Free Software, Free Society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman. 2nd edition.

The issue here is not whether people should be able or allowed to install nonfree software; a general-purpose system enables and allows users to do whatever they wish. The issue is whether we guide users towards nonfree software. What they do on their own is their responsibility; what we do for them, and what we direct them towards, is ours. We must not direct the users towards proprietary software as if it were a solution, because proprietary software is the problem.

A ruinous compromise is not just a bad influence on others. It can distort your own values, too, through cognitive dissonance. If you have certain values, but your actions imply other, conflicting values, you are likely to change your values or your actions so as to resolve the contradiction. Thus, projects that argue only from practical advantages, or direct people toward some nonfree software, nearly always shy away from even suggesting that nonfree software is unethical. For their participants, as well as for the public, they reinforce consumer values. We must reject these compromises if we wish to keep our values straight.

If you want to move to free software without compromising the goal of freedom, look at the FSF’s resources area. It lists hardware and machine configurations that work with free software, totally free GNU/Linux distros to install, and thousands of free software packages that work in a 100 percent free software environment. If you want to help the community stay on the road to freedom, one important way is to publicly uphold citizen values. When people are discussing what is good or bad, or what to do, cite the values of freedom and community and argue from them.

A road that lets you go faster is no improvement if it leads to the wrong place. Compromise is essential to achieve an ambitious goal, but beware of compromises that lead away from the goal.

Copyright c 2008, 2009 Richard Stallman

This essay was originally published on http://gnu.org, in 2008. This version is part of Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, 2nd ed. (Boston: GNU Press, 2010).

This chapter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.

Chapter 42. Overcoming Social Inertia

Almost two decades have passed since the combination of GNU and Linux first made it possible to use a PC in freedom. We have come a long way since then. Now you can even buy a laptop with GNU/Linux preinstalled from more than one hardware vendor—although the systems they ship are not entirely free software. So what holds us back from total success?

The main obstacle to the triumph of software freedom is social inertia. It exists in many forms, and you have surely seen some of them. Examples include devices that only work on Windows and commercial web sites accessible only with Windows. If you value short-term convenience instead of freedom, you might consider these reason enough to use Windows. Most companies currently run Windows, so students who think short-term want to learn how to use it and ask their schools to teach it. Schools teach Windows, produce graduates that are used to using Windows, and this encourages businesses to use Windows.

Microsoft actively nurtures this inertia: it encourages schools to inculcate dependency on Windows, and contracts to set up web sites that then turn out to work only with Internet Explorer.

A few years ago, Microsoft ads argued that Windows was cheaper to run than GNU/Linux. Their comparisons were debunked, but it is worth noting the deeper flaw in their argument, the implicit premise which cites a form of social inertia: “Currently, more technical people know Windows than GNU/Linux.” People who value their freedom would not give it up to save money, but many business executives believe ideologically that everything they possess, even their freedom, should be for sale.

Social inertia consists of people who have given in to social inertia. When you surrender to social inertia, you become part of the pressure it exerts on others; when you resist it, you reduce it. We conquer social inertia by identifying it, and resolving not to be part of it.