Is your computer a political device? Yes, it is, and the sooner each of us understand this, the better.

Our PCs and laptops are indispensable parts of our daily lives but in fact they are controlled not by us, the users, but by those who sell us the software that we run on our computers.

Why is this such a bad thing you ask? Well because we are powerless and weak when it comes to our computers in many ways. All of us know of moments of great frustrations with our computers — they are slow, they keep getting ‘corrupted,’ they keep crashing, etc., etc.

We feel helpless and confused when we are told that the problems are because we use outdated software, our machines are too old — ‘upgrade this,’ ‘change that,’ ‘your software is pirated...’  The suggestions are endless and confusing.

Should we really keep spending money to keep our computers in working order?

Is ignorance bliss?
For how long will buying new software or hardware solve the problem?

 Most of us don’t have an endless amount of money to keep buying new software or hardware but the really maddening thing is the lack of knowledge we have about these devices and our powerlessness in being able to understand the problems and sort them out ourselves.

In the end it is too complicated a world and we are forced to leave it to the “computer guys” to sort it out.  “Just give us a machine that does its job and does not crash on me when I least want it” is what we say.

Stumped by what we see as a shortcoming on our parts (we are not all computer engineers after all) we blindly take it that for the most part that this is the way the world is ordered and this is the only way it can be.
However, that’s not true at all.

It is possible to know more, to control our computers completely, to take the decisions on how we use it and how we don’t use it and really none of this requires  technical education.

You may be a retired Kannada or English teacher; there is a world of computing possible for you where you can feel in control and where words like ‘piracy’ and ‘viruses’ are non existent.

But how come I don’t know about all this, you ask. Ah well! This is where the politics come in. Because those who sell us the proprietary software most of us are forced to use on our machines, want our ignorance and our helplessness.

Proprietary software
Professor Eben Moglen, General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation was here in Bangalore recently lecturing on the nitty gritty behind the world of proprietary software, how it came about and what you and I can do about freeing ourselves from it.

“Unless your name is capitalism, you will have to see the sense behind this,” says Professor Moglen.

In the ’70s and early ’80s, Prof Moglen was a software programmer with IBM corporation and one of the goals that all software engineers aspired in those days while developing code was to “Write once, run everywhere.”
However as we all know,  this viewpoint has changed drastically and now proprietary software is developed so that it is only compatible with certain types of hardware machines. Also, proprietary software prevents customers from redistributing it in order to force customers to buy more licenses or copies.

Free software, on the other hand, does the exact opposite. Developed by thousands of people around the world (many of them volunteers), it is written with the intent that it should run on all machines.

Not only is it free for all to use, it also encourages you to share and redistribute it freely.

Further, proprietary software is sealed up in such a way that even a knowledgeable programmer who uses it cannot modify it. Again free software does the very opposite – the code is open and the user is  encouraged to look deep inside the software and make changes if he or she should wish to do so.

Freely sharing knowlege, improving it and letting everyone know how to go about it is what the free software movement is all about.

As Professor Moglen sees it: “A system which depends for its continuation upon the universalisation of ignorance for private profit is an immoral system”.

Free software
To break free from the control that monopolies like Microsoft corporation have on our lives and to take control of our computers, more of us, particularly those above sixty years of age for instance, must be shown how to use free software, says Professor Moglen.

Professor Moglen has contributed enormously to the Free Software movement by preparing the licenses that programmers who wish to develop free software can use to protect their work.

Thousands of people all over the world contribute to the free software movement. Once they are ready with the work they put it out for general distribution and use.

Before doing so they generally opt to license their products in one way or the other. This licensing ensures that the software continues to be free for copying, modifying and reuse.

As early as 15 years ago, free software was mostly used in research institutions and universities.

This is not true anymore and today the capitalisation of free software is estimated to be in the range of $100 billion and to meet the changed requirements of the current situation the third version of the General Public License (GPLv3) is being readied.

This license can work globally. Professor Moglen led the effort to draft the third license but speaks with satisfaction and happiness of the community effort that went into the preparation of the license.
More than 10,000 people emailed their suggestions and ideas to him and the discussions were both sincere and sophisticated, he says. This process has led him to dream of  future where we can “replace public institutions of law with communal institutions of law.”

The author is with DeepRoot Linux.
To know more about Free Software and what it can do for you, email her at rosalind@deeproot.co.in.