Peak Individualism and Software.
Open Source software is collaberative working for collective benefit. It is happening now, and providing market leading software.
The notion of thousands of people working together to help millions of others is a truly utalitarian vision and one which is happening now! Therefore, OpenSource
Software is a potentially evidence that we are passing peak individualism.
This post highlights some of the great Open source software, it’s ethical advantage and how you can support the open source movement.
Why should we bother?
By decreasing the power of the largest players in a field we can decrease the temptation for curruption. We will also be decreasing the impact (including on us) of what would happened if said company tried to abuse their power.
There are several major players in IT software such as Microsoft, Google and Apple.
The popularity of companies should be linked to the quality of the products they provide and the level of innovation they offer. However, there are several inferiour products which are popular and products which have hidden costs such as monitoring your computer based activity such as emails.
On privacy there are several questions, one being do you mind what is done with your data? Do you know what is being logged and stored about you? Do you mind that on pages that had statistics provided by Alexa this data was used to build your Amazon profile (Amazon bought Alexa)? It is clear that digital privacy is almost non-existant. The debate should consider if we want it back, and if so how is this done.
My philosphy
While I would love to not have to use any Microsoft prodct, I appreciate that they often do the job pretty well. They often do it better than any of the alternatives. Personally I like MS windows XP and MS office. However, Internet Explorrer does not meet my needs. Linux distributions such as Ubuntu offer a great free alternative to MS Windows.
The vision is to gradually spend more and more time using OpenSource software so that at some point (a few years or so) all my tasks will be done with OpenSource. However, the main aim is to be heading in the right direction for the moment.
By avoiding Windows and commercial “free” (advert supported) software will minmise the amount of time my actions are being logged in a database! OpenSource software being free enables me to save cost over time aswell. The availability and popularity of OpenSource was likely a major cause for the cost of Ms Office to decrease so significantly.
This lower cost of IT, decreases the barriers to entry for the internet and the wealth of knowledge that it can provide. In my view, a significant part of a ‘good’ soceity is one which offers support to those aspiring to offer value to soceity themselves.
What can we do to support Open Source and Moral IT?
• Use OpenSource alternatives were possible. i.e. OpenOffice rather than MS office. They are very similar, one issue being that Open Office doesn’t currently support commenting.
• Changing your operating system is a lot easier to test than it ever has been. Ubuntu offer a Live CD which enables you to get a taster of Linux without ever installing the software. If it meets your needs you can install it directly from the same CD. There are several ways to ease the migration, Wine allows you to use Windows Applications in Linux
Virtual Box allows you to run Windows inside Linux.
• Remove commercial software which isn’t needed, i.e. Windows Media Player!?
• When learning new software in Windows, use apps that are also available in Linux. That way when you make the migration there will be less to notice! Popular tools include
o GIMP
o ThunderBird
o FireFox
o Opera
When you notice a bug in the software, do make the effort to see if it’s been reported yet and if not submit a bug ticket. This will help make the software better.
If you’re a programmer perhaps you could get involved in Open Source software? It doesn’t have to be a huge project it could be a component / Add-on for a popular piece of OpenSource Software.
There are many ways to support the OpenSource movement, the best is probably to become part of the community. Use the software and help spread the world that free alternatives exist and they are getting better by the day.
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