Imagine a world, a future world. Beautiful people, beautiful nature, beautiful technologies all around you. Computer and robots are making lives easier. And then there you are, at a corner, as a slave! Nice, isn't it? Your fate is determined by richer people, your life is at the mercy of some big technology corporate, you are bound to go by the laws determined by them, you are bound to pay whatever they ask for. Because you are a slave then to a world ruled by some closed technology giants.

No, I am not a prophet and thus I am not making some absurd prophecy to make you afraid. I am not trying to joke either. What I just mentioned is what IT people all over the world are talking about. Sooner or later the world is going to face a new challenge called technological slavery. Closed technology is creating the pathway for that slavery.

Non Free Technology

Computer science and information technology together constitutes a new science called computer technology. With the first ignition the science started its journey long long ago. Through time the science has evolved and has reached the level that we see today. But how did this happen? Basically when one scientist innovated something, another one improvised on that and came up with some better innovation. But think of a situation where further development on something already innovated has been restricted. People are not allowed to improvise. If they want to, then they have to build it from scratch.

Just think! If improvisation on radio would have been blocked, then we might could never see television. This is what closed technology does. It stops you from improvising something already invented. This way it stops the further development of that particular technology. Moreover for the use of the technology, the end user becomes fully dependent on the owner of the patent on that technology and thereby becomes a slave to whatever he says for the usage of the technology. Sometimes the person is not even allowed to share the product of that technology.

How does one become dependent? Today you may see many big IT giants giving away great piece of softwares for the use of mass free of cost while they charge for other softwares in huge. Mostly these free softwares are development tools. Beware, these are not free at all. If you research a little bit then you will find in most such cases, the software development tools that you are using are giving you a development environment which is largely dependent upon some library files from that corporate giant. Whatever application you create will be dependent upon this library. In case of closed technologies, coding of these library files are not provided to the programmer. Instead they give some binaries for the purpose. This way the programmer and the program created in that development tool get largely dependent upon the library. This in turn makes the end user dependent upon the library. Now if someday the company asks for a huge amount of money for the use of that library then everyone from programmer to end user is bound to pay the same to that company as they do not know what is inside those library files and they must depend on the company for the program to work. So the programmer loses the control over his program, the user loses the control over his usage and this way everyone becomes a slave to the company.For example if you have a single user license of some software then you are not allowed to pass on a copy of the installer to your friend. If you do so, then you are no less a criminal than a thief in the eyes of law.

The Remedy

If some door is closed, then to have a taste of freedom you must either break the door open or find some other opening. The remedy in this case is Free Technology. To obtain freedom in computer technology, you have to choose this open way. What do you get? You get a assurance that the future will be free. You get the same thing that freedom fighters get after gaining freedom - a better world.

Freedom in Technology and FSF

FSF or Free Software Foundation is the one organization to help you in the way. It was created by Richard Matthew Stallman on 4 October 1985. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based (Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions.) movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software without restriction. The FSF is incorporated in Massachusetts, United States of America.

From its founding until the mid-1990s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project. Since the mid-1990s, the FSF's employees and volunteers have mostly worked on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community.

Being consistent with its goals, only free software is used on all of the FSF's computers.

Richard Stallman and the concept of free software

Revered as a cult hero in the realm of computing, Stallman started his awesome career in the famous Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, and during the mid and late seventies, created the Emacs editor(Emacs is a class of feature-rich text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. Emacs has, perhaps, more editing commands than any other editor or word processor, numbering over 1,000. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work). In the early eighties, commercial software companies lured away much of the brilliant programmers of the AI lab, and negotiated stringent nondisclosure agreements to protect their secrets. But Stallman had a different vision. His idea was that unlike other products, software should be free from restrictions against copying or modification in order to make better and efficient computer programs. With his famous 1983 manifesto that declared the beginnings of the GNU project, he started a movement to create and distribute softwares that conveyed his philosophy (Incidentally, the name GNU is a recursive acronym which actually stands for 'GNU is Not Unix'). But to achieve this dream of ultimately creating a free operating system, he needed to create the tools first. So, beginning in 1984, Stallman started writing the GNU C Compiler(GCC), an amazing feat for an individual programmer. With his legendary technical wizardry, he alone outclassed entire groups of programmers from commercial software vendors in creating GCC, considered as one of the most efficient and robust compilers ever created. The man with a mission has now dedicated his life to make people understand the four basic freedoms that a computer user should have and how one can fight for it.

According to him, "Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). * The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). * The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.

The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run a program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her.

The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified and unmodified versions. (Distributing programs in runnable form is necessary for conveniently installable free operating systems.) It is ok if there is no way to produce a binary or executable form for a certain program (since some languages don't support that feature), but you must have the freedom to redistribute such forms should you find or develop a way to make them.

In order for the freedoms to make changes, and to publish improved versions, to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software.

One important way to modify a program is by merging in available free subroutines and modules. If the program's license says that you cannot merge in a suitably-licensed existing module, such as if it requires you to be the copyright holder of any code you add, then the license is too restrictive to qualify as free.

In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the power to revoke the license, or retroactively change its terms, without your doing anything wrong to give cause, the software is not free.

However, certain kinds of rules about the manner of distributing free software are acceptable, when they don't conflict with the central freedoms. For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms. This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather it protects them.

"Free software" does not mean "non-commercial." A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important. You may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.

GNU/Linux

The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system.GNU's kernel isn't finished, so GNU is used with the kernel Linux written by Linus Torvalds. The combination of GNU and Linux is the GNU/Linux operating system, now used by millions.Sometimes this combination is incorrectly called Linux. There are many variants or “distributions” of GNU/Linux. The name “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix”; it is pronounced g-noo, as one syllable with no vowel sound between the g and the n.

Use Terminology to Respect Freedom

Stallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about the world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He untiringly asks people to say "free software" and "GNU/Linux", and to avoid the terms "intellectual property" and "piracy" (in relation to copyright). His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of the importance of terminology are a source of regular misunderstanding and friction with parts of the free and open source software community.

One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agree to use his terminology throughout their article. Sometimes he has even required journalists to read parts of the GNU philosophy before an interview, for "efficiency's sake". He has been known to turn down speaking requests over some terminology issues.

Stallman rejects a common alternative term "open-source software" because it does not call to mind what Stallman sees as the value of the software: freedom. Thus it will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom. Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are "software libre" and "unfettered software", but "free software" is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term "proprietary software" rather than "closed source software", when referring to software that is not free software.

Stallman repeatedly asks that the term "GNU/Linux", which he pronounces "GNU slash Linux", be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the Linux kernel. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer." He claims that the connection between the GNU project's philosophy and its software is broken when people refer to the combination as merely "Linux". Starting around 2003, he began also using the term "GNU+Linux", which he pronounces "GNU plus Linux".

Stallman argues that the term "intellectual property" is designed to confuse people, and is used to prevent intelligent discussion on the specifics of copyright, patent, trademark and other laws by lumping together areas of law that are more dissimilar than similar. He also argues that by referring to these laws as "property" laws, the term biases the discussion when thinking about how to treat these issues."These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. Copyright law was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas—a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying." An example of cautioning others to avoid other terminology while also offering suggestions for possible alternatives, is this sentence of an email by Stallman to a public mailing list: "I think it is ok for authors (please let's not call them "creators", they are not gods) to ask for money for copies of their works (please let's not devalue these works by calling them "content") in order to gain income (the term "compensation" falsely implies it is a matter of making up for some kind of damages)."

Why Should Present Day Engineers Care?

As a future engineer you are going to determine the future of technology. If you do not want the future as described in the beginning of this article, you should care. Your contribution to the future of technology might be very small but remember several small efforts can one day bring the giant change. You are a future developer, it is your duty to see that freedom of computer user is preserved. If a doctor does not care about his duties then it takes little time for unwanted things to happen. The whole world is facing similar danger now. Hence it is your moral responsibility to care for the freedom.This time it is technological colonialism that we need to fight against. The fight might be tough, but we must fight. The changes are not easy to make, but change must come. There are evils who are trying to look like friends, but friends must stay way from them.

How you can contribute

Once you are decided to enter this free world, freedom is everywhere. You have lots of good stuff to play with, you have all freedom to use it, talk about it, write about it, share it, modify it to suit your needs. Everything you do with it will be considered as a contribution. Still for your help here are a few steps that you may want to follow.

1) To start with use some free alternatives such as Firefox, OpenOffice on your existing OS. To have the softwares you can use search engines to download them. You can also contact and become a member of Passion4Freedom - a Freedom in Computer Technology Supporter and Developer Network(FCTSDN) and have the softwares in a CD. In P4F there are many activities that you can take part in. For more informations regarding passion4freedom you can visit http://passion4freedom.co.cc .We also suggest you to take the initiative of forming an FCTSDG (The groups that form the network of P4F) in your institution.

2) To try some GNU/Linux, you may download the .iso files from Internet or you can easily have the it from P4F members. You can also contact me personally at tamathecool@gmail.com or call me at 9231443728 and ask for it.

a) You can try the GNU/Linux without even replacing your existing OS. You need to just put it on your CD/DVD drive and reboot. The OS will load itself into your ram and you will be able to use GNU/Linux instantly without touching your hard disks. This is also useful for recovering data when the exixting system gets corrupted.

b) If you are willing to install GNU/Linux but do not have free partition on your hard disk, you can opt for VirtualBox. It lets you install GNU/Linux on top of your existing OS and lets you virtually boot into GNU/Linux (i.e. you log into your existing OS, open VirtualBox, run GNU/Linux, Go to Fullscreen mode and voila! you are running one OS one OS on top of another.

3) After these you can read more articles on the topic from Internet and support the movement by sharing your knowledge with others. Write about it on your blog, on magazines like these use the terminologies everywhere. For any help or to know more, join P4F mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/tp4f/ and post your queries there.

Some parts of this article has been taken from wikipedia, this is the notice from wikipedia

Passion4Freedom (zuletzt geändert am 2009-03-21 07:56:41 durch ABTS-North-Static-069)