GNU Project on Ivon's Blog

Free Software Extremism: If You Insist Everything Must Be Open Source...

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:00:00 +0800

Free Software Extremism isn’t Far Enough. ← This title is so good I just copied it directly.

Why should we use free software led by Linux? Well, many people have already offered their brilliant opinions on this topic.

However, if you pursue free and open source everything…

You will be unable to move an inch.

This is a trap that some users who come into contact with Android & Linux and then follow the open source faith easily fall into.

The reason it is called extremism is that you stubbornly fight all the way to the end, refusing to compromise. You become an “open source chihuahua,” or an “open source obsessive,” going everywhere to “educate” Windows and macOS users that they should repent and use Linux.

Thus, you force yourself into an ideological dead end.

Note: In this article, when I use free software, most of the time it also includes the definition of open source software.

Swallowing the Red Pill
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We can understand how far the most fanatical free software lovers can go by looking at this tech newbie vs. tech master image. I once had the experience of sliding toward the right side, but because of various factors, I ultimately did not reach the most extreme state. I realized that humans do have limits after all, so my current state is somewhere between 2 and 3.

In another crazy universe, Jobs and Bill Gates, who made proprietary software, would both have to go to prison. From: Luke Smith - Free Software Extremism isn’t Far Enough.

If you enter the world of free software through some of the “manifestos” from the Free Software Foundation, rather than merely learning about open source culture through Github, it is very easy to be brainwashed by this idea and become a believer in free software ideology. Cannot understand it? Here are some Chinese translations, and the tone is very intense: GNU專案的理念思想

The most important part is the four freedoms:

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.

Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works and modify the program to suit your own needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for realizing this freedom.

Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute the program in order to help your neighbor.

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program and contribute those improvements back to the community, so the whole community can benefit. Access to the source code is a precondition for realizing this freedom.

This feels like reading The Communist Manifesto. It has strong agitational power, and with its emphasis on the spirit of sharing, it easily makes people think this is communism. But free software is not communism; I discussed this in a previous article.

Believers in free software ideology think that insisting on free software is an act consistent with moral principles. Therefore, they gradually begin detoxing the things around them, to the point that from top to bottom, they pursue absolute “freedom.” They swallow the red pill and gradually understand the truth of the world.

Recording My Thoughts After Using Linux Systems for Two Years

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Sat, 20 May 2023 21:00:00 +0800

「果てまで　気の遠くなる様な旅をしよう」

To the end, let us begin that long journey.

Source: https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/65891187

Learning to use Linux systems and no longer returning to Windows has finally entered its second year. For the record of my first year learning Linux and earlier, see this article.

This year was a year of completely continuous Linux system use. I did not use any other system on bare metal.

This year’s journey:

Ubuntu 22.04 → openSUSE Tumbleweed → FreeBSD 13 → Arch Linux → Gentoo → Linux from Scratch → Arch Linux → Debian → Arch Linux

Every distribution has a different color and a different culture. It is just like what the OP of Kino’s Journey sings: traveling through different countries, what a beautiful world.

1. Preparing My Mind
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Linux is free if your time has no value. Studying Linux during the senior year of a humanities student, when there is the most free time, could not be better. This time, I wanted to truly make it my main desktop system and use it in every aspect of life.

Thought brings motivation; this is self-evident. During this period, I was mostly building theory. Contact with the implementation side of systems would only begin in the next stage, “wandering around.”

In March 2022, after leaving Ubuntu, I chose to install openSUSE Tumbleweed, a rolling-release distribution with automated testing to ensure update stability, and came into deeper contact with the ideological system of free software.

For one month in May, every day I read articles from websites such as the Free Software Foundation, “Information Human Rights Nobles,” and the Software Freedom Conservancy, studied the GNU GPL license, and argued for the reasons to use free software. Richard Matthew Stallman’s Free Software, Free Society advises you to read more.

In June, this blog was established, and I began writing articles discussing free software, as well as usage tutorials for various Linux software.

After watching the historical documentary Revolution OS, this article came into being: My thoughts on the Free Software At School

Studying free software philosophy is an immersive experience almost like religion, and it gave birth to a kind of wild-take article like this: Why Give Up Minecraft. An even worse negative consequence: I once became a “free software police,” attacking those bastards who used proprietary software everywhere. I once argued with people about why translation projects should use Crowdin instead of Weblate, and in the end I was blasted for missing the point. After all, those translators really had professional work in the real world, while I did not; I was only running my mouth. Several similar conflicts broke out within a few months, which has made me much more restrained now. I learned love and tolerance, and I argue pure ideology with people much less often.

At the same time, to satisfy my then-still-unextinguished desire to play games, I went to Arch Wiki and Libregame Wiki to investigate what free and open source games were available. The final results were: Switch to Libre Games, as well as Join Minetest

Free Software in Universities After Watching Revolution OS

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 03:01:46 +0800

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.