Install Fests: What to Do about the Deal with the Devil

So, as a card-carrying member of the FSF, I'll weigh in. When I pull out my FSF card that contains a tiny flash drive with a Trisquel image on it [0], most people think it's incredibly cool and often allow me to demo it on some old PC/laptop they have lying around.

The "demo" of Trisquel goes pretty well for about ten minutes (the DE is quite easy for people used to the Win 9x paradigm to understand), then I inevitably get to the point where they want to see the browser or something that requires internet, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because there are very few desktops or laptops that ship with a wireless card supporting a completely free driver that Trisquel will ship. And that's where the conversation usually ends. Because if the free OS can't let the computer do the things the end-user expects it to do, they won't use it. It doesn't matter if they align practically or philosophically with the FOSS movement, a computer that can't access the internet is just a toy or a paperweight to them.

[0]https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits

I'm all for OSS, but reading things like this really make me think of the community as totally nuts. I don't have the time in my life to get this worked up over OSS, and I don't have the time to avoid the smallest paid software package. I guess I am glad that a community like this exists to push OSS forwards, but I wonder how much this pushes away more moderate people. Would the ecosystem be as easy for a moderate like me to enter were it not for these fringe envelope pushers? Would it be slightly harder to enter, but offset by the larger number of developers not alienated by the apparent gung-ho anti-establishment attitude? In the end I think it's a benefit but it does push me away.

This is a fairly amusing read. Favorite quote:

    This devil would be a human being disguised to teach a moral lesson with a theatrical metaphor, so let's not take the metaphor too far. I think we would do well not to say that users are “selling their souls” if they install nonfree software—rather, part of their own freedom is what they forfeit. We don't need to exaggerate to teach the point...

I'm sympathetic to the FSF's goals, but I think they're desire for ideological purity prevents them from achieving meaningful wins. Increasing the availability and desirability of Free software shouldn't have to mean total exclusion of all non-Free software.

As an industry, I think we should be more troubled by devices that aren't even allowed to run code without special permission from some third party. The App Store is a sad state of affairs in my opinion.

I don't know how this situation with most WiFi hardware being FSF-hostile will ever change. People who care (be they end users, enterprises, Linux kernel developers, or distro developers) don't provide sufficient motivation to the manufacturers.

Part of the reason might be that, even if one is generally aligned with the FSF's goals, the distinction the FSF makes, based on where the closed firmware is stored, isn't very compelling, IMHO. Most people need a good reason to incur the high costs of FSF-friendliness.

(I've compromised on this, myself. In 2010, the Debian Live variant utility stick distro I made bundled the `non-free` drivers, since that was already a problem then. Though I have bought FSF-friendly `ath9k` PCIe WiFi cards for my own use. And I even went through the massive headache of converting several ThinkPad X200 units to Coreboot, which let me put FSF-friendly mini-PCIe WiFi cards in them. I never would've done the latter, had I known how much work it would be.)

If someone is going to an install fest, their technical skills are not very strong. Especially in this day and age where plentiful devices means not rendering your only computer inoperable, but being able to follow along with online instructions! That user's effective freedom is very low, even if they're sitting in front of a fully documented Free machine!

But they're interested in taking a step in the right direction, even though they will not reap the full benefits for quite some time. This must not be squandered!

The problem here is that emphasizing the negative association still ties it to GNU/Linux - first, the presence of a visible "devil", and second the difficulty of being confronted with an overt looked-down-upon decision that is not fully understood.

Rather, people respond better to the carrot. They should be informed - they might indeed have a different machine that would be a better fit for Linux. And they should walk away knowing that the machine they have is not perfect from a Freedom standpoint.

But how are they supposed to care enough to influence a purchasing decision, especially of a new machine, if we make it difficult for them to become accustomed to the benefits of Freedom? A machine loaded with all proprietary blob drivers still showcases the results of Freedom quite well - similar to why there is such big business in taking Free software and locking it up with DRM/HTTP, but I digress.

In general, RMS really needs to reconsider the nuance of how he applies his philosophy to the modern world. While he has been extremely prescient and unyielding for the overall war, he keeps wanting to fight the original battle rather than many of the new fronts that have sprung up.

For example, he uses a T400 laptop - what storage device does it have? I guarantee it runs non-free firmware from flash. There is little difference between this and AMD's graphics firmware blob files, if the latter is only ever loaded under Free control. Condemning the latter because it puts the blob front and center in our faces is fundamentally a symptom of failing to flesh out the paradigm of what applied Freedom means, and without that we cannot hope to defend it!

This is absolutely Cuckoo, even for RMS.

Take people, probably leaning nontechnical who have an interest in trying OSS and try to explicitly impose on them the concept that they are wrong and you are right and they are 'dealing with the devil' if they don't see things your way. They will be put off linux and the FOSS community for life.

It's not like we don't have years of evidence of what happens if you try to impose your idea of politics on someone.

If you really want people to care, then you need to introduce them slowly, and even then - without appreciating some sort of obstacle (like a technical user trying to get their wifi or graphics cards working) I'm not sure it's so easy, because most people have other priorities.

Yet another self-defeating idea from RMS. If someone asks for Linux, we should either give them a broken version, refuse, or give them a lecture? Sad.

Urgh... this is perhaps one of the worst positions for the FSF to take at this point.

This is a position you take if 10% of the desktop market was already running a mostly free operating system and APIs. (Making a distinction between GNU and Chrome OS).

Once you have enough mindshare to expose people to what Free Software, community developed software, software they can have control over (either by learning how to program or being able to pay someone to do it). Then you push to wipe out these crappy binary blobs.

At this point, with less than 1%, Microsoft could lock out every Linux user from modern hardware by refusing to sign an UEFI kernel.

Things have gotten better. Dell provides a few Linux laptops for desktop users. System76 is great... even if their machines look a little dated. Steam's Proton is a godsend.

But the Linux desktop still hasn't broken out of the a few niche areas. Chrome OS has more market share than all other desktop Linuxes. We haven't gotten past 2% and in many Asian countries we are falling behind even more.

You can't tell people they are only ethical if they use a modern laptop without working wifi. They won't care. A lot of people just don't care about technology. They just want it to work! But once you reach 10%; you have network effects people can rely on and feel confident about choosing a Free Operating System. If you point out this Free Software sticker means it works better for Linux/BSD/Haiku because you have control over the code that runs your wifi/whatever, then people will care.

> My new idea is that the install fest could allow the devil to hang around, off in a corner of the hall, or the next room. (Actually, a human being wearing sign saying “The Devil,” and maybe a toy mask or horns.) The devil would offer to install nonfree drivers in the user's machine to make more parts of the computer function ...

Oh, but this should only be suitable if it's done with FreeBSD and not some Gnuuh-slash-leenacks.

The degree to which Richard Stallman lives on another planet, entirely divorced from the reality of human behavior, cannot be overstated.

We can't even get people to ditch facebook when it is obviously and actively harmful to them on almost every dimension because people simply do not care. The idea that any of them would futz around trying to compile drivers from source code is ludicrous.

This problem is why I use https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ for downloading Debian ISOs, because I know that I'm going to need nonfree firmware for it to actually do the things that I want it to do (and finding the right ISO on the Debian website is a godawful nightmare).

I think the page takes the most rational approach by informing the person about the danger to user freedoms imposed by non-free software while, and this is very important, letting the person just get on with their life right now.

Stallman's proposal sounds...cartoonish and annoying and IMO ultimately harmful. I think the only way to get people who aren't already dedicated to want to use free software is if using it doesn't make them annoyed first.

Ugh, I think you get to pick between "strict purity" and something other than strict purity -- you can't have both. You can't deliberately tolerate something you deem to be devilish without becoming morally soiled by it. You can't perform an act that you call evil, or tolerate and implicitly encourage the act, and then in the next breath condemn it.

Either you have to maintain strict purity, or you have to acknowledge on some level that real life is not especially compatible with strict purity, and sometimes compromise is, at a minimum, necessary and to some degree desirable.

There's no logical way around this, and trying to force there to be a logical way around it gives you this kind of wink wink, nod nod, say-no-more sort of idea.

What distro are they installing at an install fest? I assume the users going to these would typically be in the lower half of the tech savviness distribution. So a user friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint would make sense, but they include non-free coode in them.

If they install some weird hobby distro, that doesn't have a large community around it to help support users I'd expect to scare users entirely away from Linux.

Is "install fest" actually a thing? I thought people just download whatever OS they want to install these days...?