Why Do We Hold Ourselves Back?

A couple of weeks back I went on a rare family meal, which allowed me to catch up with people I've not seen in several years in a few cases, and to meet my new sister in law for the first time, who I found to be a great laugh and a welcome addition to the family. The whole area of "staying in touch" raised some questions in me which is the point of this post.

My sister, niece and new sister in law all use Facebook. My brother in law does too, although he's only posted once, he's not really that interested in social networking. My niece loves her iPod too. As a FOSS advocate there's plenty scope for advocacy to swamp what would otherwise be a great night for all. What do I do? Do I try to convert them onto something free? Or do I accept that to stay in touch with them, I either go where they go or restrict myself to emails or phone calls?

The real question is "do I judge them because of what they choose to use?" Why is it so hard for people to accept the decisions of others? Yes I'm as guilty of that as other people, although I'm now questioning it, and by extension, my own actions and reactions. We throw about the term "freedom hater" a lot, which if memory serves was a LugRadio original which was widely adopted. We use the term to put social pressure on each other over video card drivers, choice of MP3 player, smart phone, social network, and operating system. We do it to such a degree that it's almost a badge of shame for us to use anything not sanctioned by the crowd.

We take it upon ourselves to try to change the world and it's inhabitants to our ways, yet we take great pleasure in judging each other for our own choices. Is this freedom? Is this what it means to be free? Your decisions are only valid if they are the same as mine? One of the things that rubs me the wrong way is the GNU / FSF people on Identi.ca who insist on pressuring people to call Linux, GNU / Linux. If you want to call it that, fine, just don't tell me what words to use and insist that you're protecting my freedom. You're removing my freedom to choose my own term.

Why do we do this? How does it help us win the war?

The whole proprietary mindset is well entrenched as we all know, all of the household names in tech, from web services to gadgets are all proprietary. Turning that tide is a long slog. If you need any more proof of that, how many years have people genuinely assumed that this year would finally be the year of Linux on the desktop. It hasn't arrived. It hasn't even come close to arriving. Not because Linux isn't capable, it's more than capable, it has been for a couple of years now and it gets better every day. It hasn't arrived because proprietary solutions are very deeply entrenched.

There is no quick fix, there is no magic wand to wave that suddenly sends a wave of epiphanies around governments, lobbyists, lawyers, corporate buyers etc to wake up to the idea that "hey this FOSS thing is actually the better way to go". This is a long war, consisting of many battles. So why do we make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be?

When we intentionally become FOSS islands, only using FOSS platforms and FOSS services, we're preaching to the choir. Not only that, but we're dividing our forces by constantly judging each other for daring to betray the FOSS ideal by using something we either need to use, or get value from using. It's almost like a pissing contest at times, a contest to see who can be more free than the others. We have opinionated and vocal members of various factions who can't seem to resist the urge to knock other factions.

• KDE v Gnome v XFCE v Unity v Gnome Shell
• Ubuntu v (insert distro here)
• Vi v Emacs

That's only the tip of the iceberg. Thankfully the days of Vi and Emacs being a flame war are long gone, but the others are very much alive and well. It's one thing to have your own favorite combination of things you like for whatever reasons you like them, it's also perfectly fine for you to promote those to help share what value you get with others, in the hopes that they may get similar value. It's something else to constantly find ways to have digs at the stuff you don't use, and by extension the people who choose them.

Yes I've had issues in the past with Fedora, it's too bleeding edge for my tastes. I've also taken cheap shots at Fedora too because of my own limited experiences with it. For the most part I restrain those urges, not that they're very strong anyway, because I know Fedora have a huge user base and they're a long established distro which says one thing; a LOT of people are perfectly happy running Fedora. Why should my feelings about Fedora impact them? Why does my opinion matter more than theirs? It doesn't, and nor should it. They're still running a FOSS operating system, they understand the principles of FOSS. In short, we're in the same boat, we're on the same team.

FOSS is better for the users because it empowers them. It's a much harder sustainable model for businesses who willingly give up one part of their revenue (the sales of an application people can't just compile themselves for free) and have to make that up in other ways such as support or advertising. When companies explore different models to make that revenue and keep as much as they can FOSS, why do we insist on crucifying them for the small parts where they don't go as far as we'd like? If they're not profitable, they only last so long before they disappear. What incentive is that to new companies? What incentive is that to currently proprietary companies we're trying to entice to be more FOSS?

One of the huge selling points of the FOSS idea, along with open standards is the absence of lock in. I am writing this on my crusty old (hopefully about to retire very soon) P4 desktop PC running Debian Squeeze with XFCE. There is nothing that locks me into staying with Debian. I can choose at any time to wipe it and install something else. None of my files will be affected or be inaccessible.

I often run Linux Mint either on the desktop or the netbook, the same applies. I've recently switched the netbook to Xubuntu 11.04, the same applies. These are all Debian based so a large portion of the knowledge transfers across, so does my choice of XFCE. There is nothing stopping me from moving beyond my comfort zone and switching to Fedora, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, Frugalware, Slackware, Arch or a million other distros. So why do we feel the need to castigate each other over choices we make?

Many FOSS advocates have to use Windows or OSX at work, school or college. Does this taint us? I don't think so. It's one thing to choose when you're in control, it's something else when you're not in control. There is always a choice of course in that you can change jobs. In the real world jobs are increasingly scarce and money is increasingly tight, people who give them up over something like this are idiots. That's different from switching jobs.

The amount of flak Canonical get for decisions taken with Ubuntu is astounding at times. Constructive criticism is good. Being willing to try to help some of our family if they stray a bit is good. We can all exercise our right to move at any time however. Ubuntu choose Unity as their default environment, don't like Unity? exercise your right and switch. Canonical make a corporate decision to swap the buttons to the other side of the window, don't like that? exercise your right and switch. Canonical develop some parts of their services as proprietary, don't like that? well, you know what I'm gonna say.

The balancing factor in the capitalist system is the consumers power to choose to give custom to one vendor or withdraw custom from another for any reason at any time. Why should this not apply to distros? Is this because we contribute in some way to the growth of our choices? Is this because we have a social stake in them, having built up relationships with others in those communities that we'd rather fight harder to get our way? Is it because rejecting one distro means betraying our friends within that distro's community? Why should any of this matter?

We'll never have a magic bullet, we have to take battles a step at a time. This doesn't mean we should all jump on Twitter, Facebook, dual boot with OSX or Windows, switch our Android phones for iPhones etc. What it does mean is that we should be welcoming and non-judgmental to those who do prefer to use those services and products.

People choose Firefox not because it's FOSS, but because it's better. Often people who use Firefox have never heard of the FOSS idea. Most users have no clue about open or closed, they just have software or services that work for them, and allow them to socialize with their friends, family and colleagues. We're never going to convince anyone if we demonize them for their choices. We at least have a chance if we accept their choices are as valid as ours, and educate them about FOSS, and why it's a better approach. Let them come to us as willing apprentices in whatever way suits them.

I am reminded of loyal Apple users who are very happy in their choices and feel the need to sneer at Windows users who they see as clueless sheep who just accept the default because they don't know better, and FOSS / Linux users who just want a Mac on the cheap. These are of course very general statements, and for some people they're accurate, but not all. I won't pay a premium price for Apple products, but plenty of people like them. Most people do use Windows because it's what came with their PC when they bought it and don't know it's a separate thing that can be switched out, let alone what the options are or how to go about exploring it.

There's always a difference in friendly digs and banter, and actually judging people on their choices. We lose sight of the bigger picture at times, that all of the FOSS family are broadly on the same side. We broadly have the same goals. We just have different ideas on how fast we get there and how much to extend the bridge to the other side.

To round off this rather long and deep post, I've decided to start using Facebook myself in a very limited capacity because I've spent too long out of touch with my family. For the most part I'm using Selective Tweets to push Tweets marked with the #fb tag to Facebook. I use Identi.ca to talk to people, which automatically re-posts to Twitter anyway, the only change is that a few get re-posted a second time to Facebook.

Does this make me any less of a FOSS advocate? You be the judge.