Free Software Has No Pirates

One Response to “Free Software Has No Pirates”

1. John Leclerc Says:
   July 14th, 2005 at 8:43am

   (OK- I know I should post this on some blog of my own, but what the hay. Bits are bits, and if my bits are on your blog, it’s no different than on my blog, right? Chaos theory internet. Maybe I am “blog bombing” in a way. If so, then so be it.)

   You know, I really wanted to comment on that but direct comments are disabled on his blog. Maybe he will still read this.

   I have always really supported the idea of free software, though using it is often beyond my meager abilities. I have suffered through some horribly failed installs over the years, but this post is coming from my only computer and it is running freeBSD 5.3 on an old garbage pentium system. It recently ran 28 days without missing a beat before I added hardware.

   Like it was yesterday, I still remember the horrible turn taken by the micro-computer community in the 80’s when the fantastic, hugely cross platform CPM OS and superb S-100 systems were just steam rollered by IBM, Microsoft and Intel. I was so angry about that blatant stupidity I left computers behind for 10 years. I just could not bear to look at those stupid, lame office PC systems, I never liked Apple’s closed architecture approach, and the DEC VAX 11-780 at university had so many users it took an hour to compile 200 lines of PL/I.

   Ironically Sun and IBM (power5) systems seem to be the main alternatives for a computing society now owned almost wholly, from superclusters to desktops, by what is little more than a hacked development of that same, crappy 8 bit IBM PC. Granted, it works well at this point, but just imagine where we might be if we actually started with something even marginally good..

   So you get where I’m coming from. Open systems, mil-spec documentation, full source code. Bulletproof software languages like Ada. Eiffel. Python. Sure- Java. The new, not just the old, please.

   So I am really impressed with what Mr. Jonathan has to say, but then I have a twitching doubt about it, too. You see, in that 10 years spent outside computers, I saw and did things most computer people never will. I added a different perspective on the universe to the one I had. I didn’t do drugs if that’s what you are thinking, but maybe I went to few too many punk shows. It really dawned on me that a lot of my frustrations in life were due to the fact that a lot of what happens in the US and the world is really not right, not good for the world or for us, and I had continuous lingering doubts about having anything to do with the whole process. It wasn’t just my own dysfunctions, there really were (and are) things wrong.

   So your interest in Africa, which is part of a wave of interest and support, is welcome. Ironically Bill Gates was probably one of the first big players to get seriously involved in helping Africa. As much as I hate that guy for basically single handedly destroying microcomputing and much of supercomputing today, he did make the remarkable statement that “Africa does not need computers”. Africa does not need Microsoft! He actually said Africa really needs medicine and clean water, not computers. Well Bill is really just scratching the surface. It actually needs a lot LESS of certain things too, like wars, tons of superpower sourced weapons, cultural annihilation and pollution.

   Basically Jonathan, though I admire your open source commitments and energy for helping Africa, there is a huge debate about how to help Africa without just absorbing and destroying it. There is a huge debate over the very idea that Africa is “impoverished” and how to address that. It is so freaking arrogant the way many Westerners to go to some third world nation with only a few traces left of their 10,000 years of history remaining after centuries of colonial annihilation, and declare, their “problem” is that they are now poor. They need “development”, I guess because they are not “developed” and we I guess are “developed”. I guess to be a “developed” person means having access to cars, concrete and electricity, not access to 10,000 years of culture. Now, a lot of wealthy people in Africa are naturally going to agree with you, and I’m not saying Africa should never become modern, but one of the advantages of being “modern” if there are any, is certainly learning from far more spectacular mistakes. One of those mistakes, which is painfully clear today, is that 10,000 years of history is far more meaningful than modern development, immersion in soulless technology, and an easy life. We, everywhere in the US, are living in a place once filled with countless nations, all with 10,000 years of history, who had some of the most remarkable and unique DEVELOPED cultures the world ever witnessed. They will never, ever be restored. They are almost gone without a trace. No one will ever know their stories, their art, their sufferings, triumphs and aspirations. That is a loss greater than any IMF refund and we all know it. Never has any region of world known cultures quite like what was here. They were extremely unique. They had 10,000 years of style and knowledge. It is all gone now. Blasted, driven, burned, railroaded and plowed away in the name of progress. Now we are all trying to help out “those poor native people.” Then we might go out to a ranch, look over the vast expanse of plowed wheat fields, smell the cows, and think “nature is so great,” and “what respect we have for our land.” We get sentimental watching the sun down while listening to a nice country western balled. But where are all the people who were here for 10,00 years? Were are the millions of buffalo that shook the earth? We are looking out over a scene of destruction. A holocaust. A land raped, a people drive off to some nameless oblivion. We are all hypocrites.

   Yet, we now constantly seek any connection with native ritual, connecting with the earth, nature. That’s no surprise, is it? Americans co-opt native styles from the other side of earth, when ironically we had some of the greatest, most unique native culture right here, maybe even your own suburban plot has a real history going back 1000’s of years, but that soil is often desecrated. Part of why we look elsewhere for indigenous connections is our own collective guilt and denial. But from all this pain, suffering and regret caused by our mistakes in the past, is the lesson that we don’t just forget them, and we now know now never to repeat those mistakes.

   So here is the problem with helping Africa, if it’s not already abundantly clear. To use a metaphor, your approach, though good hearted, sounds suspiciously like a concrete company stating that Africa needs more concrete. To use a political cliche, your argument sounds suspiciously similar to textbook “neo-liberalism”.

   So how to really help? Am I saying quit? Should we do nothing? I’m a total pessimist, you say? The very negation of action? Well, let me state this- the west, superpowers, colonial empires, whatever you want to call us, collectively got ourselves and most of the third world (including Africa) into this mess, and the universe is not obliged to now give us a solution. Yahweh does not owe you a quick fix. I believe there is always an approach, but it’s also arrogant to assume you have not just backed yourself into a corner. Foremost, what is needed is a lot less arrogance and lot more respect for people who never needed money before we came along, who were never considered “impoverished” before we came along, and who never needed to get jobs in the city to pay rent on their formerly nomadic lands which were illegally deeded out from under them with the cooperation of a rich African leader. You get my drift. As with any technically challenging problem, seek out and work with the people who are the most informed people in the field. People who are dedicated, who’s knowledge and ideas are current. Work with the real people, the traditional leaders, and all who are not corrupted, not just the politicians and the elite. Take an interest in who real Africans are, their many nations, peoples and histories, take an interest in LEARNING from them and preserving their culture, being careful not use great wealth to patronize. These issues are central to the G-8 protests, and is broadly termed “neo-liberalism”. So when you say you want to help Africa, any person can reasonably ask for a living example of a successful help program to judge it’s potential by. OK- even marginally successful. Anything. Show us what you are talking about. Demonstrate assisting a healthy, vibrant African culture co-existing with or even embracing technology. I want to build on the proven successes of the past, and they must be there somewhere, hidden away.

   To put this in terms any computer nerd, wargaming, sci-fi geek gen-X’r can understand- As much as I hate “trekkies” today, who I honestly believe are the lowest form of formerly human life, like many people my age I have seen every original star trek episode 9 times, and those sappy moralisms were burned in my young psyche. The subtleties were not lost on a cold war culture which had just finished building backyard nuke shelters. Star trek was very much the product of the ’60s anti-Vietnam generation. Even Captain Kirk, who later became a major hawk, at the time was subject to the famous “policy of non-interference.” I remember they came up against that policy time and time again when dealing with “poor, undeveloped planets.” Unlike today’s sci-fi metaphor, which might be “the Vogons”, “non-interference” was the great subtle political metaphor for the 1960’s. Disconnected from the ugly reality of the day in the form of sci-fi, there was no partisan debate over it. It was just obviously the right thing not to interfere with other cultures based on your idea of how to live, and to really think twice even when they needed assistance. Unless they face extermination, and even then, what is the best way? If you destroy their culture, maybe that is a form of extermination too. Even star trek understood that.

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