Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/10/11/denouncing-v-advocating.html

For the last decade, I’ve regularly seen complaints when we harder-core
software freedom advocates spend some time criticizing proprietary
software in addition to our normal work preserving, protecting and
promoting software freedom. While I think entire campaigns focused on
criticism are warranted in only extreme cases, I do believe that
denouncement of certain threatening proprietary technologies is a
necessary part of the software freedom movement, when done sparingly.

Denouncements are, of course, negative, and in general, negative
tactics are never as valuable as positive ones. Negative campaigns
alienate some people, and it’s always better to talk about the advantages
of software freedom than focus on the negative of proprietary
software.

The place where negative campaigns that denounce are simply necessary,
in my view, is when the practice either (a) will somehow completely
impeded the creation of FLOSS or (b) has become, or is becoming,
widespread among people who are otherwise supportive of software
freedom.

I can think quickly of two historical examples of the first type: UCITA
and DRM. UCITA was a State/Commonwealth-level law in the USA that was
proposed to make local laws more consistent regarding software
distribution. Because the implications were so bad
for software freedom (details of which are beyond scope of this post but
can be learned at the link), and because it was so unlikely that we
could get the UCITA drafts changed, it was necessary to publicly denounce
the law and hope that it didn’t pass. (Fortunately, it only ever passed
in my home state of Maryland and in Virginia. I am still, probably
pointlessly, careful never to distribute software when I visit my
hometown. 🙂

DRM, for its part, posed an even greater threat to software freedom
because its widespread adoption would require proprietarization of all
software that touched any television, movie, music, or book media. There
was also a concerted widespread pro-DRM campaign from USA corporations.
Therefore, grassroots campaigns denouncing DRM are extremely necessary
even despite that they are primarily negative in operation.

The second common need for denouncement when use of a proprietary
software package has become acceptable in the software freedom community.
The most common examples are usually specific proprietary software
programs that have become (or seem about to become) “all but
standard” part of the toolset for Free Software developers and
advocates.

Historically, this category included Java, and that’s why there were
anti-Java campaigns in the Free Software community that ran concurrently
with Free Software Java development efforts. The need for the former is
now gone, of course, because the latter efforts were so successful and we
have a fully FaiF Java system. Similarly, denouncement of Bitkeeper was
historically necessary, but is also now moot because of the advent and
widespread popularity of Mercurial, Git, and Bazaar.

Today, there are still a few proprietary programs that quickly rose to
ranks of “must install on my GNU/Linux system” for all but the
hardest-core Free Software advocates. The key examples are Adobe Flash
and Skype. Indeed, much to my chagrin, nearly all of my co-workers at
SFLC insist on using Adobe Flash, and nearly every Free Software developer
I meet at conferences uses it too. And, despite excellent VoIP technology
available as Free Software, Skype has sadly become widely used in our
community as well.

When a proprietary system becomes as pervasive in our community as
these have (or looks like it might), it’s absolutely time for
denouncement. It’s often very easy to forget that we’re relying more and
more heavily on proprietary software. When a proprietary system
effectively becomes the “default” for use on software freedom
systems, it means fewer people will be inspired to write a
replacement. (BTW, contribute to Gnash!) It means that Free Software
advocates will, in direct contradiction of their primary mission, start to
advocate that users install that proprietary software, because it
seems to make the FaiF platform “more useful”.

Hopefully, by now, most of us in the software freedom community agree
that proprietary software is a long term trap that we want to avoid.
However, in the short term, there is always some new shiny thing.
Something that appeals to our prurient desire for software that
“does something cool”. Something that just seems so
convenient that we convince ourselves we cannot live without it, so we
install it. Over time, short term becomes the long term, and suddenly we
have gaping holes in the Free Software infrastructure that only the very
few notice because the rest just install the proprietary thing. For
example, how many of us bother to install Linux Libre,
even long enough to at least know which of our hardware
components needs proprietary software? Even I have to admit I don’t do
this, and probably should.

An old adage of software development is that software is always better
if the developers of it actually have to use the thing from day to day.
If we agree that our goal is ultimately convincing everyone to run only
Free Software (and for that Free Software to fit their needs), then we
have to trailblaze by avoiding running proprietary software ourselves. If
you do run proprietary software, I hope you won’t celebrate the fact or
encourage others to do so. Skype is particularly insidious here, because
it’s a community application. Encouraging people to call you on Skype is
the same as emailing someone a Microsoft Word document: it’s encouraging
someone to install a proprietary application just to work with you.

Finally, I think the only answer to the FLOSS community
celebrating the arrival of some new proprietary program for
GNU/Linux is to denounce it, as a counterbalance to the fervor that such
an announcement causes. My podcast co-host Karen
often calls me the canary in the software coalmine because I am
usually the first to notice something that is bad for the advancement of
software freedom before anyone else does. In playing this role, I often
end up denouncing a few things here and there, although I can still count
on my two hands the times I’ve done so. I agree that advocacy should be
the norm, but the occasional denouncement is also a necessary part of the
picture.

(Note: this blog is part of an ongoing public discussion of a software
program that is not too popular yet, but was heralded widely as a win for
Free Software in the USA. I didn’t mention it by name mainly because I
don’t want to give it more press than it’s already gotten, as it is one of
this programs that is becoming a standard GNU/Linux user
application (at least in the USA), but hasn’t yet risen to the level of
ubiquity of the other examples I give above. Here’s to hoping that it
doesn’t.)