Breaking the dependency on proprietary software: A call to nonprofits to refuse Microsoft Windows 7

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 -- The Free
Software Foundation (FSF) today launched the next stage of its
"Windows 7 Sins" campaign at http://windows7sins.org, making the
case against Microsoft and proprietary software by writing to 500
leaders of the most influential nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) worldwide, asking them to make the switch to freedom-respecting free
software, and to help foster awareness of the ethical importance of
computer user freedom.

The letter warns these "Windows 7 decision makers" about the "lack of
privacy, freedom, and security" they will suffer should they adopt
Windows 7, and makes the case that they should instead adopt free
software by outlining seven major areas where proprietary software
like Windows is hurting society: invading privacy, poisoning
education, locking users in, abusing standards, leveraging
monopolistic behavior, enforcing Digital Restrictions Management
(DRM), and threatening user security.

FSF executive director Peter Brown said, "The dependency of
organizations working for social change and improvement on software
owned and exclusively controlled by Microsoft is leading society into
an era of digital restrictions, threatening and limiting our freedoms.
Free software on the other hand, is about freedom, not price, and it
is designed to give you the ability to study and improve the software
for your own needs. Today, we're asking leaders in the nonprofit
sector to switch to the free software GNU/Linux operating system for
all their desktop and computer infrastructure needs."

The GNU/Linux operating system is readily available, easy-to-use, and
supported by numerous vendors and a worldwide community. GNU/Linux
distributions come with thousands of freely licensed software
applications, including complete accounting and fundraising solutions
suitable for charities.

FSF campaigns manager Matt Lee added, "Charities, NGOs, and other
nonprofit organizations that choose proprietary software are
undertaking bad public policy, often through misinformation or a
failure to see their technology choices as connected to their social
missions. We hope to alert these decision makers to the positive
contribution they can make to society by switching their organizations
to free software. I hope these groups will make a public policy
commitment to freedom and join a growing list of organizations who
understand that sinking money and time into proprietary software is
inconsistent with the core values of freedom and progress."

More information about the campaign, including the text of the letter
and a mailing list that will provide subscribers with information
updates and action alerts, is online at http://en.windows7sins.org.

The full text of the letter is:

Dear _

Re: Important notice regarding impending lack of privacy, freedom and security from Microsoft Corporation.

As a decision maker within your organization, you undoubtedly strive to make choices that seek to improve the working lives of your employees, enhance the relationship you have with your stakeholders and donors and secure the independence and freedom for your organization to achieve its mission.

For many years, charities and nonprofit organizations like yours have relied on Microsoft and the Windows operating system, and because they threaten to stop supporting older versions of Windows in the long-term, and because their system is proprietary (not free/libre), you are dependent on them to provide regular security updates and fixes. Threatening to withdraw their support, they abuse their monopoly position to strong-arm you into adopting new versions of their software, even when you don't need the new "features" and even when updating negatively affects your ability to operate.

The dependency of organizations working for social change and improvement on software owned and exclusively controlled by Microsoft is leading society into an era of digital restrictions, threatening and limiting our freedoms. Microsoft Windows was engineered from the ground up as a Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and Treacherous Computing (TC) platform. Microsoft hides these defects under more benign-sounding names like "Digital Rights Management" and "Trusted Computing" -- the fact is that Windows is designed to limit what people can do with documents and digital media files.

As with Windows Vista, Windows 7 represents Microsoft's continued attacks against the security, privacy and freedom of your organization, and are no mistake. Microsoft has a history of manipulating computer manufacturers into installing its products onto the computers you purchase.

Because of Microsoft, many decision makers in the not-for-profit sector are wholly dependent on the Windows operating system for their organizational computing.

The root cause of this dependency is proprietary software (not free/libre) and with the release of Windows 7, you have an opportunity to break your organization's dependency on it.

Free software is about freedom, and not price. Free software is software that you can use and adapt independent of any one vendor, such as the GNU/Linux operating system or the business productivity suite OpenOffice.org. Free software provides all of the freedoms Microsoft tries to deny, and is therefore better in all areas: security, accountability and monetary cost. GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org are available from numerous vendors ensuring competition for your patronage and your freedom to change supplier.

Free software is more secure because you, your IT supplier and the wider IT community are independently able to read the source code of and customize any program you use in your infrastructure. It saves you from relying on a secretive third party, and the public availability of free software code means that many qualified eyeballs, the security experts and researchers around the world, are continually studying and reporting on its integrity.

Replacing all your desktop systems with GNU/Linux will give you independence from Microsoft, access to thousands of free software applications, and help break the social ill of proprietary software. Thousands of organizations have already moved to free software. What's your organizational plan?

Investing in Microsoft's Windows 7 will only get you more stuck and more dependent on them.

Take the next step -- evaluate your organization's opportunity to use free software -- and sign up for regular announcements on making the move away from Windows and to receive information about the work of the Free Software Foundation: http://windows7sins.org/signup.

Sincerely,

Peter Brown
Executive Director
Free Software Foundation

As with the previous round of letters that I covered in this post, I kind of feel the same way - I am still to be convinced that this is good marketing for the free software movement as a whole. Instead maybe we should be considering writing to charities offering free software alternatives and free limited support and training to enable them to get off the ground and find a viable alternative to Microsoft and the Windows platform.

I am quite sure this is the tactic that MS would use. Their own website states (with no prices given):

Eligible nonprofit organizations can acquire multiple software licenses—rather than multiple software packages—at reduced prices through Volume Licensing.

This is how they are getting their foot in the door so to speak, and I still feel the best counter measure is to undercut them.

I would be very interested for the FSF to release figures on exactly what effect their campaign has had on raising the awareness with both of these campaigns and I would encourage Matt Lee and Peter Brown to let us know what feedback has been received from the companies and NGO's contacted.

]]> http://www.cocoageek.com/2009/10/free-software-foundation-launches-second-wave-of-windows-7-sins-campaign/feed/ 0 http://www.cocoageek.com/2009/09/installing-python-eggs-in-linux/ http://www.cocoageek.com/2009/09/installing-python-eggs-in-linux/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:52:20 +0000 Andrew Nixon http://www.cocoageek.com/?p=18 Ok i am a little late to the party with these wonderful Python packages.. however installing them in Ubuntu (or any flavor of Linux) couldn't be easier. All you need is the python-setuptools package.

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

This package contains the easy_install command allowing you to install whichever egg you like using the following command.

sudo easy_install <.egg file>

If you don't want to install the package then you can get the source for easy_install from here. Once you are ready to get try some eggs have a look at www.python-eggs.org for links to loads of great resources.

]]> http://www.cocoageek.com/2009/09/installing-python-eggs-in-linux/feed/ 0 http://www.cocoageek.com/2009/09/fsf-windows-7-sins/ http://www.cocoageek.com/2009/09/fsf-windows-7-sins/#comments Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:50:03 +0000 Andrew Nixon http://www.cocoageek.com/?p=5 The  FSF will start its Windows 7 campaign this week by launching the Windows 7 Sins website as well as sending 500 hundred e-mails to charities and non-governmental organisations about why they should use the Windows 7 launch as an excuse to review their open source policy instead of an upgrade. This follows the letters last month to 499 of the Fortune 500 companies (Guess who was excluded) saying the same sort of thing.

I think the letters are a good thing. Software policy in organisations should be constantly reviewed and with the current upsurge in Linux use it is important to maintain a campaign and awareness that is not too fragmented. Any open source movement will have the problem that it is difficult to advertise - how many distros are there? how can they all be cooperative with advertising? Well obviously they can't and that isn't really the point is it. People in the open source community just want adoption of any Linux distribution, it really doesn't matter if that is Red Hat, Ubuntu, SUSE or whatever as long as there is adoption. This is the role that the Free Software Foundation should be taking. Quoting the FSF website:

The FSF campaigns for free software adoption and against proprietary software. Threats to free software include Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), Software Patents and Treacherous Computing.

This brings me to my criticism of the Windows 7 Sins campaign. I don't believe (being a free software user) that as a group we should spend our time and money (donations) criticising competitors products. We should be pointing out why we are better not why they are worse.

I think the decision to run the Windows 7 Sins campaign has not been taken lightly however it reflects not only upon the FSF but on the whole open source community and it doesn't reflect well. The FSF are guardians of the community and should remain so however i do think these sort of campaigns demonstrate a loss of direction.