Linux.conf.au, FOSS and the Joe Blow job

Angus Kidman
Thursday, 21 January 2010 09:59

Business IT - Open Source

This year's Linux.conf.au gathering has placed more emphasis than ever on the broader impact of free and open source software (FOSS), and how the models it utilises could benefit society in all kinds of other ways. It's a fascinating argument and a worthwhile goal, but it's still hard to escape the feeling that it's not being tailored well for the non-geek community. The way the case is being presented at LCA 2010, Joe Blow won't want to know.


One of the specific aims of the conference organisers for Linux.conf.au 2010 in Wellington was to offer general keynotes on issues surrounding open source, rather than highly technical talks product-focused talks. That's certainly been reflected in the three keynotes so far.

On Tuesday, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman looked at the tensions that often arise between "free software" purists such as Richard Stallman and the slightly more pragmatic open source movement typified by Linus Torvalds and Linux coders, arguing that this is healthy in ensuring that neither movement stagnated. Coleman also highlighted the fact that open source has a critical role to play in battles over how copyright law should function, especially in helping overcome "misguided assumptions" that there are no possible alternatives" to existing intellectual property laws.

On Wednesday, MIT researcher Benjamin Mako Hill outlined the idea of "anti-features", annoyances frequently found in commercial hardware and software that don't provide any benefit to users but help ensure greater profitability for companies, such as DVD region coding, mobile-locked SIM cards and printers that won't work with anything except one brand of cartridge. "The world of proprietary software is a world of firms controlling users to their own benefit and to the disadvantage of users," he said. "The result is software that is full of features that users hate -- so much that they often pay money to have these features removed."

Hill pointed out that the anti-features concept is particularly useful in explaining to non-technical types why proprietary software is bad: the finer points of open development can be difficult to appreciate, but no-one, as he noted, is saying "Gee, I wish my phone could be set up so I could never use it with another carrier! Why don't they offer that option?" It's a useful observation: "anti-features are a way of talking about software freedom to people who are less in this world [the geek world, essentially]."

On Thursday, author and journalist Glyn Moody looked at how the movement to open sharing of information had proved equally important in genomics, in the publishing of scientific papers, and in government information systems. While Moody is enough of a realist to acknowledge that this a slow process, he made a compelling case for why sharing is always better than the well-entrenched notion that if you can make money from something, you should defend that approach at all costs no matter how the world changes.

The general theme that united all three keynotes was the notion that the open source approach has value, and that its value is greater than just creating and maintaining Linux and Apache and all the rest. Emphasising the idea of sharing and communal ownership and creation could have a major impact in science, in education, in telecommunications, in politics -- indeed, in every sphere of public life. That's undoubtedly true (if utopian), and it's a point of view that most LCA attendees would be sympathetic to. However, when it comes to actually explaining that argument to a non-FOSS crowd, even the finest minds seem to have trouble.