Agenda

[Sławomir Lach]

I am computer newbie, basically low C/Python/JavaScript/PHP/Bash coding 
skills. Do not think I am rookie - I have only small amount of knowledge about 
each of these languages.

I am also Free Software user. I am use Free Software everywhere, except 
gaming. I am also OpenSUSE Tumbleweed user.

I see lot of people hate Free Software, because it think it is like communism. 
But, Free Software are to give people the software as property. Long time ago, 
software was sold. But in less remotely past, companies decided to hide some 
madness and bad ideas and creates closed-source software. In more recent 
times, Bill Gates wrote letter telling people, he/she should not sell 
software, but license it. In fact, he call it selling software, but it is not 
selling.

I see this in this manner. Imagine,  I am businessman and decide to sell 
truck, but need to use it to gather more money, so I duplicate keys to it. To 
made everything law-friendly, I use some text in sell trade. That's exactly, 
what companies do. It do not sell software. Firm are only allowing us to use 
it on good for this firm conditions. And currently, firm are more often use 
this fact. Microsoft are use UI of Windows to display advertisements.  And we 
can do nothing. If we decide to do something, we break up law.

I saw many thinks in my life. For example IE6 end,  I do many thoughts about 
Digital Restrictions Management and File Formats War. And every of these have 
one root: we do not own software, cannot modify it.

If we do nothing, this problem will grow and everything in future will be 
controlled by software. Ever clothes. We will own nothing. And we will be 
slavers of things we are "bought", so firm producing these things.

That's what we should tell people. People hate Free Software, because somebody 
told them it is a communism, but reality is quite different. Free software is 
making we own our property. Maybe free software, due to practical reasons is 
often free in money.  But we can still bought service related to it - closed 
source software vendors many times told, where people told them: you do not 
sell product. It says: We sold services! So what a problem in buying services 
related to free software?

I will introduce you to my first law related to IT market:

"""
Because:
1)  Backward compatibility is a holly grail of IT
2) Free market force us to address our product to as many people as we can

, so closed source software must be broken or advance by smaller amount over 
time to prevent lost of users.
"""

And I see this in IE, companies use this rights by creating DRM and by reduce 
support of file format. Every time  company prevent lost of thier clients by 
break up thier software... or force thier client to aks other people to use 
thier software by breaking it.

For example IE6. It is worst browser, but companies made web pages for it, 
because it was very popular. Even if creating page will cost 0,001% time and 
money than making it for IE6. And we will create single page for each 
browser... but no... we must also create page for IE!

What if IE will be better? Web pages automatically will be created for other 
browsers, so people could move from IE. That's not theory. Bill Gates told 
court he order to FronPage create only pages for IE. And IE (in my opinion) 
was broken by design too. So we destroy our products to avoid market loss.

Another thik is DRM. It is similar. We build-in mechanism to reduce user 
rights to our products. But this mechanisms could not been used if firm/
artists/etc would not use it. So firm will use these mechanism. But that's 
only a part of our strategy. Only restricts our users will do not brinks 
benefits to us. We also made exert of these mechanism outside of out product 
illegal. And that is what MS, Apple and Adobe done in past.

I can told you history about Franchise and American presidents friendships. 
French president "bought" set of American best movies on DVD. American 
president cannot watch it, because he try this on USA territory! :-D

Another example is Formats War. That is a real problem. Many years ago, 
British government told he has many documents in very old formats and there is 
no software to open it on modern computers. Final of this story could be 
migration to ODF, but MS decided to standardize thier documents format. But MS 
cannot be good and decided to implement something different in one';s product. 
MS Office do not impement standard created by MS, because it will made MS 
Software compatible with others and (in fact) MS will loss of users.

Format wars looking like this:
1. Linux users send ODT document to Windows user:
- Hell! I cannot open this document
- Install LibreOffice
- But wiruses, troyans, etc. Go to hell!
MS User decided to go friend asking him, what they should to do:
- Do you have friends like this? Why he is use different software? Whole word 
use MS OFffice, he must evolve or he will die :-( !
MS user decided to blame Linux user.
2. Windows user decided to send Word document to Linux user:
- Can you convert this document to pdf or wrote it in LibreOffice?
- How to do that? What is LibreOffice? What about viruses? Maybe Johns have 
lost thier social media account? - Sorry, but I cannot do that. Install MS 
Office!
Linux user go to friend:
- What to do
- And wait. What is LibreOffice?

So, in my opinion, companies manipulate thier clients to gather more clients. 
But... victims are products (if I can call this product) and rights to be 
owner of sofrware, computers, wearable, etc.

I can told more. But I think, you can use this mail as propaganda. I wait for 
response. Thanks.