Fitting the battle of life

I was lying in bed a few moments ago - yes, the lazy student in bed, what a surprise - when I had a fleeting glimpse of an idea. The image came to me of a worker operating a machine (probably in a factory, I suppose) which was a giant grey metal box. On it was a button, and the worker’s job was to push this button every so often, so that the machine would fulfil its function - say, putting the heads on teddy bears or whatever - but of course, the worker has no idea what goes on inside the box machine. He pushes the button and out pops a teddy-bear, but the abstraction of his work (i.e. pushing a button as opposed to picking up the head and manually putting it on) and being unable to see it actually happen leads him to question what the point is, what he is actually doing.

I see a short, quasi-satirical, almost Kafka-esque piece forming in my mind, on this subject, loosely a metaphor for open-source vs closed-source (and in more areas than just computing). I shall update once I make a start - if I make a start. Must remember that I’ve got exams coming up after Easter.

Well, everyone knows what facebook does, right? It’s a social networking site, the bane of productivity and a spam folder for all those useless applications you’ll never use, yes?

Check out mirror.facebook.com. It’s a repository for plenty of open-source applications.  Who’d have thunk it?

I’m not a parent, heaven forbid. But I do recognise the immense value of education, both in terms of its worth and its cost. Richard Stallman’s article on ‘Why schools should exclusively use free software‘ struck something of a chord with me. With education in this country in a not-so-perfect state, and there not being a whole lot of cash around, increasing the use of free software is, I think, an important step we should be taking. Other European governments are taking the lead; it’s time we caught up and got ahead, I feel.

For those of us living in the UK, there’s some simple steps we can take, like writing to our MPs and the Secretary of State:

Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
London
SW1P 3BT

A simple letter asking why the minister is not instructing schools to use free software when it costs nothing, can be run on older hardware better (thus reducing cost further) and when companies like Dell are openly supporting it, and when the French government are using it, might get us nowhere. Conversely, of course, it could start a little pebble rolling at the top of a very large mountain.

The one thing every student needs is access to a word-processor. Yes, there are cluster rooms, but these are dull and dreary places to work at the best of times. At the worst, you can’t even log on because the server load is too high. Rubbish. Use your own. The problem is, the most basic version of MS Office 2007 costs £73.48 at time of writing, and that’s a lot of money for a student to stump up. In fact, by using the free OpenOffice you save that entire amount, which is equivalent to:

• 43 pints of lager at my student union (which means that, given I’m in London, this will be higher elsewhere) with some change for a couple of packets of crisps
• more than 90 songs on iTunes (we won’t get into that discussion here, this is for illustration only!) [Edit: this could soon be even more songs if this BBC article is right]
• 54 pints of Sainsbury’s semi-skimmed milk (4 pint bottle). That makes a lot of cups of tea.

My nan used to say, if you look after the pennies the pounds will look after themselves. I’m saying, if you look after that £75, you can buy some very useful items instead of bloated, proprietary nonsense.

Before I start, let me just clarify: here I’m going to be talking about open source software, rather than any definition of ‘free’, i.e. simply software where the source code is available to look it (regardless of the cost of that software, and regardless of any limitations on the user to amend that code). This isn’t because of any disdain for the FSF or any other group, but simply because I don’t want to get drawn into a debate over whether you have a ‘right’ to do what you want with software you own/license/use (another time, perhaps).

Ok, so in this post I want to argue that we should be using open source software (i.e. OS, drivers, and any other applications we might think about using) in order better to protect our own rights, primarily the right to privacy, which comes under Article 8 of the ECHR.  My argument basically concerns ‘hidden’ functions of software - i.e. things software does that you don’t know it is doing/have no way of knowing (without incessantly watching your outgoing internet traffic, for instance) it is doing.

Let’s get rid of the ‘users should read the EULA’ argument as well, because it’s just rubbish to be frank. While yes, everyone who clicks the ‘Yes, I agree’ button declares that they have read the EULA and agree to be bound by its terms, the pragmatic view is that actually very few people do. Let’s take the worst case scenario: you’re setting up a new computer, installing all the software you want to use. How long would it take to read all those EULAs properly?

Secondly, software features shouldn’t be hidden in an EULA. If EULAs should exist at all, they should be there to say what you as a user may or may not do with the software, not to tell you in tiny writing what the software will be doing behind your back. Any gathering of statistical information about end-users should also be a transparent option for those end-users, not built into (and hidden in) a license agreement.  Software companies do not have a right to invade our privacy unless we make a clear and transparent (a tautology if ever I saw one) choice to give up some of your personal information.

So far I’ve been arguing against EULAs and ‘hidden’ features of software. Where does open source come into this, even if we installed laws to prevent the former?

I’m not one who has great belief in the kindness of humanity. There will always be people with malicious intent (whether intended maliciously or not, if that makes sense). We cannot rid ourselves of privacy-invading software so long as that software remains closed. Given that there have been some very worrying cases of closed software invading privacy (and doing so quite deceptively), we cannot trust closed software. Only open software guarantees our right to privacy, simply because we can see what it’s doing. Even if an end-user doesn’t have the requisite knowledge to read millions of lines of code that tell him what’s going on in his computer, someone somewhere does, and will be reading it.

We wouldn’t have faith in a closed judiciary, because we need to know that fundamental rights are being protected, and you can’t do that when trials happen behind closed doors. So why admit the possibility of rights infringements by using closed software?