Free Software is a Joke

“Free software projects do not rely on markets or on managerial hierarchies to organize production.”

“Free software offers a glimpse at a more basic and radical challenge…What we are seeing now is the emergence of more effective collective action practices that are decentralized but do not rely on either the price system or a managerial structure for coordination.”

Free software is a joke. It was used to make a statement, and regardless of whether or not it worked (it did, of course), it isn’t grounded in the true nature of what it seems to imply. According to Yochai Benkler, the foundation of free software is described accordingly, “Participants usually retain copyrights in their contribution, but license them to anyone—participant or stranger—on a model that combines a universal license to use the materials with licensing constraints that make it difficult, if not impossible, for any single contributor or third party to appropriate the project.” Is this the goal of a true ‘peer-to-peer’ network of minds working to create a piece of software everyone can use? It never was, and it most likely will never be. Free software grew from “political conviction”. Don’t be confused, the statement of free software was great. Richard Stallman was visionary in using the system to create “liquidware”. Software was previously developed by large corporations who restricted access to a program in order to charge money to use it. The reason Stallman’s work should be deemed “liquidware” is because he generated software that could flow and change as much as people were willing to modify it, yet it still had to be held in a container, a framework if you will. Yes, the programs are monetarily free. Yes, the software can be changed by anyone who is willing. But what is the real purpose of free software? Is it to make the best program ever imagined? Hardly. In essence, the free software movement was a stab at software development companies. It was Richard Stallman saying to the Microsofts and IBMs of the world, “We don’t need you.” Profound and driven, this movement was no more than a petty grudge held by a very smart man.

However, the free software movement did pave the way for the real peer production mechanism, open-source. Benkler talks of three men. The first creates a functional but simple program. The second asks for a new feature and/or reports a bug. Finally, the third modifies the program according to the second’s requests, and so on and so forth. Benkler says, “This collaboration is not managed by anyone who organizes the three, but is instead the outcome of them all reading the same Internet-based forum and using the same software, which is released under an open, rather than proprietary, license.” Finally, the souls of corrupted and unused computer programs can rejoice over the fact that there will, from now on, always be the hope of being improved. Open-source may be seen as a revolution of free software, but in actuality it is more of a Renaissance. There was no more fight. No longer was there a point to be proven. From now on, free software, open-source software, will be about the software itself and not about what or whom it represents.