Bringing Free Software to the masses

Posted by schiessle on 0

I have found this interview of Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation. He described his work as "to get the message of free software outside the hacker world":

When you ask people about free software they should instinctively believe in free software. Just like people say ‘I recycle my cans,’ but don’t understand the process behind it, you don’t need to have read the GPL or been a programmer to understand that a computer should be under your control. The typical computer user can’t change the software, but then again my mum can’t change what the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank is doing, but these issues still matter to her.

For Peter Brown this is the right time to get the message out about Free Software to the non-Hacker world:

This is the perfect time to get the message out about free software as you have a confluence of situations – there is a growing realisation among the general public that certain CDs won’t play in your CD player, or you can’t play them in your computer. Then we have the upcoming release of [Microsoft’s Windows] Vista, which has DRM up to its gills.

It is time to show a contrast. GPL v3 is the first stake in the ground against DRM. For the first time someone has said, ‘that’s it, we’re stopping it’.

Furthermore the FSF plans a campaign against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) after the second draft of GPLv3 sometime in June and will even employ a professional campaigner for this job.

The campaign will target three important areas:

  1. Developers need to know that their freedom to tinker is at stake. With DRM it can happen that you get an device with Free Software on it and if you change the software, the device won’t work any more. Tivo is an example of such a device.
  2. Telling the wider world of non-Hackers that they shouldn’t be handing over the keys of their home to strangers. In the future home entertainment systems will be able to tell what you’re watching and how many times you watch a video. This monitoring infrastructure is really scary and will cause a large loss of privacy.
  3. Telling device manufacturers ‘do you want to have control over your destiny, or do you want content providers to have control over your destiny?’