free software

Think gOS. It might not be such a bad advice after all. It's been hyped up, but it sold out. And there may be lessons in its deployment and success for all of us Free Software and GNU/Linux advocates!

First of all, what is gOS? Well, it is a light operating system based on Ubuntu GNU/Linux. It uses a polished Enlightenment E17 GUI interface and integrates deeply with various web services and applications most of which are from Google. The "g" in gOS apparently stands for "green" which does make some sense considering that it can run on PCs that consume very little resources and hence essentially save up on energy, which is environment-friendly.

As Apple's Steve Jobs is announcing that they suddenly "want native third-party applications on the iPhone", something its users have been yearning to have ever since they started buying these phones (even if it meant hacking them), Steve justifies their prior resistance to this kind of openness by security threats. As he says, they are "trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc."

Now it is time consider what does "open" here really means and what exactly are these security threats he talks about stemming from. "Open" here does not mean "Open Source" and certainly not "Free Software". It means simply letting developers other than Apple write software for iPhone, be it proprietary or Freedomware, just the way Microsoft allows others to write third party software for Windows (which ends up boosting its perceived value quite a bit - no good third party applications equals a not very desirable operating system). Of course, just as Apple fears viruses on iPhone, Microsoft has been and continues to be ridden by them on Windows.

Today I found an excellent small website about the gender imbalance in Free software. There's been a lot about the topic on the linux/free software news sites too.

Large parts of the free software community are rather hostile towards women, as unfortunately is usual in communities with a huge male majority. Which then prevents the community from becoming balanced because it will be unattractive to women.

I think it is odd the proprietary software industry is closer to gender balance. Aren't people who care a lot about freedom supposed to be more friendly to others who are different from them in any way?

It is not enough to have Richard Stallman travel around the world endlessly giving standard Free Software speeches among other things repeating how Open Source is not the same thing as Free Software and how the operating system widely known as "Linux" is actually "GNU/Linux" (because GNU project in fact started that OS). It is not even enough to have Free Software supporters constantly keep pointing these things out and arguing why they believe so.

In my previous article I argued that the Open Source Initiative, founded as a reaction to the perceived unwillingness or ineffectiveness of the FSF to attract businesses to Free Software, was a bad solution because it was based on hiding of the most important part of what makes Free Software what it is, the user freedom. It emphasized business friendly aspects of Free Software at the expense of rather than in addition to its underlying political aspect - one largely based on bringing social and economic justice back to the software world.

Due to the increased diffusion of "Open Source" as a term this article suggests its gradual phase out in favor of the original "Free Software" term and renaming of the "Open Source Initiative" into "Free Software Business Initiative" (no matter how controversial the proposal may be).

There are three ways we could look at Microsoft's recent approaches to the "Open Source" phenomenon.

• 1. They are in a process towards genuinely embracing Free Software or Open Source.
• 2. They are pretending to be embracing it while trying to diffuse and weaken its image.