I got some interesting comments on the last post about Linux desktops. I realize that I haven't talked about this in a while, and I'm not sure I've actually ever articulated this completely on this blog. So here goes. I got involved in Linux a long time ago. I was a professor at the time, and a nonprofit organization wanted to get on the web, and give some of their staff email, and at the time, colleges and universities were the only organizations that had easy access to the internet, and virtual hosting companies cost a fortune, way beyond what a nonprofit could afford. The date was sometime in 1995. We set up a little box in the corner of my office, and loaded several piles of floppies containing the Slackware distribution onto this box. After a few hours (as opposed to the few minutes it would take now) we configured that server to hold a website and serve email. The old site is still up on the Wayback Machine. I co-administered that box for a few years. Eventually, they got a T1, and moved the server in-house. I left academia to do that sort of thing with nonprofits full time. In fact, that experience, and the work I did around it with that organization, was the first step into this whole nonprofit technology field. What I learned about Linux back then was that it was a way (along with the help of a college) for a nonprofit organization to get on the web easily and relatively inexpensively. It leveled the playing field, so that an organization without many resources could do what at that time, required a lot of resources. In many ways for me, the most important aspect of free and open source software is that it does just that - it levels the playing field so that people and organizations with few resources can have access to quality tools to do what it is they need and want to do in this software-driven world. I've learned a lot about FOSS since then, of course, and the other aspects of FOSS have also come to be very important to me. I do agree, fundamentally, with the four freedoms laid out by the Free Software Foundation:

• 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 to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

And ultimately, in Michelle's perfect world, all software, all content, all hardware, etc. would all be free (libre). But we don't live in Michelle's perfect world, we live in this world. This broken, very imperfect, very problematic, and quite capitalist world.  And in that world, I am a realist. I am ecstatic, and do many happy dances a day, that there are people who write and support free software. I think of myself as one of them (Besides working with NOSI, I've been involved in several projects over the years in varied capacities.) The number of situations where one can still argue on a functional and cost level that proprietary software is a better bet get fewer and fewer. I could easily argue that for the overwhelming majority of places you need an operating system, the free and open source alternatives are better (if you count the BSD core of the Mac OS. If you don't, it's still the majority.) There are innumerable really great free and open source desktop applications that can run on any OS, and there are more every day. And, surprisingly to me, I'm quite happy that lots of big corporations are now really getting into free and open source software support. I think, ultimately, it's when big corporations want to ditch Windows on the desktop that the biggest strides will be made in Linux desktop usability and support. That's a tide that will really lift all the boats. Bottom line for me: free and open source software is about leveling the playing field, free access, community benefit, and community control allows this. That's why I got into it in the beginning, and that's why I'm sticking around, and doing what I can, even though I'll be using my Mac (with, of course, a lot of free software applications on top.)