+++
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 for it, 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.