Bonum Certa Men Certa

A New Ethos for Free Software

Article by Thomas Grzybowski

A candle Thomas Jefferson: "A candle loses nothing when it lights another candle."



Summary: "Free Software is a Process!"

This essay initiated/emanated from my reading of a popular piece written some years ago by a certain Mr. Eric Raymond: "Homesteading the Noosphere" -- an article which I should dismiss immediately. But before I do that, I would like to mention that this cited work contains ad hominem attacks against early pioneers of the Free Software movement and is based upon a profound misdirection. Here I will ignore the attacks and seek to correct the misdirection.



"As people work to create and modify Free Software and distribute it again, the aggregate creative acts give rise to the availability of more, many more useful results."In his essay, Mr. Raymond immediately places Free and Open-source software in the realm of "property", making there an analogy to "homesteading" undeveloped land, which is to say: taking, developing, managing, owning property. This preconception is hereby dismissed in the formation of a new ethos.

Software, or Free (Libre) Software rather, does not exist subsumed within the domain of economics, though it may participate there. Culture is the over-arching domain of human social activity and subsumes all forms of economics - be they gift-giving, commerce, or rent-seeking; Free Software is just one manifestation of creativity in our common culture. Free Software (as distinct from other types of software) seeks to more fully participate in the wider cultural domain, and it is this direct and active participation which defines the expression of Freedom implicit in the term Free Software and in the software itself. As people work to create and modify Free Software and distribute it again, the aggregate creative acts give rise to the availability of more, many more useful results. Useful, beautiful software as cultural works are divergently and compoundingly created without limits – growing trees neither proscribed nor bounded. Thus our Freedom propagates.

"In music, as in software, huge corporations seek to define the products and control the markets – thus delineating artificial boundaries and creating scarcity for the art."Writing software, as an artistic activity, is very closely analogous to textual writing, and also music. Writing and music, as cultural activities, far predate modern commercial practices. Sadly, it has been a major failing of the Free Software community not to recognize this artistic commonality. In music, as in software, huge corporations seek to define the products and control the markets – thus delineating artificial boundaries and creating scarcity for the art. As with a novel or poem, Free Software is not so much in the writing or publishing as in the reading – the using. Like traditional music, each new contributor engages with the original and, more importantly, renews and transforms it in the working of their personal vision into the piece. In our civil society a unification of Free Software with Free Culture would likely mutually reinforce each.

This is not to say that Free Software is purely an art form. Far from it: using Free Software is enjoying Freedom, and this is a practical matter. Freedom is the doing of what one wants with the software. Obviously, freedom is directly related to what is possible – for instance, you may want to use your computer as a flying machine, but you are neither able nor free to do so. If your printer, the printer you paid-for and have in your possession has no software driver, you are indeed unfree to use it to print your document whether you have the sales receipt and copy of a software license or not.

"The first being that it is not the software itself which is free: Free Software is a Process!"Now a word about “Public Domain”. Ideally, our printer-driver and all Free Software would reside together with our commonly-held culture in the Public Domain - but our current socioeconomic environment makes this scenario impractical. Copywriting and licensing are the tools we must use – the legal devices required in this present day-and-age so as to preserve our rights to read, use, distribute, and modify and distribute modifications of Free Software. But we need also understand that Free Software is a notion and practice independent from the license – the license is to protect sharing of the ongoing freedoms attached to the software and preventing diversions into the dead-ends of private property.

"To encourage participation, to encourage more freedom, code should be made as modular and simple as possible."There are some important implications attendant with our new ethos for Free Software. The first being that it is not the software itself which is free: Free Software is a Process! It is the writer and user of the software who experiences and expands their freedom as they engage with Free Software. Code (text) is a lifeless thing, it might as well be carved in stone or baked on clay tablets. And long-term storage is a museum or resource for mining companies. Software Freedom lives only as the code is read, composed, elaborated-upon, and played (used) - much like music. The only constraints upon or shortages of Free Software come from our lack of participation. Realization that the central nature of the Freedom attached to Free Software resides in the participation of the community should impact the features of the code itself, both the design and the style. To encourage participation, to encourage more freedom, code should be made as modular and simple as possible. When code is modular in its functions, other developers can easily and directly utilize just the pieces that they wish. When code is simple to understand, it is simple to test, to trust, to modify or extend. It is more simple for others to document and more simple for everyone to share.

As we have seen, an application of the ethos outlined above results in a branching tree, or an ecosystem with exponential growth of value to human civilization, all at virtually no financial cost. This is indeed something of a miracle!

Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA

Recent Techrights' Posts

Reboots Should Never be Necessary
"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
Links for the day
XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
 
Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
Links for the day
The Danes Want GNU/Linux
David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
It's a very long article
BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
"I went on a date with a chatbot!"
Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
OSI has been fairly quiet lately
Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
It's so ridiculous
Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
unlawful communications like threats
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
Links for the day
Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
Links for the day
Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
Links for the day
More EPO Leaks on the Way
We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
There are 67 left before reaching the target
Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
On behalf of violent men
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
Links for the day
Pissing Contests and Pissing Off Everyone
people who came from Microsoft are trying to vex and divide the community
Microsoft Repeats the Mistakes Made by the EPO After We Exposed a Major Microsoft/EPO Scandal 10 Years Ago
That scandal was all over the media, not just in English
The Demise of LLMs
We've just checked BetaNews again. They've dropped all the slop and went back to human authors.
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Sonpo Museum of Art and FCEUX
Links for the day
Links 13/07/2025: UnitedHealth's Censorship Campaign, Australia Wary of China
Links for the day
Firing Away With Nonsense
Or fighting fire with fire
Links 13/07/2025: Climate Crisis, GAFAM Poisoning the Water
Links for the day
Turns Out LLMs for Code Don't Save Time and Don't Improve Quality
Neither legal nor useful
The Microsofters Will Have an Obligation to Compensate Us
This story isn't just about Microsoft. It's also about corruption, there are many women victims, there is abject "abuse of process", and many more scandals to be illuminated in years to come.
Reproducing at the EPO Instead of Producing Monopolies for Foreign Monopolies With Their Price-Fixing Cartels
Does the EPO recognise the need of well-educated Europeans to bear kids?
Valnet Inc. Dominates Real (Not LLM Slop) GNU/Linux Coverage in 2025
And likely in prior years, too
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Fund Raiser Goes on
Later this month we'll expose another OSI scandal
EPO Staff Representatives Issue a Warning About Staff's Health and Inadequate Care
Even the EPO's own stakeholders (money sources) are openly protesting against what the EPO became
Links 13/07/2025: Partly Assorted News From Deutsche Welle and CBC
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Board Games and Battle Styles
Gemini Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 12, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 12, 2025