This is A Humble View on Free Software in Universities, Reflections After Watching the Film Revolution OS.
For an assignment, I needed to write a film reflection, so I took the film Revolution OS as a starting point to explain why free software matters and offer a humble view on the current state of software use in universities.
Revolution OS
Revolution OS (2001)
*There is a version on Youtube with Chinese subtitles revised with help from Professor Huang of National Cheng Kung University.
At the time, personal computers were beginning to rise in the 1980s, and a group of hackers wanted to build a brand-new operating system to change the world. Time has proven to us that under Microsoft’s rule, users will never have true freedom, so we need other choices, especially systems that respect user freedom.
This documentary describes the development process of Linux systems and the open source community over 20 years. It began with Richard Stallman, who worked at MIT. Dissatisfied that Unix systems were moving toward closed source, meaning users could not freely view or modify program source code and even had to pay for it, he decided to design a new system and promote the concept of free software, later founding the Free Software Foundation. Among these efforts, the GNU GPL license states that users have the freedom to view, modify, and distribute source code, and that modified programs must also be open source. This license became the legal basis for many pieces of software. After most applications were completed, the Linux kernel written by Linus Torvalds happened to fill the gap, and thus a usable system was completed, enough to compete with commercial closed systems, including Microsoft Windows and Apple’s Macintosh computers. Before this, Microsoft had already obtained a huge market share in the personal computer market through various strategies, while Linux was the challenger. Yet Linux emerged in the server field. The idea of Linux open source allowed users around the world to participate in development through the internet, while companies also used free software and open source concepts for commercial sales. What if companies did not sell software, but instead sold consulting services? This kind of revenue model, with the emergence of the killer program Apache, led Linux companies to go public one after another and win recognition from investors. This model gradually brought Linux into public view. In Eric Raymond’s essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Linux’s development model is the bazaar part: public participation, and with enough eyes, bugs become shallow. GNU’s compiler and tools are the cathedral, led and developed by only a few people. Of course, these are all development models of free software. Today, with the internet widespread, free software developers can easily use Git platforms on the internet to let everyone participate and contribute, so Linux and related open source technologies still have great potential.
Today, Linux distributions number in the hundreds, and most are free of charge. Because of public participation in development, Linux has an absolute advantage in the server market. However, the public in the personal computer market still has not developed the related awareness. Let us start with the most basic software. For ordinary people, switching to open source software (talking about freedom would probably make them not know what we are talking about, so talking about open source is more practical) is torture. Since childhood we have been trained into slaves of habit. Schools teach software because the workplace uses it. But if the software is closed source, should everyone continue using it? Why do people not use alternatives? For example, Microsoft Office often becomes the entirety of a person’s office career. Disliking other open source solutions as hard to use or unfamiliar is irresponsible toward one’s own basic human rights values.
Likewise, Adobe’s Photoshop suite has become an industry standard, like Office becoming a standard workplace ability for companies. The same is true at this school. The courses I took all, without exception, used closed source software. After learning PS and editing skills, I wanted to raise an objection: why must reports be submitted as Word files? Why has ppt become synonymous with presentations? Isn’t the odt promoted by the government clearly better? Although one should not sabotage one’s own grades, when doing my graduation project I still talked with a professor in the English department: docx and the Times New Roman font are both proprietary licenses. Even if they do not charge money, that does not change their nature. Perhaps in the future we can switch to free alternatives. In addition, when companies say they require proficiency in a certain technology, they should not specify which software must be used in the “job requirements” field, especially when it is closed source software. Many times, when alternatives exist, they can meet the requirements. Yet it seems that the people advocating these fixed software work models only want to train people into technicians, and have never doubted whether the things they use have any possibility of having their essential composition explored.
If this is true for applications, then personal computer systems are even more disappointing. Windows still has a market share as high as 50%, followed by Apple’s MacOS, while the market share of the many Linux distributions is said to have surpassed the nobody-uses-it Win8 (less than 10 percent). These two systems take very good care of computer idiots, letting people get started easily. But how did the idea of educating people into idiots arise? If users only need to click around to complete tasks, can we say they understand computers? Clearly not enough. If one eventually has to learn programming, why not choose a system that exposes even the system itself to you without hiding anything? Apple users actually dare to say that using Apple is tasteful and trendy, but that is merely jumping from one walled garden to another. In terms of openness, Windows is even freer than MacOS. The same extends to phone systems. Jobs said people do not know what they want, so I will design for you a system even idiots can use, and over time it formed an entire system. If rulers keep saying it is for your own good while sacrificing basic personal rights and interests, should it really be like this? Should one’s own rights be controlled by others, with no other choices? Although Android phones developed based on Linux are still not free enough, they are the great weapon in the phone world capable of challenging the closed source camp. In phones, Android is more successful than Linux on computers. Although, as Linus said, people do not directly use operating systems, and the public generally has no concept of computer principles, Android has indeed contributed. So it is time to develop Linux phone systems not led by Google.
Beyond that, common entertainment software clings to closed platforms, making it hard for people to leave. Just look at the closed source games everywhere and multimedia copyright mechanisms (such as DRM) and you know: people exchange freedom and rights for happiness. This is not saying these things are some tittytainment conspiracy theory or that I support communism or anything like that. Rather, people should have the right to know, even for games. Open source game development is very scattered, but it has achieved some results, perhaps because they do not know how to make players addicted through black-box software operation like commercial companies, thereby controlling users. Emphasizing that games should also be open source is somewhat unreasonable, especially because art and text are hard to compare with open source programs. However, the “Creative Commons” licenses that have emerged in recent years can likewise protect authors’ rights. They are still difficult to use for commercial marketing, because if what art sells is scarcity, Creative Commons becomes similar to doing public welfare. But at least artworks can try to be placed on open source carriers, so that after the public obtains them, they are less likely to be controlled by closed source programs.
The final point to emphasize is that free software and open source software do not force people to join; otherwise they would become the Communist Party. Therefore, beyond appeals, it is also important for governments and other large organizations to join promotion. Also, maintaining an open attitude is not a bad thing. According to the Free Software Foundation’s strict definition, the firmware of modern machine hardware contains piles of closed source components, so in practice we cannot completely avoid using closed source software. We can only do our best to let the public know these concepts and persuade everyone to use free software solutions. Referring to the Buddha’s method of preaching, taking the middle way is wise. Fortunately, through the efforts of people from many fields in Taiwan, Linux and the open source community have improved, and the government has also invested effort, so the future remains bright.
Finally comes the self-congratulatory segment: this article was written with LibreOffice on the Linux distribution openSUSE, and I was forced to save it only in docx format, which truly wronged me; it was uploaded to the digital learning platform and Line using the free browser Firefox. One additional point: Line, this kind of communication software, can be called a typical representative of tyrannical closed software. Taiwanese people are used to being held hostage by communication software that is third-rate in the world order, all for a few lousy stickers, instead of learning to use better solutions such as Telegram and Signal. I really like a sentence by Lu Xun: “If it has always been this way, does that make it right?” When speaking to Asians about human rights, is it really like playing a lute to a cow?
