FLOS; Under Pressure.

I promised to get back to some of the comments that Robert Guerra made in his entry, 'Blogs, Wiki's, WSIS and Open Source..'. It's been gestating a while, this entry, and it's taken a few years of experience - almost complete immersion - to be able to write about what he's talking about.

Robert wrote the following:

...Last time I raised the issue, I and other good colleagues such as Derrick Cogburn were subject to a ferocious set of personal attacks by a handful of members of the zealot like free and open source software caucus. The attacks didn't stay in the plenary list, but also extended to other spaces and lists. The dogmatic battle that occurred was totally unexpected, and lead those of us with an honest idea and good intentions to just drop the proposal all together.

The whole episode left me to conclude the following:

• That good intentions and good ideas can very easily be brought down.
• Many times the best enemy of Civil Society isn't governments, not business, but itself.
• That the FOSS community is made up of a wide variety of different actors. The novices, the developpers/implementers, the e-riders, the activists and the zealots.
• One must take great care to make sure mailing lists related to WSIS stay focused, as discussions can get off-topic and once they do they can get very, very personal.
• When discussion about a certain issue starts to change, recommend the subject of the message be changed to something that more clearly reflects what is being discussed.

Now... I'd love to say that the Free Software folks are generally good people. In fact, I will say that; the fact that they are interested in the civil liberties related to the internet and software that so many people reject is certainly noteworthy. But some - no names - have a tendency to come across as extremist.

On the MISTICA list, there's also a distinct division between the people interested in Free Software advocation and others who are trying to resolve other issues. And everywhere you turn, there's a division. In fact, today, I had to respond to a thread where one advocate said that 'the objective of the Free Software/GNU project is to replace all proprietary software in the world'.

OK, fine. A few of us might like the world more if all the software were GPL'd - in fact more than a few, including myself - but such statements make it sound like it's about world domination. The author of these statements regularly makes such assertations that really give a military revolution perception of Free Software. Penguinistan Rebels immediately comes to my mind, but by those less interested in Free Software on that list, Free Software advocates have been dubbed, 'The Taliban'. Extremist. Uncompromising. Authoritarian. And to an extent, dictatorial.

Some have called them Stallmanesque, but... I'm not sure about that. Stallman can be reasonable, I've found that in email discussion with him. These people that I am talking about are more like a lot of people perceive Stallman than even Stallman himself. That's a hard thing to live up to, but with unswaying fervor, they do so. When I posted about the Creative Commons licenses for developing countries, I ended up in a very odd discussion. There are practicalities involved with making a living through writing, as I point out here. And I got this back. And this. All over one post talking about something that actually worked for the Latin American region, Caribbean inclusive. That's insane, and is a symptom of the problem that caused the Latin American Caucus to become a closed list instead of an open one. Giving good news caused 'philosophical discussion' that lead *nowhere*. Wasted time and energy.

Huh? Even Stallman doesn't say that one must FDL everything. In fact, there are problems with the FDL. What's the deal?

The point is that for some reason, Free Software is under some sort of pressure. It's like a cognitive dissonance that the system won't allow release of; it's where passion turns to frustration turns to... Taliban. And it's not good for FLOS, for Free Software, for the WSIS, and even Joe Farmer down the street.

The only way to proceed is through discussion, and when the very fabric of discussion becomes strained because one person is not listening and instead simply doing the utmost to present a perspective and ignoring the perspective of others... well, it's like a salesman with one major difference. When I don't want what the salesman is selling, I don't talk to a salesman. And if these salesmen keep ringing my doorbell and bugging me, even when I have one of what they have, then all they do is alienate me.

A few years ago, I was pretty bad about Free Software advocacy. I also pissed off a few people doing it, and realized that what I was doing wasn't advocacy if it was pissing people off (and, in retrospect, a few of those pissed off deserved it). But I was never as bad as some of the people I read in emails on almost a daily basis.

There's a fine difference between talking to people and talking at people - and that difference is a choice between FLOS being under pressure or not. Advocating civil liberties shouldn't be this difficult to explain to people. Because at the very core of it all - left out of the GPL, but indirectly written - are civil liberties.

As I wrote today in response to one:

...If someone tries to tell me what I must do, I must look at them as a fool or a would-be dictator. You cannot give freedom, it must be taken by choice. And that choice, in case you don't know, is liberty. People have lived and died for Freedom before Stallman didn't get the code for the device driver. Nelson Mandela was in prison over Freedom. Henry David Thoreau went to jail over freedom because he didn't wish to pay a tax for something he did not believe in, and he wrote 'Civil Disobedience' about the freedom of an escaped slave. Mahatma Gandhi stood for Freedom. Sir

William Wallace of Scotland stood for Freedom.

" As long as men worship the Ceasars and Napoleons, the Ceasars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable"