Re: We can't reject all nonfree hardware with today's technology.

[Jean Louis]

* Leland Best <lcbpublic@gmail.com> [2022-02-09 00:57]:
> Just to be clear, _I'm_ not trying to argue that Free Software is not 
> important,
> or that the FSF should abandon it's efforts, or anything similar.  What I'm
> trying to point out is that people tend to have a certain amount of tunnel
> vision when thinking/discussing the Freedom issue.  They tend to only see it 
> as
> important and/or practical in areas in which they have some
> expertise.

How I see it, you are talking about need for education. In general all
people have lack of insight into knowledge they don't know. GNU
project teaches people about freedom in using software. It is thus
matter of education.

You and anybody may teach people too. You can provide seminars,
organize local free software groups, write l.etters to representatives
in parliament, and you are free to distribute software and teach
people "why".

> 99% of the people I know have never even _seen_ source code, never mind 
> actually
> compiled and installed the resulting binaries.  And modifying it?  Or fixing
> bugs?  No blinking way!  That's what programmers do.  As a result, the idea of
> Free Software seems a bit abstract and it's difficult for them to grasp the
> benefits.

Yes. Like you said, freedom is necessary on all levels.

Programmers do it, of course. But people related to programmers advise
programmers on what final results to achieve.

There are online market places and many businessmen who do not need to
see the software but benefit from source code. There are millions of
such businessmen while hundreds of thousands of such people are on
online marketplaces. Several of them paid me to provide service for
them, they need not know what is source code, though they need source
code indirectly.

Another example is that I have accidentally met several similar people
in Uganda and in Tanzania. They develop businesses while not knowing
for what is source code, but they need it in the business. In a
business organization there are programmers who are then dealing with
source code. They download source code, and use it to develop
applications. Businessmen is planner who decides and people propose
various solutions. Some companies don't have applications, programmers
are proposing them solutions for that. Thus large number of people are
interested in improvements, modifications and changes and they are not
programmers but seniors or related to programmers. It is happening all
the time.

Some programmers are isolated, your personal story tells about it. You
may be advanced compared to group of people you associate with.

I was for few years together with people who liked source code and
were not programmers, but wanted to become programmers, so we taught
each other. But when I changed my living location I found myself
isolated and far from people of that interest. 

Programmers don't just appear out of nothing. There are many people
who are contributing to programming while they may not be directly
involved. Example is the development of Emacs, there are many
contributors and interested in source code. Myself I am interested in
some improvements, but cannot know how to do it, those are initiators
and programmers may sometimes listen to it.

> A programmer on the other is much more likely to "get" Free
> Software.

That may be, I have not think about it. 

What I know is that in Germany and neighboring countries, notebooks
are sold often with GNU/Linux and there is increased awareness in
licensing issues related to Windows. There is large number of computer
users who thus prefer having other system rather than Windows. There
are government offices who preffer free software operating systems
rather than Windows. Thus casual computer users such as government
officer, individuals, friends, neighbors, they may be using GNU/Linux
and similar free operating systems.

Certainly majority of such users will not reach to source code without
having a clear reason for it. Some of them may be intrigued to create
something like a 3D object and will learn OpenSCAD, so that is where
they slowly become programmers. Some may start using GNU Emacs and may
slowly become programmers. Having the access to source code is thus
very important.

People gradually and by education learn about improvements in free
software. 


Jean

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