The Free Software Foundation just sent out an
email asking for feedback about their list of High Priority Free Software
Projects. As they said, "we encourage you to publish your thoughts independently (e.g., on your blog)
and send a us a link". So I thought I'd answer. I'm an FSF member (just to support
them; I'm not actively involved in anything), but of course my answer does not carry
any special weight.
The points of this list are not really given in any specific order. The first
three points cover most of the situations where I use proprietary software, so it's a bit
geared towards my own needs and those of people around me.
It excludes things like video games, because I feel that video games are works of
art and not just software: it seldom makes sense to replace them by a free
alternative, like you wouldn't replace a copyrighted movie with an "alternative"
to that movie. The last two points are less about software proper, and about
more general issues.
Developing an alternative to Skype
I use Skype to communicate with remote colleagues (aka coauthors, in
researcher parlance). It is the only solution used by people around me for
conference calls, except when they can't get Skype to work, in which case they
sometimes switch to
Google Hangouts, which is not really better as it may require a non-free browser plugin
and in any case requires a Google account (so you cannot self-host it).
As Skype is not federated or interoperable either, you must use the Skype
client to talk to Skype users, which makes it especially hard to replace Skype with a
free alternative. (Back in the days of text messaging, I was able to switch from
MSN Messenger to alternative clients because the protocol had been
reverse-engineered, but it seems like this has not been done for Skype.)
To replace Skype, I would need a drop-in replacement that just works and that
I could try to advertise. I tried to find such a solution some time
ago, and tested various SIP clients
in this hope, and couldn't find anything suitable. Skype is not even perfect, in
fact, and
sometimes does not work, but it works much more often than the alternatives.
Of course, as SIP is federated, SIP clients need you to open a
SIP account before you can use them (some of them facilitate this process); this
is an additional complication as compared to Skype, but OK, it is unavoidable,
and you have to register for Skype as well.
But then, the interface of these clients is ugly and ridiculously hard to understand even
for experienced computer users. Worse, even when both
parties are using the same client, it usually doesn't work. The call doesn't go
through, there is no sound or distorted sound, the connection fails, etc. Worse,
there are often no helpful error messages, logs, or other debug information to
troubleshoot the problem.
There are a lot of hard problems to address to make a solution that works. If
both users are behind NAT, you
need NAT traversal.
Sadly, with existing solutions, it doesn't work, even if you are root on a public
server that you could use to relay the
traffic. Also, if the connection is
flaky, you want to avoid gaps in the audio. I suspect that Skype is fairly clever behind the
scenes, as I sometimes hear it buffer speech during network hiccups and then
send it and make up for the lag by speeding up speech and skipping blanks, so you don't
miss anything. All of this is not so trivial.
Relying on Skype means relying on proprietary software, but it also means
relying on a non-federated and non-interoperable protocol (and thus contributing
to the network
effect), and it also poses a security issue because there is no secrecy on
the contents of Skype chats (as opposed to, say, SIP with ZRTP). In fact, the CNRS,
the largest governmental French research organisation, which is related to my
employer, recommends
against the use of Skype. Yet such recommendations are ignored by all
researchers I know, even when they are personally committed to the principles of free
software: they need to work with other researchers who use Skype, and
have no usable alternative to advertise.
What's needed: Developing a Skype alternative that works,
both with a usable interface and the required backend features. Maybe WebRTC is a promising
direction.
Developing and promoting an alternative to Dropbox
Some of my coworkers (not the majority) are starting to use Dropbox
to collaborate on documents, instead of version control
systems (VCSes), because it is easier. So I use Dropbox when I
need to collaborate with other people who do, and I have no drop-in self-hosted
replacement to offer.
Using Dropbox in this context is essentially laziness, as the complexity of
setting up a VCS usually pays off in terms of added power: computing and reviewing
diffs, using blame, having commit messages, branching, proper conflict handling,
etc. Yet, in some contexts the hassle of updating, committing, and pushing
manually, is not worth it, and it is better to automatically sync changes
because there will often be no conflicts and little need to review old versions.
I would also need such a system to synchronize data between my machines. Manual rsync (or cronjobs) often suffice,
sometimes VCSes are the right tool, yet sometimes automatic sync is all you want; especially
on phones where manual solutions are impractical. So far I have resisted the
temptation of using Dropbox for this, but I would be interested in a tool that
would have the convenience of Dropbox.
This is not so obvious to engineer. It should rely on inotify or offer a FUSE FS to avoid polling for
changes and sync with no noticeable lag (which excludes Unison).
It should offer file access when you are offline (which excludes sshfs-based solutions). It should
use bandwidth sparingly and avoid retransferring existing content (even doing this
across files with different names, which is fine in theory but
not done, e.g., by rsync). It should run also on Android so I can sync data with
my phone. It should ideally rely on a VCS to resolve conflicts automatically
when possible, and to offer sensible tools for manual resolution when needed
(although the situation should occur rarely: only, e.g., when changing the same file on two
different machines with one of them offline). I want a tool that solves only
this problem and solves it well
(which excludes ownCloud). Also,
it should have good documentation and tutorials, which excludes git-annex (I still haven't
understood whether it does what I want or not).
What's needed: Developing a Dropbox alternative that is easy
to use, and document how to use it.
Making mobile phones usable with free software
Most Android applications are proprietary and distributed through the
proprietary Play Store. The only libre alternative that I know of is F-Droid, and I use it exclusively, but it has
about 1,300 apps listed as of this writing, whereas Google Play has a thousand times
more. What is more, many proprietary apps are hard to replace, because they
are designed to access the backend of specific services (train companies, banks, postal services, even public institutions,
etc.): there are many such services, and they often don't have a public API.
Even forgetting about the apps, it is essentially impossible
to avoid proprietary software on mobile phones. At the operating system (OS) level,
Android
used to be touted as open. Now the visible
face of Android is riddled by proprietary Google applications.
The pure open-source side of Android, AOSP,
is barely keeping up. I use CyanogenMod to have Android
without the proprietary Google stuff, but it has many limitations.
For instance, the TextSecure SMS encryption
service cannot
be used without the proprietary Google Mobile Services, even though it is
itself open-source (and bundled with CyanogenMod).
In any case, CyanogenMod does not solve the problem of proprietary drivers
and firmware. The Replicant project does,
but currently supports only 12
devices, and only partially (for none of them is both telephony and GPS
suppported, for instance). At least it's a start, but hard to use for now.
Then there is the issue of the radio
firmware: to my knowledge the only libre implementation is OsmocomBB, with very narrow device
support and no 3G. This is especially worrying: the radio firmware has
unrestricted access to the entire phone and is constantly
connected to an untrusted network. Replicant developers have found suspicious
things there, and more may be lurking.
What's needed: Supporting the development of libre radio
firmware alternatives, and of Replicant (or maybe the solution lies with other
phone OSes entirely, such as Firefox OS). Support the
development of F-Droid. Campaign so that people understand that not everyone is
using Android or iOS, and that it is important to provide an alternative to
non-portable apps (e.g., a good website).
Fighting back OS bundling and warranty exclusions
In France, as in many countries, most PCs are bundled with a Microsoft
Windows license, even though it is illegal to bundle the sale
of a service (the license) with a good (the hardware). Thus, when buying my Lenovo Yoga 13, I
could not avoid buying a Windows license with it,
and could not get it refunded from the manufacturer (Lenovo). (I had looked for
comparable OS-free machines that I could buy instead, but the choice was too limited.)
Of course, bundling does not apply only to Windows, but also to Apple
computers. You can buy Mac OS
separately, so it is not a free service, and it is bundled with the machine (even
though it is leased to you by the same company that is selling you the hardware
and does not expect you to run a different OS).
Going to the courts is not a realistic option: a Linux user sued Lenovo
France in
2007
and the case is still open.
The latest episode is a
February
2014 ruling by the Cour de
Cassation (French's last resort court) which cancelled a previous verdict
and requested that the affair be
judged a third time.
Advocates of bundling contend that customers cannot install operating systems
themselves (and of course everyone uses Windows), so bundling is justified. The
obvious counter-argument is that you could sell the hardware and sell separately
an activation code for the preinstalled OS. In fact, now that Windows licenses
need to be activated with Microsoft through the Internet, this solution would be essentially trivial
to implement. Yet nothing has changed.
A related problem is the question of warranty. PC manufacturers tried for
some time to avoid offering hardware warranty to users which had installed a
different OS. Now mobile phone manufacturers
will argue that jailbreaking, or installing a different Android, will void your
warranty.
I believe there should be a clear separation between the hardware and the software,
and warranty should be offered on the hardware no matter which software is run.
(For cases where buggy software could damage the hardware: if the hardware
cannot withstand what the software asks it to do, it is its job to avoid getting
damaged.)
Last, installing alternative OSes on computers and phones is blocked by
technical measures: UEFI
for computers, various locking mechanisms for phones...
What's needed: Legal support to consumers seeking
reimbursement of bundled software, especially through collective means such as
class action whenever
possible. (There is a French support
group but I'm not sure how active it is. At any rate, I could not get
definite information about whether Lenovo France offers refunds for Windows 8
licenses (they don't).) Lobby for investigations into this practice using competition laws, like
the Windows
Media Player case in the EU. Help consumers who were denied
warranty claims for a hardware problem because of the software that they run,
lobby against technical restrictions and document ways to circumvent them.
Proprietary software and centralized computing
This is not at all a software project, just a closing comment about a battle
that needs to be fought, which is distinct from the question of free software,
but as least as important, in my opinion.
With the advent of customer broadband connections, it became clear that
people would be tempted to use remote servers to perform their computing and
store their data, even at the expense of their freedom. This switch back from
personal computers to dumb terminals is well underway, and does not seem to
stop. In this light, the original concerns against proprietary software seem
quite tame in comparison with cloud computing. Yes, you cannot know what a proprietary
program does, it could have a backdoor and give evil people access to your
data, it may save your files in a proprietary format that nothing else can
read, so you can't switch and your colleagues have to use the same program.
However, in the cloud, you don't even know which software is running or when it
changes, the data is already in the hands of others, and you may not even be
able to retrieve it at all, so you are stuck and anyone working with you is
stuck as well.
Ironically, with newer devices such as phones and tablets and Chromebooks,
more people are using free software, without realizing it. Of course, there are
proprietary vendor-specific programs and drivers, but the core is often free.
Sometimes there are technical restrictions against tinkering with the device,
but sometimes there aren't. Yet people do not know or care, because what matters to
them is not the device, but the remote services.
To users, this is normal: they are entrusting their computing to
specialists, like they do with their electricity, their food, their housing, and so many
aspects of their life. Still this is not right:
people are still expected to have their own opinions, their own vote, their
privacy, and people's electronic trails are
more and more entangled with their private thoughts and actions... Yes, computing
is less vital, but it is a finer-grained power mechanism, so
it is really dangerous to give it up.
Proprietary software, and centralized computing, are two different threats at
two different levels, but I find the second one maybe more worrying than the
first. For the first one, free software has scored some big victories. For the
second one it's not even clear which alternative model we can propose...
