Free, as in speech

Stuart Robinson has an excellent new weblog, in which he covers a topic with which I am unhealthily obsessed: the relationship, now and in the future, between Open Code and Free Speech.

Stuart writes:

I use almost exclusively open source software. There are many reason for this, the most important being my intolerance of unjustified crapiness (if my computer is pissing me off I want an excuse and a solution).

Another major advantage of open code is the ability to audit the code. Now you can check that, for example, your computer is not CCing your emails to the FBI or your plan(s) for world domination to Bill Gates. Except that unless you’re a programmer, you won’t understand the code and therefore you can’t.

So where is the benefit for non-programmers? A slightly bizarre comparision I like is to a mute man choosing which country he should claim asylum in. He can’t speak so what use is freedom of speech to him? Others will speak for him, helping to ensure his liberty. Others will audit code for you, helping to ensure your security.

To me, a programmer, this argument is both persuasive and obviously true. I’m not sure it would be, though, to the many, many people in the general public who see technology—computer-related technology especially—as, well, incomprehensible magic.

This is not a put-down: there are many perfectly rational, smart people, for whom the behavior of the software systems they see and use will always be mysterious and unpredictable; just like, for example, car engines are for me.

Which is in fact a helpful analogy: the fact that cars are open systems (for now) means that, though I don’t know a spark plug from my grandmother, I have a choice of many who do, and who will lend me that knowledge in trade for money.

In other words, open systems enable free markets. The opposite is also true: closed systems inhibit free markets.

So, why am I an open source user, programmer, and advocate? Every day now, more and more of the systems that run our society—from the TV networks to the airlines to factories to newspapers to, obviously, the internet—are defined and controlled by software. Software is in the middle when we talk to our friends on the phone, when we buy books at the bookstore, when we watch DVDs, when we post blog entries talking about software.

You do the math.

Filed under: technology