10.13.19

Free Software Timeline and Federation: When Free Software Advocacy/Support is a Monopoly Expansion Becomes Necessary

Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF at 7:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“With nonfree software, support is a monopoly, because only the developer has the source code and only the developer can make any change.” –Richard Stallman in TN, India

“Proprietary software usually means a monopoly for support because only the developer has the source code…” –Richard Stallman in Zagreb, Croatia

Timeline

Summary: Support for Software Freedom — like support for Free software (think Red Hat/IBM and systemd) — should be decentralised and compartmentalised to make the movement stronger and adaptable

THE most recent events served to show that in order to make Free software more resilient and its support network a lot more robust (resistant to malicious/misguided dissenters, entryism etc.) we may need to federate advocacy of it.

“We thank people who have joined us in recent months as readers, IRC lurkers, contributors and so on.”A contributor of ours is working on this timeline of Free (as in freedom, libre) software and it hopefully helps explain the history and how/why it all came about. Free software is a response or a reaction to particular events of significance. Yes, it was largely reactionary because prior to it (e.g. in the 1970s) sharing and passing around code had been the ‘norm’.

We thank people who have joined us in recent months as readers, IRC lurkers, contributors and so on. We’re currently working to better advance Software Freedom, not only by means of reporting and advocacy; those wishing to participate and are eager to help can contact us on bytesmedia@bytesmedia.co.uk (multiple recipients). █

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