I think if anyone was having difficulty understanding exactly what the difference is between free software and non-free software, then this posting about how Microsoft plan to make their branded startup sound mandatory on Windows Vista illustrates exactly what the deal is.
It might seem like a small innocuous change and to be honest it won't have much of an impact on the way in which people use their computer, but it perfectly illustrates the attitude of companies like this towards who actually has the right to control what your computer does and how it does it. The momentum gathering behind so-called Trusted Computing shows us that these companies don't trust us to use our own machines for what they see as the right purposes. Can they really not trust us to choose the right start-up sound either? Or is that just not the point?
Well many people do actually want to personalise their own computer, even if it allows (God forbid) people to do things like this, which is incidentally really quite funny.
Ridiculous actions like this on the part of Microsoft and the invasive behaviour of software like Windows Media Player and Real Player are extending the already long list of why I am seriously considering giving up any proprietry software for good. If I do so, I think I shall also become a fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe, following a quite informative talk at my local Linux User Group by Shane Coughlan, already a fellow.
Have any comments on this? I'd be interested to see what people think.
Comments
I'm still considering my view
I'm still considering my view on what Microsoft is doing with this Trusted Software concept, but obviously anything that curtails your ability to do stuff with your own PC is on the face of it bad, even if the reasons for the restrictions are on the face of it good. For the badness not to be an issue, the Trusted Software system must work brilliantly at eradicating malware, viruses and other such problems with modern PC use. I seriously doubt that it will do this but we will have to wait and see.
So if we don't like what Microsoft is doing, the question is, what's the alternative to Windows and Microsoft products? For most people, there isn't one. The problem with a collaboration between techies, such as Linux, is that it doesn't take into account the views of non-techies asking the sort of stupid questions that lead to systems being made usable to the general public. Microsoft products balance power with usability because they do test the software on "normal people". Open source stuff isn't developed in this way, and unless this changes I don't think that outside techie circles Microsoft's dominance will be seriously challenged by Open source software. The only recent serious challenge to Windows PCs has recently been from Apple, which has seen massively increased sales of its computers because of the success of iPods. Apple doesn't use open source operating system, of course.
Slightly off the subject, I've recently tried to install GIMP, an open source alternative to Paintshop, but can't even get the Help file to install! The online help pages telling you how to do this probably make perfect sense to someone with a PHD in computing, but not to the rest of us.
You could argue that "non techie" people should get involved in development process for open source stuff, but the reality is that we just want to be able to buy or download software and be able to use it straightaway. If that means buying it from a "trusted source" then so be it.
-Alex
Thanks for the comment
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the comment. I think one of the scariest things about this Trusted Computing thing is the large amount of misconception about what it actually is - and whose trust. The system is to be implemented in hardware; an extra chip on your motherboard which can prevent certain things being run on your computer. In this way, it's not actually your trust that is being discussed here, but whether software and media industry trusts you not to do something with their software or media that they didn't want you to. Even though you may have agreed to a licence agreement, they still want to physically prevent you from doing things with what you've bought other than what they intended. In this way Trusted Computing is a little like DRM. I don't think we need either TC or DRM, just people who take responsibility for obeying the law themselves.
I think you're right that despite the best efforts of the advocates of operating systems such as GNU/Linux, many people making a clean switch from Windows will still find it quite hard at first. However, I honestly don't think that this is a problem. People get conditioned by the way Windows does things to expect all computers to behave like that. There is a learning curve when you switch from one system to another, just as there is for people moving from Windows to Macs, and Apple have acknowledged this too.
Traditionally, the difference between Windows and GNU/Linux has been the apparent user-friendliness of the interface however. Ever since around Windows 3 in the early 90's Microsoft have made a concerted effort to hide most of what the computer is doing from the user, instead presenting happy little wizards, paperclips and "click here to fix my computer" buttons. Systems such as this require increasingly more complex back-end software to keep up the veil of simplicity and from time to time, they will break. A higher level of complexity in the back-end can lead to a more exploitable system as bugs and security holes become ever more common. Coupled with this, the happy, ignorant and ever more trusting user is happy to click on buttons which promise to fix their computer, receive HTML emails with worms embedded in them and all the other things which plague such systems. Of course, in order to protect the user from themself, even more complex back-ends are required and ultimately, the inevitable direction of this approach is a Trusted Computing chip. In effect, the user has given away any control over their own machine, software and increasingly personal information in order to buy themself a little more user-friendliness.
I am not just referring to Microsoft here. There are hundreds of companies following this philosophy - Microsoft is just the most successful so far. In my opinion, this is where Free Software differs though. Systems such as GNU/Linux do not try to hide away the fact that people are using incredibly complex pieces of equipment. To be honest it's amazing that we can use with the minimal training and experience that we do. This transparency can often make the system look a little more complex or require ten minutes of reading before diving straight in, but in exchange the user retains a significantly higher degree of control. And not just control over a system they don't understand, but control over all the personal data which is probably stored on their system too.
I don't think though, that this means it needs to be more difficult to use your computer. It is true that to use a system like Linux, it can take a little time to familiarise yourself with the way it works before you can do some of the apparently simple things for which Windows provides user-friendly interfaces, but once learnt, many people say (and I agree) that Linux can in fact be easier and quicker to use.
Linux has also come a long way since the old days when a severe amount of techie knowledge was needed to get your modem working, and distributions like Ubuntu (I'm using Kubuntu at the moment, BTW) make it even easier. I wouldn't argue that non-techie people should get involved in the development of Free Software - that's not something they're interested in, but things like having the developer's email address in Help->About means that you can email them with a request for something you'd like the next version to do. One thing the Linux community is still suffering from to be honest is a dominance of developers (when so many testers, artists and documentation writers are needed), but then those are still the people who drive it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating banning Microsoft and though the various legal actions being taken against Microsoft et al are probably justified, I don't think that's the main point. Anyone who isn't satisfied with the system they have, and feels like Trusted Computing and DRM are just going too far, should feel like they can switch - and that's what I'm going to do.
Pete.
P.S. I've never had any trouble whatsoever installing GIMP - in Kubuntu I just clicked on GIMP in my software installer program and it did it all for me automatically. Then again, I've never tried in Windows and I doubt to be honest that many of the contributors get around to testing it on systems they don't use.
Thanks for the further info
Thanks for the further info & views Pete.
My only further comment about the usability issue is that if I buy a car, I don't want to have to become an expert on the engine before I can drive it. Learning the interface is about as far as I want to go. Same goes for an operating systems and other software.
Your comment about GIMP is quite telling really and supports my view about the problem with systems designed by techies for techies. If the first experience that most people have of open source programs is on a Windows PC, and the software doesn't work and/or isn't easy to use, then why would they want to move over to Linux?
Having said that, I'm typing this and browsing your blog using Firefox, an open source creation that works beautifully! So maybe the problems I list with Linux and open source software are just because of the stage of evolution of this type of software?
Cars and software
Yeah, I've heard the car analogy before and I think that on the whole you're right. We do expect to be able to use cars without knowing how the engine works or how to fix it. But having said that, most people don't expect to be able to drive a car without several hours of tuition in both practice and theory. Also, when they do get a car, they tend to want to know how to do basic maintenance, such as replacing the wheel or changing the oil. Using Linux certainly doesn't expect you to know how to kernel works - but it is helpful to know that there is one and it's got X feature - a bit like having a 1.8 or 1.6 litre engine, I guess.
I think the thing with running software such as the GIMP on Windows is that just like any other piece of software, it's not self-contained. Just about every program we run these days requires quite heavy use of the operating system, or at least graphics libraries contained in the OS. GIMP wasn't built to use Microsoft's proprietry graphics libraries, it uses GTK+ which you will also have to install. Now, I don't want to get too techy and your point is totally valid that you shouldn't have to know things like that to use a paint program, but it's a symptom of this mix and match approach. I wouldn't expect to be able to run Windows Media Player on a Mac and if I could it would be a bonus.
But yes, Firefox and Thunderbird are obvious examples of Free Software that have worked very well in the Windows environment, and that is thanks to developers with an interest in doing that. The problem is that in order for a developer to give up their time to work on a Free Software project (assuming they're not sponsored), they probably care about why they're doing it. If they do care, then they're probably not going to want to spend a lot of time making things compatible with Windows.
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