'free beer' rather than 'free speech', he is shooting himself in the foot, insofar as his goal really is to reduce scams and "cons". To put it another way (at the risk of redundancy), to allow economic discourse to colonise the term 'free', O'Reilly is advocating a way of speaking/writing which makes possible the things he is lamenting. If he really is against "cons", pointing this out may make sense to him.

I hope what I've written makes sense. Please tell me if it does not.



-- 
"Więcej kondomów, mniej poligonów!" - Big Cyc

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