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My parents gave up on Linux and bought a Mac Mini. We bought an AppleTV for the kids and filled it with their favorite DVDs. I stood in line for three hours to buy my wife an iPhone 3G for her birthday. And nobody gives a shit about freedom 0.
Discuss.
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Ugh. I know. I hate myself for loving this iPhone. I’m really starting to question the strength of my convictions. I’ve fallen down a hole and no one wants to jump down here ;)
nobody gives a shit about freedom 0.
Well duh, its implicit. It only ever comes up when someone says “you cannot run this program for that purpose”, and even then such an edict is unenforceable (see Piracy).
And since most people are incapable of Dogfood Manufacturing, none of the other ‘freedoms’ affect them except through several layers of indirection, with the minor exception of redistribution, which just legalizes what they will do anyway (see Piracy).
— Fred Blasdel 
My experiences have been more positive. My daughter’s pre-school principal is still happy with Linux after an year or so and her husband asked me where to get Linux training for some technicians he employs. My father after complains occasionally but turns down offers to switch him back to Windows. Its not all bad.
I’m still using Ubuntu at work and at home.
I’ll admit to being irrationally winded when you announced that you were going to switch the first time. I also bought an iPhone 3G and have been pwning it just so I can run code for the fucker.
When Cory told us two years ago that the TPM would mean a more closed environment, we laughed and awarded him the troll cap, and when the TPMs were gone on the next round of Macs, we laughed some more. The iPhone is the sort of closed environment that Cory predicted, except for the loss of the file system as a concept. It may be provident in order to simplify a phone, but when you thrust your kill switches and your security theater in my face and prevent me from doing stuff and don’t even have a media conglomerate other than your own to point your finger at this time, that’s when I get ticked.
No one cares about freedoms for the same reason that no one cares about oxygen. As long as they’re there, why bother? Freedom zero is so abstract to most people that no one even thinks about it, let alone care. It’s like the string theory. It’s only when things are taken away that there’s reason to get upset.
Keep fighting the good fight. Eventually, Linux will get there, although I’m not sure what “there” is. Eventually, DRM will be viewed as misconceived even by most people in the industries whose dinosaurs think they’ll survive thanks to it. And, I hope, eventually some people will understand that the allure of products from companies like Apple isn’t that they’re less open than some products but shinier, so it’s okay.
— Jesper
I think that we often forget that most people still equate their computer with a toaster. It’s what they use to do stuff. Nobody is concerned that they have a toaster that restricts them to sliced bread. But then again, they seem just as (un)concerned about their freedom in the real world.
— Steve
The freedom to use a program for any purpose is not as important as the ability to use the program for the specific purposes you’re interested in.
— Dan
Tradeoffs. Some things are more important to certain people more than others. The fact that I have to jailbreak an iPhone to put certain apps on it really angers me but for 99% of people they couldn’t care less. I guess to sum it up, just because something matters a lot to some people doesn’t mean it matters to lots of people.
I do not have an iPhone, no matter how much my work spouse is madly in love with hers! I don’t have one particularly because I care about freedom 0. I want to tinker with the device, or at least take advantage of others’ tinkering. I want to be able to switch networks if I spend that much money for a phone, so my phone lets me talk, and that’s nearly all it does. Yes, you and I care about freedom 0, but the masses have spoken, and at least enough of them like shackled hardware.
Hell, I even have two TiVo DVRs because I didn’t care to spend time setting up my own system, and yes, the shackles have bothered me from time to time, but not so much as I would have been bothered by configuration, setup, and administration of a MythTV box.
When your parents switched from Mac OS to Linux we received a point-by-point list of reasons. If you have time, can we get the same sort of list for why they switched back from Linux to Mac OS?
Freedom always comes at a cost.
— n[ate]vw
If the system for your parents had had, from retail, Linux installed, do you think they would give a shit? No, they just want a preinstalled usable system.
Freedom 0 will only prevail with preinstalls, sadly. I just don’t see it happening to the market unless someone like Canonical/RedHat really pushes :/
— John Drinkwater
I’m pretty sure people care about freedom. Well, kind-of.
People care about being popular and using bright, shiny and pretty things _first_. Sad, but true.
Freedom just isn’t sexy, it doesn’t have sexy aluminum and glass curves, it doesn’t play mp3s (it can…) you get off of kazaa or bittorrent, it doesn’t play DVD’s (it can…) or BluRay’s.
Freedom means you have to think for yourself and do some work to have fun. That is directly opposite of what kind of mindset this country has fallen into. Give me pretty, give it to me now.
I really identify with you sometimes, but unfortunately I fall into the “give me pretty, give it to me now” category almost all of the time. Freedom costs a lot, and most people just don’t want to pay.
— Nathan
Freedom, in and of itself, is super awesome. It’s the constant tweaking that bums me out. I guess that’s why I’ve always used Macs, which were (for me at least) the most ready to put to work straight out of the box. The lure of Linux is strong, at least as strong as the lure of Windows is nonexistent, but muscle memory is a strong beast. My Xbuntu laptop goes unused for want of an Apple menu and a reliable sleep mechanism and a media player whose developers don’t remind me all the time how great Ogg Vorbis is.
Again, I would tweak these things. But you could also tweak a Toyota until it’s a Nissan. I just buy the Nissan and help kill freedom.
Reportedly, eight people purchased “I Am Rich”.
That’s all that needs to be said.
— Rod
Nobody gives a shit about their freedom … until it bites them in the a**.
— Luka Marinko
Freedom is more expensive and less convenient. That’s a bad combination in a down economy.
People give a shit; it’s just not the sole consideration and it’s not “all or nothing”.
If people want apple, let them buy apple. If people want windows, let them buy windows.
Choice is personal and individual. Stop worrying about what other people are running and follow your own drummer.
— tanguy
Freedom 0 should ideally be “The freedom to make a non-coerced choice.” Good on you for taking the logical (not to mention nicer to your children and wife) approach to what is, in fact if not in opinion, _not_ an ethical issue. =]
— Charlie
To some, freedom = the choice to use whatever works best for the tasks at hand. Perhaps it also means the freedom to not be isolated into any one platform, open or closed.
In general, people are more concerned about getting things done, than about following a mantra.
— Matt
Hi, wat’s with the “0″ in “freedom 0″?
No, not many do care about software licensing or who “owns” the programs on their computer. What consumers care about is the ability to do things. The important thing about a toaster is not that I have the ability to take it apart and see how it works, the important thing is that it makes toast, and does it reliably, every day.
Most people will only choose open source software over proprietary solutions if, and only if, the open source software provides a “better” end user experience.
— Jon
And you forgot “And I work for Google”. :-)
— Hub
Yeah, well, what Ian said…
I bought a new desktop a few weeks ago, and I almost went with a Mac. Freedom won out over comfort, I guess. So now I have been tinkering with ndiswrapper and other workarounds to make 32 bit software run on my 64 bit Ubuntu install. Fun for me, but that’s not something I would want to explain to my parents.
— Roel
Freedom and usability dance a delicate dance in my mind. I place very high value on both, but inevitably one has to win out. With Desktop GNU/Linux, the freedom isn’t worth much if I have to spend 3 hours searching Google for the solution to a simple, simple problem. I couldn’t get any work down when I used Ubuntu as my primary OS — half my days were eaten away trying to dig my way out of a hole using the Terminal as a shovel.
I’ll come home when it’s ready for the real world. In the meantime I’ve got my wife to stop using Internet Explorer, and I’ve convinced her of the evils of the iTunes music store. I’ve even got her to be semi-interested in an ASUS Eee PC. Plus the whole WordPress thing. Baby steps.
The essential problem is that technology is too complicated for the average person to understand or even be aware of the issues regarding freedom that surround it, such as open source and/or open standards. I don’t think that this will change until something monumental happens, such as Apple shutting down, taking their App Store and iTMS offline with them, or until some closed source software proves to have a built-in backdoor that affects every consumer. I don’t know when or even if this is going to happen though.
— barfoo
So who decided on the AppleTV, you or the wife?
Like any worthy cause, it’s up to those who are able to shoulder the burden. Until Linux powered machines and open devices are as easy to use for the parents and wives of this world as Apple’s products are, those that care will be a lonely lot. (No disrespect intended toward older generations or women. I only borrowed examples from the context of this post.)
I do care about freedoms 0 through 3, so I run openSUSE myself. But I’m a geek. Most people’s computing needs fit neatly within the confines of the narrow walls that proprietary companies like Microsoft and Apple give them, so they’re OK with it. That’s the basic difference, I think.
A spacious prison cell with a big plasma screen and an expense account might sound enticing if you’re allergic to sunlight.
— Anonymous
Freedom 0, contrary to Stallman’s perspective, is simply not an ethical matter in most circumstances. It’s important in some contexts more than others. If you’re a government (etc.) and you have a fiduciary duty to the people, it’s absolutely unethical to keep public data in closed, encumbered formats. (EVEN THEN, though, the freedom of the software is not nearly so important as the freedom of the data format.)
But if you’re a regular person, then no, it’s not an ethical decision, it’s merely a practical one. If you have to choose between the closed iPhone and the awful-to-use, unquestionably, thoroughly crappy Openmoko, then that’s no choice at all, unless you’ve adopted the inflated definition of “ethics”.
I understand your personal frustration with Apple, I’ve read your article about the straw that broke the camel’s back (it was Mail.app switching away from mbox, right?), and I understand that completely. You are a programmer without ADD who can get by with using Free software, even when the experience of using some of it is atrocious. That’s awesome. I too long for the day when there’s Free software for every task that’s actually well-designed in addition to well-coded.
But that day’s not today, and if you try to convince a regular person today that freedom 0 is an ethical matter to them, they will rightfully look at you like you’re nuts.
— Lanny Heidbreder
You had previously mentioned your parents’ reasons for leaving the Mac; I would be interested to now hear about their reasons for leaving Linux.
— David
Most people don’t care about Freedom 0. Geeks do. But Geeks are only a small part of the “market”, and a part of the market which doesn’t part with it’s cash easily. The rest of the world seems to want something which works - mostly, in the case of Vista - and “does the job for them”.
I should be, thinking about it, a big freedom zero person. I’m not. I’m a developer (.NET, Ruby, Java, OSS, Mac, Windows, all sorts), but I dropped Windows like a hot stone and got a mac 18 months ago. I’d considered moving to Linux, but frankly, for what I want to use it for, it’s just “not there enough”. The apps I want don’t exist on the platform, and I can’t just install it and use it - so I stick with a Mac, which I can do exactly that with.
Same with phones: I have an iPhone, because I looked at Android and it screamed “only crappy developer-focused apps need apply”. Great for Linux geeks, but crap for everyone else. And I use front row over XBMC (for the mac) or Boxee, because (until boxee is released :) ), it just works. If I had a TV, I’d get an Apple TV. Because it just works for me.
So tell me, when the things which work for me break freedom 0 - and there is an excellent incentive for the provider to keep providing them (ie, cash and share price, the only motivating factors for a large company, esp in the western world) - why would I go with an inferior product? The argument could be “well, Apple (or vendor X) could take them away”. But refer back to the start of this paragraph. Cash stops them.
Love the post title. Ironically, it means I have to now get onto the itunes store to download the song - because I can’t use the non-DRM Amazon service, as I’m not in the US. Pathetic. Goes to show that non-DRMed content doesn’t mean “plays everywhere”. Because I can’t play it, because of where I am. But thats another rant.
— Nic Wise
Sorry, I could not see the previous comments for some reason, at the time I posted.
— David
Freedom 0: not yet compatible with the masses?
That seems rather sad, but all too true in this ownership-centric world where the purchaser is not deemed the owner, but the manufacturer/producer.
— telcor
To expand on something above (lost in the slew of comments): a phone you can actually use to do something is way better than a phone that you can’t use to do anything. Even if that anything is limitless and the something is severely limited.
Instant gratification is why I still buy DRM laden mp3s when I can’t get it elsewhere. When I want something, I want it now. Why worry about what’s going to happen with this thing worth $1 a year from now?
Practicality trumps freedom 0 or—who said this?—’I may have no morals but I do have standards’.
— Luis
Frankly, most bits of software are “de facto” freedom 0 - there’s always a “free’ (pirated) version available out there. This is why people don’t care - they haven’t been affected by it in a way they can’t work around.
Those of us insisting on working within the current legal framework are hampered by those who discard it.
— Zack
Let me add something to my earlier comment:
You use iPhoto. You create a lot of metadata for your photos. Then its binary black hole database gets corrupted and you’re SOL.
You use [open source photo manager]. You create a lot of metadata for your photos. Then its open, documented, XML-or-whatever database gets corrupted, but you can run it through an XML validator or write your own script to fix it. Yay openness!
Except you can’t fix it if you’re not a programmer of some variety, and you and I both know that any non-programmers faced with this problem will post on a forum, and they’ll be told “If you want your problem fixed, code it yourself.” Which is The Open Source Way and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you can’t say Free/open source software is the best for everybody when one of its biggest advantages is moot for 98% of the population.
— Lanny Heidbreder
Steve Jobs took a dump on your face! Ha!
You’ve made me die a little inside.
— cry
Sometimes, the need for things to “just work” becomes more important than “freedom”.
— Anonymous Coward
Jeena Paradies: Here you go.
— Martin Wilson
Poor you. You’re self-marginalizing yourself by choosing Linux and then you want to talk about buying Apple products? Please.
As a lowly user whose personal interpretation of Freedom 0 seems to be “the freedom to run whatever software the operating system comes with for very few purposes,” I had to bail on Ubuntu when it upgraded in ways that left my Thinkpad half-functional. For the past few months I’ve been on a MacBook. No killswitches or brickings from on high yet!
So much of my backsliding is hardware-based. I like shiny things. Free Software needs a shiny.
I’m going with the same frustrations. Windows users can’t be taught anything but I’m dealing with the people who should know better.
— Rob
A decent portion of those people on this planet who can understand why control over technology might be important — i.e., they actually understand that, and why, technology has real power — want to increase and protect technological autonomy. Not everyone, of course, but enough to make a difference.
However, the idea of technological autonomy remains as fundamentally inscrutable to the vast majority of technology’s users as it is fundamental. Until we find some way to address that problem, the Apples of the world will continue to sex up and sell technological servitude while the disempowered line up to thank them for it.
I’m surprised that you overestimated people. You, of all people.
LOL well as long as it isn’t M$, I’m not complaining. Though I hope you know Steve really is straight RIPPING you of $300-400 every time you buy a mac…
Fedora Sulphur and Ubuntu Hardy ftw!
— Sam
FSF fan: “But the EULA of this program forbids you from doing x.”
Joe Blow: “But why would I want to do x anyway? I only want to do y, and besides, even if I wanted to do x, I’d need to spend six years getting a master’s in computer science and another year tinkering with this thing to get it to do x.”
Selling people on freedoms they can’t exercise themselves is, to put it mildly, an uphill battle.
Almost all of my docs are plain text. All the apps I use are free software. The software I write is generally written in a high-level language and runs on most operating systems.
As a practical matter, it doesn’t really matter a *whole* lot to me whether I’m using a Mac on a standard GNU/Linux box. GNU/Linux tends to be easier to use, while the Mac tends to “just work” for things like multiple displays, external monitors, wireless networking, and sleep/awake (so Macbooks are handier for carrying around between multiple and varied locations).
My level of contribution to the free software community stays about the same whether I’m using GNU/Linux or a Mac. Buying a Mac puts extra cash in Apple’s bank account. I’m still looking for a company that sells a laptop that will run on nothing but free software.
— Free software user
(edit typo: a Mac *or* a standard GNU/Linux box)
— Free software user
What’s there to be sad about? So OK, the Linux desktop still isn’t quite there yet; it isn’t as simple and solid as the Mac OS and the hardware integration is still less-than-perfect. Consider how difficult it would have been in 2001 to have your folks to use Linux full-time for any length at all. Answer: impossible. Thanks (largely) to Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu, we’ve got a Linux that’s making gigantic strides towards becoming the obvious choice. We’re not there yet? OK, but we’re dang close.
I predict by 2010 we’ll look back and this and remember when Linux was still nearly-but-not-quite-there and we’ll tell stories about what it was like “back then.” But of course, by then, no one (or rather, no one who has a clue) will argue that there’s any reason to avoid Linux except for personal preference. The discussions about ease-of-use or convenience or whatnot will be moot and silly.
— jw
> So who decided on the AppleTV, you or the wife?
Technically, our kids made the decision for us. I tried and tried to love my Neuros OSD, but my kids can’t use it by themselves because they can’t read yet. AppleTV displays cover art while you scroll through your movie collection, so both my 4-year-old and 2-year-old can find what they want to watch without waking us up in the morning.
Sleep > Freedom 0
— Mark
At least there’s some source, SOMEWHERE (I’m thinking of Darwin). And when I buy a laptop (desktop I can assemble from parts, at least), who do I want to give money to, Microsoft or Apple? Between the two, the underdog which has some non-trivial chunks as open source is the winner, for the moment, anyway.
Plus, their stuff actually somewhat works most of the time. For me, where Linux was frustrating at times, Windows wasn’t really that much less frustrating (ever programmed for Windows? oh, it’s very entertaining), so it was rather moot for me: equally frustrating, but one of them is free (both as in beer and freedom). Duh. At least, when I balance from Mac OS X to Linux, I feel that I get SOMETHING in exchange for the loss of freedom, even if it’s only skin-deep (which means it’ll probably come to happen on Linux too soon enough)…
I totally agree with Dan “The freedom to use a program for any purpose is not as important as the ability to use the program for the specific purposes you’re interested in.” I want to add my own perception to this ” he freedom to use a program for any purpose is not as important as the ability to use the program in the easiest possible way”
— Sachin
What kind of freedom that you guys are talking about?
You’re just repeating yourselves over and over without making sense even.
“Proprietary software subjugates the user. It’s an injustice. And the idea that it’s good to get people using computers regardless of everything else is shallow and misguided. It’s better not to use computers than to use proprietary software.” -Richard Stallman in http://tinyurl.com/rmsandcomputers
— Colin
To all Freedom Fighters: do you own/have a car? So you do. Why the double standards then?
— Peter
Re: the comments about the computer being, or wanted to be, a toaster…
That was the point of the computing device. Turing wanted to move away from building one special purpose device for every new purpose, away from the restricted nature of physical hardware. In a very real sense, Freedom 0 is the reason the computer exists — because of the need, or the desire, to be able to do with your device what you will.
To see this brilliant concept artificially restricted and then accepted by the masses is … well, if nothing else, incredibly sad.
— Sohum
Sure everyone is happy now - but wait till they lose their home movies of their kids.
— Stephen
First, Lanny, that’s horsecrap. What will probably happen if it is a widespread problem and the person is working with a distribution that has a good community behind it, like Ubuntu or Fedora, is they will post the problem to a newsgroup and others with the same problem will find it. Then, together, they will isolate the problem and come up with a workaround or, if one among them is a coder, a script of some type to rebuild the file.
This happens ALL THE TIME in the ubuntu forums.
Often bugs are generated in the public database with links to forum threads that contain enough details that the developers can isolate and correct the problem.
How much time have you actually been a part of the Open Source community?
It sounds like never to me.
— Jim
I guess, it’s because everyone is, by their nature enslaved to their own desires and deeds because everyone rebels against God. So we, having no default freedom of our own, default to slavery. In everything. Including freedom (not that freedom 0 is the ultimate freedom but still).
— Mark
(And that would be why we need Jesus to free us from our slavery, not just from our own stupidity, but that’s part of it.)
— Mark
Apple gadgets are all nice and pretty until Apple move the goal posts within their walled gardens (iTools, iPhoto, iTMS). And don’t even think about running Linux when you have Apple items scattered about. You can’t admin your AirPort base stations from Linux (unless you have a Windows partition or another PC nearby) nor play iTMS tracks (unless you stripped the DRM or enable hacks from certain projects that Apple Legal have already tried to shut down). Converting your contacts from Apple’s Address Book to vcf isn’t a clean process (URLs get screwed up for me) and exporting your mail from emlx to mbox is still a chore. I haven’t even begun to touch upon Apple’s continued battle to keep iPod syncing and DAAP sharing out of anything other than iTunes, iPhoto and iTunes metadata, the iPhone SDK NDA, the iPhone kill switch, ad nauseam. As it has been said, people don’t care until DRM and lock-ins bite them in their arses. Just look at what happened with the Yahoo and MSN music stores. The iTMS isn’t going to be around forever, folks.
That you stood in line for three hours to purchase a phone says much, much more about your views on Freedom 0 than any weblog post ever could.
You don’t really believe in Freedom 0. You believe in Cory’s shiny happy futuristic version of Freedom 0, which is a lot different than the RTFM/SVN CO/GCC version of Freedom 0 which exists today.
What did you say to your wife when she asked you to stand in line? “But honey, it won’t play OGG files”? What was her response? There’s your definiton of Freedom 0.
— Mark
Some people build kit cars (Linux), some people appreciate elegant design and pony up the $$$ to drive BMWs or Audis (OS X), and some people just want something to haul the kids and all their crap to soccer practice, so they get a Suburban (Windows).
Likewise, some people earn a living developing commercial, closed-source software (me) and some people work for the world’s largest advertising company and have a different, somewhat idealized perspective (you).
To each his own: it’s a big world.
— Richard
This has nothing to do with people not caring about their freedom. Free software proponents have done a very bad job, both in the PR department and in the usability side. Any point that ignores these facts is more likely wrong. For years binary interfaces (at several levels) have been kept intentionally unstable to discourage commercial vendors. Stallman has been a source of huge amazement for unsuspecting human beings. Distributions are still an incompatible bunch. Things don’t work. Things are unusable. Free software developers are often arrogant and uncapable of understanding their users. People should be true heroes to fight for their freedom in these circumstances.
— Bitter
I’m surrounded by mac hardware but I couldnt care less about Apple the company. The computers just happen to do what I want. I also have a PC running Windows for 3D software. Unfortunately, the software I use is typically not available for Linux. I tried, but the available comparable software was no where near the usability and grace of the mainstream software titles I use. I tried getting my father on Linux after he had quite an attack on his windows machine–I installed Ubuntu on his PC Laptop, but 3 weeks later he went and bought a mac. And I have to say, its SO MUCH EASIER to support ol’ Dad over the phone when he’s on a mac. If it crashes (and never has), it doesnt default to a command line interface. The average person does not like command-line interfaces, they just dont. It’s hard for some to understand that, but its true. It’s why computers weren’t that popular in the home until that first Mac came out.
I have never felt ‘crippled’ on my mac. perhaps its because i make CD backups of all my purchases anyways (and all info is preserved), perhaps i just havent wanted to subvert the OS into doing something it wasnt designed to do, but if anything, modern Mac’s have been more of a liberation.
— Court
Ok i broke down after seeing the man palace and got a nice big flat screen and got rid of cable and watch http://www.hulu.com thanks for the idea now i never see the outside of my office :-) life is good
— David
Richard’s car analogy is bogus. Find me an auto manufacturer that will take you to court for opening the hood of a vehicle you paid for.
— Jonathan
heh. My dad too; moved him from a G4-dual 500 to a G4 mac mini for his birthday (didn’t want to mess with Intel transition if he didn’t have to), and he’s tickled. Carbon Copy Cloner still gets the job done - in under an hour, no less.
For him, OSX has been the perfect balance, easy enough to use for his writing job @ the paper, but also with enough geek access that he’s been teaching himself about ports, and correcting the Verizon rep about how mail.app interfaces with gmail over IMAP.
Ubuntu is sweet, and freedom is awesome, but often people just want the heavy lifting done for them - that’s why auto mechanics, landscapers, and building contractors all have jobs. Until my dad can do his own maintenance on Ubuntu with a copy of Disk Warrior that has one button to press, he’ll be using Macs.
(PS: say hi to the family for me)
— chris lawrence
The thing is, I can modify any Cocoa program on OS X with a short python script to add features I want/need (using SIMBL, extended example here: http://livingcode.org/2006/tab-dumping-in-safari). And because my extension is built without modifying the code of the program (or having access to the code of the program) I can update the program freely and my extension keeps working (for the most part). Even though technically I could compile my own version of a program under Linux, I would have to learn a great deal more about the system, and synchronize my changes with the community or have to repatch my version whenever an update was released.
I love Linux and run it on several devices, but I write code for the Mac (or the web) because I only have finite amounts of time.
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