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The Limits of Free SoftwareAsa WinstanleyPage 1 ¦ Page 2 ¦ Page 3 ¦ Printer-friendly version Information inequalitiesThere is a standard phrase used to refer to these inequalities - the digital divide. Like much of our everyday language, this is a propaganda term. It gives the picture of a world of 'two halves' - those with computers and the internet, and those who do not have them yet. The global reality seen is of course very different. The 'haves' actually form a global elite, while the 'have-nots' constitute the vast majority of the world. There is no compelling reason to believe that greater technological innovation alone will substantially reverse this trend. While freely available and modifiable software tools are a great help to activists and community computer projects here and in the global south, they can only work within the restraints of massive social inequalities. The laudable principles of the Free Software Foundation are irrelevant to Indian villagers who have no access to electric power or computers. Software cannot be used where there are no computers, and free software distribution or co-operative development is severely limited amongst the 90% of people who have no internet access. The technological privileges of class and race in the westIn our more privileged part of the world the hierarchies of knowledge come into play more, but the older economic disparities still take hold. According to the government's own figures, less than half of British adults have access to the internet at home, as of June 2003. If those who have regular access via internet cafes, libraries and so on are factored in the figure rises, but only to 56%, with 61% having ever used it. These figures are a definite improvement from 2000; household access is up from only 33%. Clearly, we too have a 'digital divide' broadly along class lines. A study along race lines would probably reveal further inequalities. There are other factors for the deficit, such as the fact it is a relatively new technology that many are not yet comfortable with. Indeed, major growth over time has occurred - only 9% of households had net access in 1998. However, the general trend in the figures suggests that we are now reaching a plateau, and that this divide in the nation will be broadly sustained as long as more general class, race and educational divisions remain [14]. A look at a 1999 US government study reveals very similar findings [15]. Black, Hispanic, Native American and rurally based Americans are much less likely to have access to computers, especially those in lower income ranges. In fact, although access has improved for the most disadvantaged sectors since 1994, inequality actually widened. For example, the gap in computer access between white and Hispanic households between 1994 and 1998. The report even found that black people had less internet access anywhere than white people had at home. For black people too the overall situation has improved since the internet took off in 1994, although the gap between them and the white population also increased significantly. However, in black households making over $75,000 the gap, though still present, narrowed between 1997 and 1998. Class trumps race in this respect. At the absolute bottom of the pile, though, are Native Americans. Access to computers in 1999 for rurally based Native Americans was far below the national average of 42% at 27%, and internet access was at a mere 19% at a time when the national average was at 26%. Retreat from realityWhile this cursory review of the statistics reveals a striking divide in the west, it is obviously nothing compared to more pressing global inequalities. Those of us with internet access are the more privileged half of the western world, but we are part of an even smaller global elite. When we next hear grand rhetoric about the "global community" of internet and free software users, let us remember how narrow this community really is, even within our own countries. Many in the free software movement are blind to the reality of this situation. Responsible for this attitude, in no small part, are grand illusions about the 'free market'. Presupposed by its proponents is equal opportunity for all, equal access to resources and information, and so on. Trickle-down economics. The reality, of course, is far different. This comes as no surprise to anyone concerned with genuine egalitarian development and a humanitarian vision of globalisation - and least of all to anarchists. Unfortunately, there is a small but significant current in the free software and open source movements that are extreme supporters of the 'free market' - those who usurp the honourable term 'libertarian'. Worse still, some of them happen to regard themselves as the movement's 'leaders'. This leads to several problems, not the least of which are self imposed blindness to inequality, subsuvervience to corporate interests and the growth of technocratic elitism. Free market assumptionsEric S. Raymond is one such figure. The term "Open Source" was coined and is promoted by him amongst others. In 1998 they founded the Open Source Initiative. Although he has made no significant free software contributions, Raymond explicitly presents himself to the wider world as a leader of the 'open source' movement, especially to business leaders who he focuses on in his campaign for corporate adoption of the GNU/Linux operating system. This is a step beyond the respect (albeit sometimes bordering on an unhealthy cult of personality) for figures who are admired because of their their software (e.g. Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds) or for establishing projects and legal mechanisms to protect and promote free software. Raymond describes his role as "public advocate for the hacker tribe, speaker-to-journalists, evangelist/interface to the corporate world" [16]. He is part of the strange American anomaly that calls itself "free market libertarianism" or "anarcho-capitalism". Around the rest of the world, 'libertarian' is just a more friendly name for an anarchist - someone against both private wealth and state power. In the US in recent years the word has been adopted by radical 'free market' advocates. They tend to presuppose. a world in which everyone has the same access to computers and more or less the same access to the internet. Failures of access to technology are down to the individual, not the provider and certainly not the government. This form of what could be termed 'radical corporatocracy' suggests that government is not needed because private corporate interests and the 'free market' should control everything (except for a some form of minimal government for things like national defense). Services that were normally public (libraries, for instance) Formerly public services would be only be available to those with the money to pay for them. A more appropriate title for such a political philosophy is "free market fundamentalism". [Editors' note: see this month's supplementary essay on anarchism.] Such disturbing politics could simply be ignored, were it not for the limitations of vision it imposes on sectors of the free software movement. It makes for an extremely blinkered view of the world - presupposing that if we can only make enough free software then we have "the possibility for a fairer free market that stands a chance of achieving the requirements of comparable goods" [17]. Oddly enough, this almost mirrors the "GPL society" ideas of Oekonux - emancipation through information. In the real world, however, such advances can only come through much larger changes in wider social conditions. Free software can certainly play a part in widening consciousness and making people think that "there is another way", but it is limited in what it can achieve. Richard Stallman for one seems to have a more considered and realistic outlook on the place of software freedom [18]: "I hesitate to exaggerate the importance of this little puddle of freedom, because the more well-known and conventional areas of working for freedom and a better society are tremendously important. I wouldn't say that free software is as important as they are. It's the responsibility I undertook, because it dropped in my lap and I saw a way I could do something about it. But, for example, to end police brutality, to end the war on drugs, to end the kinds of racism we still have... these are tremendously important issues, far more important than what I do. I just wish I knew how to do something about them." Footnotes14. Office of the e-Envoy, UK Online Annual Report, 15 December 2003. return 15. National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide, November 1999. return 16. Eric S. Raymond, Take My Job, Please!, 29 March 1999. For material critical of Raymond see the relevant Wikipedia article. return 17. MJ Ray, Re: Stalls at Marxism 2003, message to the FSF Europe, UK email list, 19 May 2003. return 18. Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software, chapter 5. return | |