Free software isn't freeware: why Linux and FOSS have a higher standard

Microsoft's recent survey proclaimed nearly half the population believe it is ok to use pirated software for personal use. This diminishes the argument by Linux advocates that you can use their operating system without any cost. Yet, you can't confuse free as in cost with free as in freedom. Here's what FOSS really means.
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The survey was commissioned by Microsoft Australia and determined 45% of Australians believed software piracy was acceptable for their own use. It would be reasonable to think these viewpoints are shared across the world in similar numbers.

Microsoft has its own set of problems to deal with as a result of the survey findings. They don’t want their software to be used by those who have not paid for it. Can they in good conscience withhold security updates from unlicensed users? Do they increase the price thus making licensed users be unfairly taxed to cover the lost revenue? There is no end of ramifications that the Redmond giant will be considering.

On the other side of the fence, those of us who work to advocate the use of free and open source software, such as the alternate operating system Linux, find that one argument in our arsenal is greatly weakened.

After all, how can you say to someone, “Look, you can have an operating system and office productivity suite and photo editing package and games for free” when they just come back and say, “Well, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop and all these other packages are free to me anyway.”

It really is a major compelling feature of Linux that it comes with an enormously rich suite of software that does everything from powering the computer in the first instance through to personal productivity, software development, music and photo editing, file distribution, Internet applications and much more. All of these items are at no cost.

It’s possible to achieve all the tasks you wish to use your computer for using open source apps. You can do everything without having to spend a cent on software and without ever breaching the legal licensing agreements that apply to these packages.

Yet, this argument means nothing if the people you are pitching it to don’t consider that an expensive package like Microsoft Office, or a much more expensive – and niche – package like Adobe Photoshop actually cost money in the first place.

However, price isn’t the end of the matter. In fact, even if Microsoft and Adobe chose to give away those packages for free from now on it still wouldn’t detract from something fundamental about free software, and which is still a major argument for the adoption of FOSS.

Let’s get one thing clear from the start. Free and open source software, or FOSS, is not freeware. There’s a clear and important distinction.

Freeware is software which is given away by the author for no price. It costs no money. However, it’s still a proprietary product.

A case in point is Avast anti-virus. This popular anti-virus system has high-end versions for enterprises – which are where they make their money – down to a low-end free edition for home use only. It doesn’t cost a cent, and you get upgrades forever.

That’s pretty decent. Yet, you’re trusting Avast not to crash your computer, not to delete things which aren’t really viruses, to be sufficiently up-to-date to protect you from modern threats, and many other things.

Avast is a reputable company; I don’t mean to imply anything else. My point is merely that although a freeware app costs no money it isn’t yours to do with as you wish and its inner workings can’t be inspected or modified.

Here’s where FOSS comes in. A system like Linux, or even smaller applications like TuxPaint, are free in a different sense.

Sure, you can get them at no price too, but they’re also free from restriction.

If you don’t like the order of the menu items in TuxPaint you can change them. If you can improve the way a program works you’re free to implement a fix. If you don’t like the way Linux handles a piece of hardware you can improve it.

You can also give these changes away to others. You can submit them for inclusion in the core product, but you don’t have to.

You might have a totally different idea for a program but you need a facility that lets users draw pictures. You can embed TuxPaint into your program. Again, you can give this away to anyone else.

I don’t want to skew this towards programming ability. Not everyone is a programmer. In fact, most people in the world wouldn’t be. And those who are programmers don’t necessarily have the time to tweak every item they come across.

For non-programmers, FOSS still means a lot. The fact is you can trust TuxPaint won’t erase your hard drive because you know the source code can be heavily scrutinised by people who are programmers. You know if your computer crashes you can ask people if TuxPaint could likely be the cause and get an honest appraisal.

You don’t have this same certainty with any proprietary system. All of us – whether programmers or not – can relate tales of sucky software we’ve come across. Indeed, a lot of freeware is bad and that’s precisely why it’s free.

Nobody except the original author can fix sucky proprietary software. And nobody except the original author can figure out what the sucky software is doing to your computer and stop it from happening again.

Heck, let’s even consider getting access to all your old data and the risks proprietary software has.

Microsoft Office, prior to the latest Office 2007 release, used proprietary file formats for storing its data.

This means a Microsoft Word 6.0 document, for example, can only be opened by a product which understands the Microsoft Word 6.0 file format – which is limited to only those who have paid to license this information or those who have attempted to reverse engineer it.

In the latter case, the product’s implementation of the relevant file format may be limited. A case in point is OpenOffice which, while offering a high degree of compatibility, does not – and can not – guarantee 100% compatibility in each and every single case.

Now, Microsoft Office is a significant piece of software and so it’s been an obvious target for trying to achieve compatibility. Consider other products however. For instance, any financial software you might use. If it’s a proprietary package chances are the underlying data can only be used by that piece of software. If that software company goes out of business you might find you have data which can no longer be used in years to come.

Last year a small accounting software firm called 2Clix went out of business and into liquidation. This company achieved world-wide notoriety when it attempted to sue a popular online forum where customers had posted unflattering comments. If not for this, many people would never have heard of them.

Nevertheless, 2Clix shut its doors. One of the complaints customers had was that 2Clix would refuse to operate if the annual maintenance fee had not been paid – a fee separate to the initial purchase price and which, it had been assumed, only covered upgrades and support. This meant even if you discontinued use of the product in favour of a different financials package you had to continue paying maintenance for several years or you lost all access to historical data.

Worse, when the company ceased it was no longer possible to get maintenance even if you agreed to the fee. So, when your current license period lapsed that was it; businesses had possibly years and years of important information which was plain and simply no longer accessible. Even though it was their own data.

By stark contrast, if a FOSS program went belly-up you’d never be stuck. Your documents, your data, your information would be available forever because the specifications are always available – as encoded within the program source code.

Once again, you don’t have to be a programmer for this to benefit you. You might be the CEO of a major business. However, you can find someone – even if you need to hire them – to help out. You can rest easy that your electronic data can always be opened if it has been stored in a FOSS file format.

Remember, just because FOSS has the word “free” in it, it’s not the same as freeware. FOSS may not cost anything but it’s “free” in a broader sense. It’s free to use in any way you require. More than this, it’s free from risk.

Can you really afford to be using anything less?

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BY David M Williams
Source：iWire