The license does not give license (Opinion)

I wrote a while ago a review about a program concluding that it was not ready to be distributed, much less used. An acquaintance wrote me by direct message stating that I was wrong to do so.

My "mistake" was not in the description of the shortcomings of the program (My interlocutor admitted not having tried it) but to have badmouthed a free software application. In his opinion, if she couldn't say anything good about the show, he shouldn't have written the article. Apparently free speech is bad for the free software movement.

The religion of free software

The free software movement created by Richard Stallman is an admirable project, It is enough to review the 4 fundamental freedoms to realize:

The freedom to run the program as desired, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to do what you want (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a necessary condition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies to help others (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of its modified versions to third parties (freedom 3). This allows you to offer the entire community the opportunity to benefit from the modifications. Access to the source code is a necessary condition for this.

If we take into account that these statements predate the Internet, social networks and the impact of Artificial Intelligence in our lives we can take the real dimension of Stallman as a visionary.

The problem is when ignoring the formation of Richard Stallman and the context in which the movement began, it is intended that everyone ascribes to these principless uncritically and without taking into account their own needs.

Stallman was a junior member of the MIT Laboratory for Computing. He had to live in a time when students and teachers shared resources equally. If a student needed a desk and a computer terminal and the lab head's office was empty, he would just walk in and get to work.

Everyone in the lab was an expert programmer, if someone came up with a way to improve the operating system they would write the code and implement the improvements.

But times have changed and a new director has established new ways of working. A new computer system was purchased and when Stallman requested access to the source code to implement improvements in the operation of a printer, he was denied in the name of copyright.

In other words, the free software movement was born to recover a work environment that fostered the productivity of those who work in computing. The mistake occurs when it is believed that these freedoms should be enough for the rest of us.

the fifth freedom

Tim O'Reilly is the founder of O'Reilly Media, one of the world's leading publishers of educational technology content. He maintains that since From the point of view of end users, one freedom is more important than the other four. The freedom to do things using a program that could not be accomplished without using it.

In other words, the best program from the user's point of view is the one that allows them to do the things they need. From their point of view access to the code is irrelevant.

The license does not give license

Coming as I do from a family of merchants and doing marketing, I'm closer to O'Reilly than to Stallman. I write for the end user and the end user has to know if a product works for them or not. When we share these supposed equivalence tables between proprietary software and free software, we are lying.

We cannot tell a user that The Gimp replaces Photoshop without making it clear to him that he will not find the thousands of tutorials and the hundreds of add-ons that save steps. Instead, we can explain to them that if they take the trouble to learn Python, they'll be able to develop their own plugins without paying a fortune for licenses or risking using a pirated copy.

Nor can it be said that all Microsoft Office files will be displayed without problems in LibreOffice, but, on the other hand, access to your files will not depend on the whims of a software company.