Who is Free Software for?

For a while I have been arguing that maybe there are some issues with the whole “Open*” movements, their founding myths and ideologies (see for example my talk at Fluconf). This criticism comes from a place of love. All the writing on this blog is licensed CC-BY-SA to allow others to take the texts and do something with it: I release my work under those conditions because I believe that we need strong and rich commons to flourish as a society but also as communities, groups and individuals. I’ve also been running my own personal systems (servers, my own laptops and a few other systems) on Linux for more than 20 years now. I am deeply embedded in the space of open culture but also Free and Open Source Software.

This morning I made a bit of an off-hand remark that summarized a few thoughts going on in my head:

Post by @tante
View on Mastodon

People within the Open* movements have done the impossible, have created whole encyclopedias, the most successful and most used kernel on the planet and a metric fuckton of custom, optimized operating systems, software libraries, and user facing programs. Have contributed to the commons to a degree that wouldn’t even have been credible within science fiction stories. Some of these systems – and I am not kidding here – should be considered the digital wonders of the world.

So why have we not “won”? Wikipedia might be considered to have won: By now it is the default digital source of information for large parts of the planet when trying to get to mere facts. But Wikipedia is an outlier in that regard.

Using Statcounter’s metrics Firefox – the Open Source browser that is not depending on what Google’s ad department wants to do – currently (March 2025) has a market share of 2.63%. And sure mobile platforms and Apple’s anti-competitive strategies when it comes to mobile have made it harder but even on desktops it’s just 6.3%. That’s absolutely not nothing, it’s millions of people. But not exactly something that shifts any sort of power and influence away from tech giants.

Again using Statcounter, Linux has a desktop market share of about 4%. Which is a lot given how hard the main competitors Microsoft and Apple are making the life of Linux developers and distribution builders. But still not even close to being an actually relevant player in the market for most purposes. Which everyone using Linux feels daily when asking for certain software vendors to release Linux versions of their stuff: “It’s not worth it.”

I got a great response to the Mastodon post I embedded above:
Link: polymaths.social/@rl_dane/stat…
First: R.L. Dane is completely right in their description about how “Open Source” is kind of the corporate version of “Free Software”. “Open Source” tried to strip the little politics that “Free Software” as a concept carried to make the whole scene more digestable to corporate entities (in any meaning of the word).

Second: I believe that they also nailed who Free Software is for. Quote:

What we call #FOSS today was originally for hackers by hackers.

R.L. Dane

For hackers by hackers.

And I am afraid that we haven’t moved enough past that mindset.

That’s 100% not saying that nothing happened. A big deal has happened. Think of Outreachy that tries to get more people from diverse backgrounds internships to work on open source and build a career in software. Think of PyLadies who have put in so much work to give more women the opportunity and a safer path towards becoming active contributors into the Python ecosystem. And there are so many, many activities like that. So much work so many technical communities put into making the path towards becoming a member easier, more inclusive, fairer, etc. Those activities are fundamentally about fulfilling the Open Source promise: To give everyone the ability to have control over the software they use and the tool to build upon what’s already there. Mission … not accomplished but on its way, right?

But what are we doing? What are we trying to help “everyone” with?

We are trying to give more people the opportunity to “become hackers”. So they can profit off of all this stuff built by hackers for hackers. This isn’t a project to free all of us, it’s a project to give everyone a degree of freedom if they join our club. If they assimilate. This is Borg-mode.

We are not meeting people where they are. We expect them to come to us in order to understand why our values matter and are the best. Which – sorry to have to say so – they are not.

In 1971 the black civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer coined the phrase

Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free.

And we have not taken that to heard. Because it does not say “Nobody’s Free until everyone is like us and then we have tools to create some freedoms”.

This is why so many outreach programs don’t work. Because what we are selling isn’t a solution to people’s actual problems but a new identity. And most people already got one of those. Now the solutions we propose might actually help our target audience with a real problem that they are faced with but so often our narratives don’t connect to their realities. We’re stuck in our own heads. Our own mechanisms and traditions.

I keep realizing and feeling this being stuck whenever I talk about moving beyond Open Source and Licenses and all that. I get a lot of responses arguing for example that “if you restrict people to not use your software for war you are no longer compatible with Freedom 0 and are no longer Free Software” as if that mattered. Yeah sure, that’s the legal regiment we’ve built. And where has that got us? Are we happy here? Is that enough?

Is me being able to customize my systems to my needs good enough? I recently changed a lot of my infrastructure to depend less on US companies and service providers for the simple reason that currently hosting stuff in the US (digitally but also physically) does not feel save. I can do that. Can my dad? My neighbors? Is that their fault?

In motherfucking 2013 I wrote:

Telling people to “host your own” when some big company closes or buys a service is very similar to the princess who, when learning that the peasants had no bread, said: “Let them eat cake.”

Hosting your own is a solution for the gifted and wealthy few, for many it’s blatant cynicism.

a younger tante in 2013

I stand by that. We need to get out of our comfort zones and modes of operation. Need to move beyond the seemingly apolitical cyberspace of free licenses. We need to reshape our thinking towards more political goals and values.

Maybe then non-hackers might also give a shit.

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#floss #foss #free #licenses #open #openSource

tante

2025-02-06 14:33:37

“A Luddite Criticism of Open Source” at FluConf

On February 1st I had the privilege of getting to speak at the first Fluconf about Open Source and why that whole movement might not do as much good for as as we might want it to. It’s not that Open Source is “bad” but that it is sometimes presented as a solution to sociopolitical issues it is not capable (nor even trying) to fix.

The talk description was:

“People interested in Fluconf will also be interested in Open Source or to be more precise Free/Libre Open Source Software. Everyone has been using Open Source for many years but many from this community have shifted to trying to run their personal infrastructures on non-proprietary pieces of software and some even hardware.

This is already an important shift towards freeing ourselves and each other from corporate dominance but is it really doing enough? Are our licenses protecting the values we actually care about?

Coming from a luddite background I want to dive into a a bit of a critical reading of the values that we use codified mostly as licenses: Are they really enough? Which aspects are they missing and why? And what are the consequences of those omissions?

I’ll try to end up looking at mechanisms of integrating luddist principles in software projects. Can they offer additional safeguards?

This sessions doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But hopefully some good questions and a few ideas of where to go.”

I embedded a copy of the video on Youtube but you can also watch it on Archive.org for less tracking and everything.

youtube.com/watch?v=_Ew_MlA5Hb…

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#fluconf #luddism #openSource

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LibreOffice randlos präsentiert

Am (übrigens grossartigen!) Winterkongress der Digitalen Gesellschaft gab es einige LibreOffice-Präsentationen mit weissem Rand unten und rechts. Dasselbe Problem hatte ich bis vor ein paar Monaten auch. Hier Gründe und Lösungen.

Einige LibreOffice-Nutzer:innen kennen das Problem: Ihre Präsentation mit dunklem Hintergrund weist auf dem Beamer unten und rechts eine störende, etwa ein Pixel breite weisse Linie auf.

Bei LibreOffice ist das Problem bekannt, die Lösung zieht sich allerdings hin. Deshalb hier zwei Alternativlösungen.

Inhalt

Toggle

• Das Problem
• Lösung 1: Foliengrösse ändern
• Lösung 2: Eigener Hintergrund

Das Problem

Im LibreOffice-Bug 150102 ( LibreOffice Impress has white line on bottom and right edge of projection monitor) wird seit 2022 über den Fehler diskutiert. Das Problem scheint darin zu liegen, dass bei einem Zwischenformat für Grafikdarstellungen («Metafile format») Rundungsfehler auftauchen, weil dort nur mit Ganzzahlen gerechnet wird.
In meinem aktuellen Setup auf dem Monitor nur noch schwach sichtbar: Die weisse Haarlinie. Mit Klick aufs Bild (Vergrösserung) wird er allerdings klar sichtbar.
Wenn man nun den Folienhintergrund auf eine Farbe ändert, kann es sein, dass aufgrund dieser Rundungsfehler der Hintergrund nicht die ganze Folie abdeckt, sondern unten und rechts eine weisse Linie vom ursprünglichen Hintergrund übrig bleibt. Besonders stark fällt das natürlich bei dunklem bzw. schwarzem Hintergrund auf.

Das Problem scheint vor allem unter Linux und auf AMD-Grafikkarten aufzutreten, weshalb es regelmässig «works for me»-Antworten auf die Fehlermeldung gibt.

Die Problemlösung zieht sich ebenfalls hin, weil das Problem eben bei diesem Metafile-Zwischenformat auftritt, welches von vielen anderen Komponenten ebenfalls verwendet wird. Die LibreOffice-Entwickler befürchten deshalb, dass eine Änderung an den Rundungsregeln andere Probleme nach sich ziehen würde.

Das heisst, vorerst muss man sich selbst helfen.

Lösung 1: Foliengrösse ändern

Als ich 2023 zu einem ChatGPT-Vortrag nach dem anderen eingeladen wurde und ich dafür LibreOffice mit einem dunklen Foliendesign benutzte, begann ich mich über diese störende weisse Linie zu ärgern. In irgendeinem LibreOffice-Forum las ich, dass jemand mit dem Wechsel des Folienformats Erfolg gehabt hätte. Und siehe da: Nachdem ich mein Folienlayout von «Bildschirmanzeige (16:9)» auf «Bildschirm 16:9» umgestellt hatte, verschwand diese Linie.
Foto meines Bildschirms, Folienlayout «Bildschirmanzeige (16:9)»: Hier ist die Linie bei vergrössertem Bild rechts zu erkennen.Foto meines Bildschirms, Folienlayout «Bildschirm 16:9»: Hier fehlt die Linie auch bei vergrössertem Bild.
In meinem aktuellen Setup (LibreOffice 24.8.5.2 unter Debian Trixie auf AMD Ryzen mit Radeon) ist diese Linie nur noch schwach zu erkennen (schwächer als früher); beim Wechsel auf «Bildschirm 16:9» verschwindet sie ganz.

Es gibt drei 16:9-Folienformate «Bildschirm 16:9», «Bildschirmanzeige (16:9)» und «Breitbild». Trotz gleichen Seitenverhältnis unterscheiden sich die zugrunde liegenden Zentimeter-Ausmasse, nämlich von 28 cm☓15.74 cm über 10″☓5.63″ (25.4 cm☓14.3 cm) zu 13⅓“☓7½“ (33.85 cm☓19.05 cm).

LibreOffice versucht zwar, die Elemente diesen neuen Ausmassen anzupassen, es ist aber nach jeder Umstellung des Layouts Handarbeit notwendig.

Lösung 2: Eigener Hintergrund

Statt auf die Hintergrundfunktion zu vertrauen, kann man sich auch selbst einen eigenen Hintergrund basteln:

1. Ein farbiges Rechteck oder
2. ein farbiges Hintergrundbild (PNG oder JPEG)

taugen nämlich auch als Hintergrundbild, wenn man es mit Rechte Maustaste→Anordnen→Ganz nach hinten geeignet platziert. (Die Idee mit dem PNG/JPEG-Bild stammt von hier.)

Dabei ist darauf zu achten, dass das Hintergrundbild über die Folienausmasse hinaus reichen, insbesondere rechts und unten.

Das ist die Variante, die ohne die Handarbeit beim Layoutwechsel auskommt und insbesondere für aufwändig gelayoutete Folien einfacher ist.

In beiden Fällen kann die Änderung beliebig auf den Masterfolien oder den einzelnen Folien vorgenommen werden.

Viel Spass beim schöneren Präsentieren mit dunklem Hintergrund!

#LibreOffice #Linux