Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

I should know better, but every now and then I make the mistake of trying to explain why people should use free and open source software (FOSS). Often, the effort occurs at end of the year gatherings when someone asks me what I do for a living, and almost always the ensuring conversation is torturous.

For one thing, I'm not a natural seller. I can make a case, but if it doesn't convince, I respect people's rights to their own opinions too deeply to continue pushing for very long.

Even more importantly, figuring out the approach can be frustrating. The fact that you can download FOSS for free seems trivial at best to my average audience. Making an ethical case is usually more successful -- but presents a difficult problem: How do persuade people that they want something when they don't know it exists?

A free price, of course, is not what FOSS is supposed to be about. Still, I wouldn't see much wrong with using it as an initial lure -- if only it worked. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

The trouble is, software that is cheap or free is already widely available. Anyone who has been a student -- even a night school student -- can buy deeply discounted software from the campus store. Others get ready-loaded computers as part of their job. Still others pirate, either from warez sites or, more often, from a friend, just as people have done ever since the arrival of the personal computer. Saving twenty or thirty dollars at best just isn't going to seem worthwhile, especially since it often means using unfamiliar software.

However, a surprising number of regular users don't even know that they are paying for software. You or I know that the cost of a proprietary operating system is usually part of a computer's price, but the average user doesn't know that.

So far as they're concerned, they're already getting software at no cost. Another offer of free software isn't going to excite them.

Beyond cost

But, if many users are unaware that they are paying for software when they buy a computer, they are equally unaware of the ethical reasons for using free software. Not being coders, they don't care that they can alter the source code. Many are already sharing code by circumventing registration and activation, so that's often not a draw for them, either.

For similar reasons, I can't use the open source justification that the software is superior. the average person doesn't use most of the features of their Internet or productivity now, so why would they want new features?

Occasionally, I run across someone who is interested in features like KDE's Folder View than can improve their work habits, but such people are rare. The majority are accustomed to their work habits, and don't care to change them, even when you point out inefficiencies, such as manually formatting a text document instead of implementing templates and styles.

Instead of such arguments, I usually try to focus on control of your own computing. I mention things like GNU/Linux's security features, and the absence of registration and activation requirements, or Windows 7's end-user agreement, which basically cedes control of your computer to Microsoft.

Here, I observe a flicker of interest at last, but in most cases it quickly fades. Thirty years of personal computing via proprietary software has clubbed many users into mute submission. Yes, they respond, it's interesting and vaguely troubling that you can legally share a book but can't share a piece of software, but that's just the way things are. Nothing can really change.

As for the idea that your choice of software can limit the damage done by a virus -- well, that's just propaganda. Everyone knows that viruses and regular virus scans are one of the prices you have to pay for running a computer.

At this point, I remember why I generally avoid evangelism. How, I wonder, can I possibly convince people of advantages that are inconceivable to them -- whose existence they are unaware of, and which seem so mythical that they believe I must be exaggerating or trying to con them?

An idea ahead of its time

The most receptive audience, I usually find, are activists. The idea that you should take control of your computing seems a natural extension of beliefs to people who already believe that you should take control of your government by getting involved, or of your environment by recycling and encouraging green technology solutions.

Yet, even here, difficulties arise. For the most part, activists are not technically oriented, and are as accepting of proprietary lock-in as anyone else. The idea that they should apply the beliefs that they operate by in the rest of their lives to their computing is new to most of them. Here and there, you may find a Green Party that has a pro-FOSS policy, or a Pirate Party whose ideas may echo those found in FOSS, but such groups are rarely in any position to promote -- let alone enforce -- FOSS ideas.

Still, perhaps I am expecting too much. FOSS has always had to struggle to provide an alternative, and, looking back, I understand that it has succeeded better than anyone could have imagined twenty-five years ago. So perhaps I shouldn't be impatient when confronted by how much farther it has to go before winning wider acceptance.

But I don't want to wait. I want to see it succeed in my lifetime. So, at the end, I am left in the position of someone promoting gourmet food trying to a crowd nurtured on Big Macs, trying to persuade them not only that the alternative is better for them but that it exists at all.

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