Re: [Audio-video] [Liberté 0] Re: http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2013/Samuel_Thibault_Jean-Philippe_Mengual-Freedom_0_for_everybody_really_.text

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

Le 28/07/2014 à 02h04, Richard Stallman a écrit :
> Here are excerpts that show the problems:
>
>       And, even if Apple products are essentially binding you to
>     Apple products and removing freedom from you, they actually provide a
>     lot of freedom to a lot of people, just because then, they become able
>     to use the computer.  And I have to say that the free software doesn't
>     provide so much freedom, in that regard.

Yes, so here the “problem” is that he uses “freedom” in the large
meaning you don’t like, the one that also cover capacity, what I called
“technical freedom”, i.e. the ability to do something you want,
vs. “social freedom”, the right to do something you want. Both are
needed so someone *can* do what they want.

Just s/freedom/potentiality/ from 3rd line and it’s a lot more
understandable and acceptable. So what we need is underlining the
difference between these two separate things: “right” (social freedom)
and “ability” (technical freedom).

> and here:
>
>     It's actually a question of freedom.  Is it a legal freedom, freedom
>     #0?  Or is it a technical freedom?  Or is it about people, being able to
>     use the software?  In the past thirty years of GNU, we have pretty much
>     succeeded on the legal and technical aspects of freedom #0.

Well, here I think the distinction is clearly made. Freedom #0 is about
“legal” (or more largely “social”, because I don’t like reducing things
to laws) freedom, “technical” is just optional (to be a free
software). It’s like the fact to have internationalization, a
documentation… or accessibility. It’s not required for the software to
be free, but it’s still important, because otherwise it would deserve
the freedom it gives.

An interesting point is to notice the more direct link to the *user*
“freedom” (to its potential, its abilities, to what the programs allows
them to do): on this aspect was developed the interesting parallel
notion of “liberating software” by Benjamin Bayart, a great “free
Internet” activist, defending Net Neutrality, decentralization, and
having be the first to argue the most efficiently against SaaSS with its
notion of “minitel 2.0” (I recommend you a lot its famous conference
“Internet libre ou minitel 2.0 ?” and its conferences on the societal
impact of Internet). The notion of “liberating software” is explained
here: <http://edgard.fdn.fr/liberateur/>. He doesn’t speak about
accessibility here, but it’s enough obvious that it is also included by
this large definition of “liberating software”.

Of course we see here this other usage of the terms “freedom” and
“liberty” that you don’t like, but beyond this vocabulary disagreement,
the ideas are still interesting. And making the difference between both
(free software and “liberating software”) is an useful distinction
showing the author didn’t made unfortunate mistakes but just knew the
several different meaning associated to the word freedom.

> There may be more -- I have not tried to make an exhaustive list --
> but these show what the problem is.

Probably, with the same “purely linguistic issue”, “free” has more than
one meaning. Then our mission is to explain the difference
between these meanings, and explain ourselves so that people can
understand what we mean by “free” when we use that word. For instance,
after years and years of lobbying, when we say “free software” people
understand “free as in freedom”, not anymore “gratis” (at a point so
that when Greenwald said “free surveillance tool” at CCC, he had to
precise himself “see, it’s free… [someone: Yeah!] oh, not free as in
free software, you can’t have source code, free as in gratis”).

Did the other meaning of “free” hurted free software? Probably, but it
already existed, and we made so that when we say “free” people is more
able to think about ethics than money. Yet the other meaning still
exists (we didn’t need to destroy it), and it doesn’t harm free software
as before.

Then there’s also this other meaning of “freedom” which means
“unconstrained”, and is used in physics (or crap^Wlibertarian
economics…) and is used by, for instance, BSD people to argue their
license is more free because it’s more permissive. Yet they argue using
a completely physical meaning ignoring completely the ethical meaning,
and yet it is the only meaning which has importance here. Like you said
very well, an absence of constraint can be a freedom… or more often a
power, and it is the case of license which allow (“support” I would even
say) oppression.

Finally there’s this last larger meaning, of “what we are able to
do”. This meaning doesn’t hurt free software movement as the two
precedent other meaning because it’s effectively linked to the
ethical/social meaning. They’re interdependent. So what we could do here
is distinguish both, and making clear this link of interdependence: a
right without capacity is useless. A capacity without rights is too.

> A lot of the talk explains practical problems of accessibility.  That
> is very useful; I just wish it were not combined with these
> problematical points.

We can’t explain how to do accessibility without explaining *why*. That
would be a nonsense. But what we can do is to explaining it *better* so
that we can avoid making mistakes and deserving discourse. It would be
better in both fights (free software and accessibility) interests. And
precisely what we want is the success of both.

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