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+title = "Free Software and the wrong crowd"
+author = ["Michał Sapka"]
+date = 2024-07-16T21:01:00+02:00
+categories = ["blog"]
+draft = false
+weight = 2001
+image_dir = "blog/images"
+image_max_width = 600
+abstract = """
+  An essey about Free Software and the "wrong crowd" for it
+  """
++++
+
+Free Software is a movement aiming at changing the world.
+Seize the means of computation!
+
+> Complete system sources will be available to everyone.
+> As a result, a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him.
+> Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes.
+>
+> [...]
+>
+> Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.
+>
+> -- [The GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman, 1983](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html)
+
+Stallman wrote it 40 years ago.
+It's obvious that Free Software has won!
+We have GNU/Linux, Redis, Android, Emacs.
+Time to open champagne and dance on the grave of System V.
+But is it really the best it's ever been?
+
+Personal computing is more widespread as it ever has been.
+Virtually everyone, in every mildly developed country, has used a computer - even if in the form of a phone.
+We are living in the world of tomorrow.
+
+Free Software is the backbone of this world.
+While there are still places where propriety systems run the server land, Linux is the default.
+Most people don't even think about too deep.
+Web services run Linux (be it GNU or not) - install Linux on AWS, throw Docker on top of it, sprinkle with Kubernetes and boom - a startup was born.
+
+The desktop is also having a penguin moment.
+Steam gave it the biggest push towards mass appeal.
+People can finally do their computing on a Linux machine - use the browser and play games.
+
+But note the trend here.
+It's all intertwined with proprietary software.
+Linux popularity is here not because it's free (as freedom), but _despite_ of it.
+The push is happening because proprietary software can run on it!
+It is owned by big tech, and while Linus still controls the kernel, he is paid by them.
+
+It made him a (very) rich man, but in the process broader Linux is less GNU.
+
+> ... many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive.
+> Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the people who are best at it.
+> There is no shortage of professional musicians who keep at it even though they have no hope of making a living that way.
+>
+> -- [The GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman, 1983](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html)
+
+And people clap, and party, and pat each other on the backs.
+_Open Source_ is eating the world!
+Even your phone most likely run a semi-open source operating system.
+
+But in reality, unless you are speaking with people into FOSS, they don't care about any ideology behind the software.
+Whatever makes them productive, or simply get the thing done.
+Tinkering is just a nuisance, a problem one needs to overcome to do _the thing_.
+
+The only thing which makes Linux popular is the opposite of what it was.
+Linux is no longer a free land, ruled by the masses.
+It went to bed with Big Tech, and stayed there.
+
+The moment of Linux is created by Valve and Steam.
+They _made_ what thousands of open-source developers couldn't - run the software, which people want to use.
+It just happens, that this kind of software is not free.
+It's closed source, paid, full of licensing hells, DRMed throughout.
+The kind of software Stallman warned us about.
+
+So no.
+I am not thinking about the "year of Linux" as something good.
+For me, this kind of _success_ is a failure of society.
+Linux is fully usable by the wrong crowd, the one that would not touch it with a mile long pole when it was in the hands of hackers.
+But this crowd is almost everyone who uses computers now.
+
+And Linux is simply a better version of Windows now.
+Not the enemy we were though it is, but a companion.