I have, in the past, waxed lyrical about the different types of “user” that we see in the IT, and more specifically Linux / Open Source community. However, another year has passed, and there have continued to be many discussions on the web, and shows like Lugradio that have skirted round one particular point that I want to highlight today.
My original post included (at the bottom) this point:
- We need to create communities that are not necessarily based on contribution, but merely on membership. Analysers of social trend say that, in this day and age, people first need to feel that they belong, then they will begin to believe, and only lastly will their behaviour change. We need to create communities where people can just belong. Once they then begin to ‘believe’ in that community, then they can recieve opportunities to take action, and ‘behave’ as a community member should.
- We need to help people to simply “belong” to the community, without expecting (or impressing on) them to believe in all the facets of Free Software.
- We need to polish our apologetics so that we can explain the whys and hows of Free software without sounding like zealots
- We need to recognise that many people will have a period of time where they believe without fully behaving – they believe in open source drivers, but use proprietary drivers, etc.
- We need to sensitively include elements in our software that bridges the gaps between Free software and proprietary software that:
- Allows for quick, simple, hands-off integration, rather than creating big obstacles, of proprietary elements
- Provides succinct, and practical, reasons
- why
the proprietary elements are “bad”
Belong, Believe, Behave. The 3 Bs that, I believe, should become the mantra that Free software advocates live their lives by. Sadly, their current behaviour seems to suggest that they’re doing it backward – expecting people to “behave” in a particular way (yes, RMS, I’m talking about you and your GNU/Linux), then to change their beliefs, and then finally allowing them to belong to “the community”. This is backward, and, with some exceptions, will most likely fail to create long term growth within the community.
This, I reckon, is probably where I’m about to come into conflict with Aq’s viewpoint, which I, for the most part, agree with. When it comes to Linux, I believe we need to get people to feel like they belong, by ensuring that they can do everything they need to do, even if this requires proprietary codecs and/or drivers. I don’t like them, in the long term I don’t want them, but I think that to leave them out entirely means that we are requiring new users to behave before they belong (or believe). I really like the way the new Restricted Drivers applet works in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), as I think this is a good way to let people “belong” first, but gives them an insight into what it means to “believe”.
So – enough of the rhetoric – what are some things that I think need to change?
That’ll do for a start. Let the flamewar comments begin.
mrBen
Printed and taken to tonight Sussex Linux User Group meeting for discussion. Thanks
Good points. When we have folks as prominent as Linus Torvalds saying quite freely that he doesn’t share the goals/ideals of the FSF, it’s pretty clear that the community as a whole needs to not be zealots… I do think that the FSF rhetoric puts a lot of people off.
No one is going to stop using Windows because a bearded hacker keeps insisting that it’s “restricting their freedom”…
That being said… I use the proprietary nVidia drivers, always have, because generally speaking, they work the best. I think it would be cool if they opened the code, but to be honest the main reason I think it would be cool is that I believe they would *work better* — not that it’s the “right thing to do.” That’s just me, though.
Hrm.
I see the argument. I really do.
What I’m not sure of is what the mechanism for helping those who belong to move to being believers. I can’t for the life of me see how any argument which starts with “OK, you can currently do X and Y and Z but you should stop doing those now just on principle” will work. This is why I’ve said in the past that I want to see people come to Linux for reasons which mean that they think “I want this new thing that only Linux does _so much_ that I’m prepared to do without these things that can’t be done with free software”. As before, the obvious flaw in this argument is that I don’t know what the new thing is; on the other hand I don’t know what argument will make those who belong into those who believe either. From my perspective, remember, those who get as far as belonging but then don’t ever move to believing are a bad thing, not a good thing
A agree with Ben, you’re not going to win the majority of people over by trying to convert them on the basis of believing in Free software. People don’t care about software licensing, if they did every copy of Windows and Office would be legitimate and fully licensed.
Aq’s “killer app” would be nice but I can’t see it happening, what we have so far in terms of good pick-up (Apache and Firefox) are available on Windows so there is no *need* to use Linux for them, but they do give us well known software to use as examples when introducing the concepts of Free software to the wider world.
So how do you convert people from Belonging to Believing? Well, to be honest, it’s a matter of personal choice. If the whole idea of Free software is to give freedom to run what you want then who are we to decide that someone can’t use proprietary software alongside Free? I started to use Linux because it was something different and geeky, I began with a dual-boot system and now run Linux exclusively at home and work. That it was cost-free was more important than it being Freely licensed but now, several years on, through being part of local and on-line communities I know more about where this software comes from, why people contributed and why I don’t want to use non-Free software. It’s only now that I understand what the community I’m now part of has done that I understand why Free software is preferable – not because someone preached the philosophy to me.
It’s *very* hard to win customers (as we as a community are effectively trying to do) by telling them they have to give up things they can do at the moment, which have no *perceived* cost to them, it’s all part of what they’re used to paying for.