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Development, Ethical Trading, and Free Software Danny Yee>> Free Software AdvocacyDevelopment, Ethical Trading, and Free SoftwareFinal version November 30th 1999en français (partial)Abstract This paper makes the political and ethical case for the adoptionof free software by Community AidAbroad and other members of OxfamInternational. It should be applicable to development agenciesgenerally and to other organisations with similar values.Free software has obvious pragmatic advantages for community developmentprocesses, most notably in its empowerment of users. But the ideologicalfoundations and social/organisational structure of the free softwaremovement are also consistent with community development at a theoreticallevel.Feedback on this paper would be appreciated: additional case studieswould be particularly useful. A Community Aid Abroad appropriateinformation technology group has been set up, including a mailinglist for discussions in this area. (This paper is also a subject ofdebate onSlashdot.)ContentsIntroductionSoftware: Drawbacks and DangersThe Advantages of Free SoftwareFree Software in ActionConclusion and RecommendationsIntroductionInformational goods make up a sizeable and increasing fractionof the world's trade - and an even larger fraction of profits, sincemargins tend to be higher. (Compare Microsoft's profit/turnover ratiowith General Electrics'.) This trend towards an "information economy"is continuing. Ethical trading and appropriate technology policiesshould therefore cover informational products.With some goods the major ethical concerns are in their manufacture orthe effects on the environment of their use. Examples are wheat, iron,refrigerators, and so forth. Such goods are covered by a draft Oxfam GBEthical Purchasing Policy, which advocates products that "are produced anddelivered under conditions that do not involve the abuse or exploitationof any persons" and "have the least negative impact on the environment".The policy mentioned considers weapons and baby milk powder asspecial cases. But there are many products other than weapons and babymilk powder whose production and delivery may raise no or only minorenvironmental and ethical concerns, but which may still have effectsof major concern in the way they affect the autonomy and independenceof users. It is the contention of this paper that software falls intothis category.This paper addresses only computer software. Other intellectualproperty issues are also of great importance. Control of geneticvariability through gene patents is one example; World IntellectualProperty Organisation treaties on copyright are another. (The latterought to receive the same sort of critical response that the MultilateralAgreement on Investment did.)This is the context for intellectual property rights enforcement. Thisworld market in knowledge is a major and profoundly anti-democraticnew stage of capitalist development. The transformation of knowledgeinto property necessarily implies secrecy: common knowledge is nolonger private. In this new and chilling stage, communication itselfviolates property rights. The WTO is transforming what was previouslya universal resource of the human race - its collectively, historicallyand freely-developed knowledge of itself and nature - into a private andmarketable force of production.(Allan Freeman, Fixing up the world? GATT and the World Trade Organisation)A good deal of the world's primary resources are located in the poorercountries of the world's "South", even if their exploitation is oftenin the hands of external corporations. Systems for controlling thedistribution of information, on the other hand, are (like possession ofcapital) overwhelmingly centralised in the rich "North". This should beof great concern to organisations such as Oxfam International memberswhich take a long-term perspective in their attempts to reduce theinequitable distribution of resources.As the United Nations Sustainable DevelopmentNetworking Program says: Information and Communication Technologies arenow fundamental to dealing with all development issues in developingcountries. An Oxfam International Education Now report presents some of theconsequences of an information economy for educational equity [DEADhttp://www.caa.org.au/oxfam/advocacy/education/report/chapter1-3.html].Software: Drawbacks and DangersThe following analysis of potential political and ethical dangers insoftware is not meant to be complete. Nor is it an analysis which appliesequally to all kinds of software. There are certain key components,such as operating systems, application programming interfaces, andsoftware with mass deployment, on which many implementations and manyother software systems depend. These are more critical than softwaresystems with peripheral roles.The ExpenseSoftware is often prohibitively expensive. The standard price for anordinary office package might be a year's income for most of the world'speople. As one Mexican project adopting free software [DEAD http://www.linux.org.mx/arturo/scholar/]wrote:The primary reason for reaching this decision was the kind of money wewould have had to pay if we went for proprietary software: at US$55 foreach machine with Win98 and Office, US$500 for every NT license and anaverage of 6 workstations and one server for 140000 labs, that's a lotof money. Though "discounts" are often available on software, thesetend to either be in exchange for accepting a local monopolyfor the vendor's products, or an attempt to gain market shareat the expense of competitors. Consider, for example, Microsoft'sattempts to bribe universities and colleges into using NT.So called software "piracy" [DEADhttp://www.corpwatch.org/corner/worldnews/twn/twn11.html] is obviously anoption for those unable or unwilling to purchase software, and indeedit is a common choice throughout the South, where copyright law isoften poorly enforced. But this places users at the mercy of the law,increasing their vulnerability to those rich and powerful enough to useit to their own advantage. Also, development organisations themselvesare vulnerable to enforcement in their home countries, so they can notsupport or encourage such practices.As well as the up-front costs of software, there are usually hiddencosts. Often licensing is per-user, so costs will increasewith the size of the user base and inhibit growth. Support forproprietary software is almost always prohibitively expensive. Frequentsoftware upgrades may be required to maintain compatibility andfunctionality (consider the deliberate modification by Microsoft of thefile format in successive versions of Word, in order to force users toupgrade to newer versions). And software tends, especially with upgrades,to require more powerful, and hence more expensive, hardware.These hidden costs are often recurrent.Lack of OpennessOpen standards and protocols are in the interests of consumers, andindeed of most businesses: they allow genuine market competition,giving users options and choices. Closed standards and protocolsand technical secrets, on the contrary, benefit only thoseseeking to maintain or attain monopoly control of markets by decommoditizingsoftware. (Proprietary software can, of course, use open standards andprotocols, but much of it doesn't.)Security and PrivacyThe use of black-box proprietary software without sourcecode creates security risks, since it makes the detection ofTrojan horses rather difficult. One high-profile case is the Melissa Virus.An extreme case is government surveillance: an Australian governmentreport (theWalsh Report, see sections 6.2.10 and 6.2.11) has recommended thatsecurity agencies arrange for back doors to be inserted into mass-marketcommercial software to allow eavesdropping. Perhaps it is paranoiato think that the United States National Security Agency has alreadyarranged for this to be done, but when peoples' lives are at stake,can one really trust (say) Microsoft Word when vulnerable WestPapuan or East Timorese activists are involved?From a privacy point of view, some worrying features are knownto have been built into popular proprietary software packages.Microsoft Windows and recent versions of Office include a unique computeridentifier in all documents - an identifier which is sent to Microsofton registration of software, as well as in cookies set by Microsoft's website. The implications of this for anyone trying to maintain anonymous -whistle-blowers and activists most obviously - are frightening. (See analysis [DEAD http://byte.com/features/1999/03/win98priv1.html]and a news report from CNET;Paul Ferris points the obvious argument for free software in "Of Corporations, Privacy, and Open Source Software".)The Creation of New DependenciesProprietary software increases the dependence of individuals,organisations, and communities on external forces - typically largecorporations with a very poor track record on acting in the publicinterest. There are dependencies for support, installation andproblem fixing, sometimes in critical systems. There are dependenciesfor upgrades and compatibility. There are dependencies when modificationor extended functionality is required. And there are ongoing financialdependencies if licensing is recurrent.Political dependencies can result from theuse of proprietary software, too. For example, an Irish ISPunder attack for hosting the top level East Timor domain .tp was helpedout by hackers and community activists[DEAD http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/4/ns-6857.html] (setting up a secure GNU/Linuxinstallation). Given that this attack was probably carried out withthe connivance of elements of the Indonesian government, it is hard tosee a commercial vendor with a significant market presence in Indonesiabeing so forthcoming with support.Nearly exact parallels to this exist inagriculture [DEAD http://www.rafi.org/], where the patenting of seedvarieties and genome sequences and the creation of non-seeding varieties[DEAD http://www.rafi.org/communique/19982.html] are used to impose long-term dependencieson farmers.An Analogy: Baby-milk Powder The effectsof baby-milk powder on poor infants (which has sparked a Nestlecampaign/boycott) provide an analogy to the effects of proprietarysoftware.Sending information in Microsoft Word format to correspondents inEritrea is analagous to Nestle advertising baby milk powder to Indianmothers. It encourages the recipients to go down a path which is not intheir best interests, and from which it is not easy for them to recover.The apparent benefits (the doctor recommended it; we will be able toread the documents sent to us) may be considerable and the initial costsinvolved (to stop breast-feeding and switch to milk powder; to start usingMicrosoft Office) may be subsidised, hidden, or zero (with "piracy"), butthe long-term effects are to make the recipients dependent on expensiverecurrent inputs, and to burden them with ultimately very high costs.Moreover, because documents can be easily copied and becausethere are strong pressures to conform to group/majority standards indocument formats, pushing individuals towards proprietary software anddocument formats can snowball to affect entire communities, not justthe individuals initially involved.Restrictions on Self-helpProprietary software not only creates new dependencies: it activelyhinders self-help, mutual aid, and community development.Users cannot freely share software with others in the community,or with other communities.The possibilities for building local support and maintainance systemsare limited.Modification of software to fit local needs is not possible, leavingcommunities with software designed to meet the needs of wealthy Northernusers and companies, which may not be appropriate for them.An Example: Language SupportLanguage support provides a good example of the advantages of freesoftware in allowing people to adapt products to their own ends andtake control of their lives. Operating systems and word processingsoftware support only a limited range of languages. Iceland,in order to help preserve its language, wants Icelandic supportadded to Microsoft Windows - and is even willing to pay for it.But without access to the source code - and the right to modify it - theyare totally dependent on Microsoft's cooperation. (See an article in Seattle Times[ was http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=icel&date=19980630]and an article by Martin Vermeer which argues that lack of software localisation is a threat to cultural diversity.)Whatever the outcome of this particular case, it must be noted thatIceland is hardly a poor or uninfluential nation. There is absolutelyno hope of Windows being modified to support Aymara or Lardil or otherindigenous languages: the spread of such proprietary software willcontinue to contribute to their marginalisation.In contrast, the source code to the GNU/Linux operatingsystem is available and can be freely modified, so groupsare able to add support for their languages. See, as anexample, the KDE Internationalization Page[DEAD http://www.kde.org/i18n.html] (KDE is a desktop for GNU/Linux)or a project tolocalise GNU/Linux for Indian languages. Another exampleof the kind of thing that access to source code allows is the OmegaTypesetting System[DEAD http://www.serg.cse.unsw.edu.au/DoSE/research.html], a modification of the free TeX typesetting system"designed for printing all of the world's languages, modern or ancient,common or rare"; this sort of extension or modification is simply notpossible with proprietary word-processing packages. Unsustainable Sustainable developmentshould favour unlimited resourcesover finite ones. But while software appears to be a renewableresource, its control by profit-making corporations, as "IntellectualProperty", effectively turns it into a finite resource.The Advantages of Free SoftwareWhat is Free Software?The Free Software Foundation's "What is FreeSoftware?" provides a good introduction to free software.`Free software'' refers to the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute,study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers tofour kinds of freedom:The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.The freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can share with your neighbor. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. A key point is that "free" refers to liberty, not price. Software isonly "free" if users have the freedom to copy, modify, and distribute it,and to share it with others. A key necessity for this is access tothe source code.Prominent examples of free software are the Linux kernel and the GNUsystem environment, which together constitute a complete operating system(an alternative to Windows or MacOS), and the Apache web server andsendmail mail transport agent, which between them provide more than 50%of the Internet's web sites and handle perhaps 80% of the world's email.Pragmatic AdvantagesQuite independently of any ethical and political considerations,there are also pragmatic and technical arguments for the deployment offree software systems.Some free software products are widely recognised as more reliableand robust, more powerful, and more secure than their proprietarycounterparts, and a plausible argument can be made that this is notjust accidental, but a consequence of their open development,implementation, and testing.Rob Bos puts it well in32bitsonline [DEAD http://www.32bitsonline.com/article.php3?file=issues/199902/abclinux11&page=1]Free software is better than non-free software. It works better, itworks faster, it works longer. Open source programs are tried and proven,they are constantly pressed from every direction to do specific tasks,and do them well; and for the simple reason that they are written towork, not simply to sell copies. Free software doesn't just work better,it works orders of magnitude better. Open sourcing an application givesthe source code to a large number of developers, instead of a small,tight group. Free software projects have a pool of developers and aneffective budget multiple times higher than an equivalent proprietarydevelopment project, and will, given all other equal things, advanceat a rate many times faster because of their access to an much largerdevelopment team. Peer review of code isn't just a pipe dream, it isan essential means to writing superior applications, no matter wherethey are written. Free software can typically be obtained for the cost of themedia (typically a few dollars for a CD) or network traffic (fordistribution via computer networks). It can always be freely distributed.The pragmatic benefits of this should be obvious, but in some contextsthe price of free software can also take on political significance: I live in India, one of the poorest countries in the world, with a large number of awfully bright, poor people. In India, today, the entry-level programmer (C knowledge but no work experience) earns $100 a month, and it is not routine for him to have a computer at home. Entry-level computers at $250 and below will attract millions of buyers in India, who will find the difference between $250 and $750 to be a massive one. Industry experts look at around 200 million existing computers, 80% of which run Microsoft OSes. It's useful to focus on the next billion computer sales. In this, I see the price-tag of $0 as being a critical product feature. Ajay Shah - Unix on a billion desktops? [DEAD http://freshmeat.net/news/1998/11/15/911138358.html]Free software is often less demanding of resources, extendingthe lifespan of older hardware. As an example of what this allows,consider Project ComputerBank, an Australian venture to supply old computer equipmentrunning GNU/Linux to low income earners, community groups, anddisadvantaged schools. Freedom From Dependencies``Community Aid Abroad's vision is for a fair world in which people controltheir own lives, their basic rights are achieved and the environmentis sustained.'' (emphasis added)Free software does not create dependencies on multinationalcorporations. Support commonly comes from user groups and onlinecommunities, which often provide vastly better support than commercialalternatives. Commercial support is available for free softwaresystems, but users of free software can not be tied to single suppliersor vendors.Access to the source code greatly increases users' options. It allowsnot just the unrestricted sharing of software packages but also theireasy modification to suit local needs and requirements.The value of free software in avoiding dependencies has beenrecognised by businesses and by governments. Let's say you are a chief technical officer (CTO) at a Fortune 500 company and you have just spent millions of dollars on a strategic business system with software you cannot see inside and cannot modify, software that depends on a single vendor to service. Now are those systems going to change to serve your business plan or your vendor's business plan? ...it probably will not be long before buying closed-source software for your key infrastructure is considered the height of irresponsibility. Eric S. Raymond in Intellectual Capital [DEAD http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue173/item1329.asp] "Scandinavia, Germany, and France are some of the main centers of Linux use. Some people say that this is because companies and the government want to avoid becoming too dependent on U.S. -- read Microsoft -- products." Kalle Dalheimer, quoted in OSS Europe[DEAD http://www.intraware.com/ms/mktg/indaa/itkc/osseurope.html] Development of free software is done by those who have the necessaryskills and resources - the resulting products are available for use bywhoever needs it. With Linux, the people who use the system get to [affect the way] the system [develops]. It's democracy in the sense that you don't surrender control. Anybody can do anything. It boils down to [the fact that] you must be [competent], but that's a good way of separating the people who do the work. And even the [people who] don't make changes can make suggestions and can do testing and things like that.Linus Torvalds, interview with upsidedown.com [DEAD http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=379de85d0].Shared ValuesMost free software has been produced through decentralised,community-based development processes which are usually open to anyonewith the right technical skills (or a willingness to learn) who isprepared to do the work. Users of free software can join softwaredevelopment communities and participate in the refinement and improvementof existing software, or in the development of entirely new programs,building on what already exists.Many free software development projects are almost modelcommunity development projects. They are based on opencommunication, inclusiveness, personal relationships, andworking for the good of the community as a whole. In a paper Technology andPleasure, Gisle Hannemyr describes the history of the "hacker"community, placing it in the artisan tradition and in opposition toTaylorism. He describes its imperatives as: reject hierarchies mistrust authority promote decentralization share information serve your communityand includes among its position statements:when creating computer artifacts, not only the observable results,but the craftsmanship in execution matterspractice is superior to theorypeople should only be judged on merit (not by appearance, age, race or position)you can create art and beauty[NOWPAYTOVIEW http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/digicult/dc990812.htm]by the means of a computerThe long-term effects of free software and associated changes are likelyto be significant:Oscar Wilde says somewhere that the problem withsocialism is that it takes up too many evenings. The problems with anarchism as a social system are also about transaction costs. But the digital revolution alters two aspects of political economy that have been otherwise invariant throughout human history. All software has zero marginal cost in the world of the Net, while the costs of social coordination have been so far reduced as to permit the rapid formation and dissolution of large-scale and highly diverse social groupings entirely without geographic limitation. Such fundamental change in the material circumstances of life necessarily produces equally fundamental changes in culture. Eben Moglen, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of CopyrightIn many ways the ethics of free software reflect that of theInternet community more generally - a community which is still resisting commercialisation of the Net. Education and Technology TransferFree software both encourages learning and experimentation andin turn benefits from it. Free software is widespread in educationalinstitutions, since access to the source code makes free software an idealtool for teaching: indeed much free software began as learning exercises.Due to low start-up costs and rapid change, software development andthe information economy more generally offer a possible way for the Southto build high value industries, leapfrogging older technologies and evenmodes of production. The flourishing Indian software industry providesan obvious example. But if these industries are built on proprietaryproducts and protocols owned by multinational corporations, thenthis will only reinforce one-sided dependencies. Free software has obvious advantageshere.Free software lends itself to collaborative, community-baseddevelopment at all scales from cottage industry to world-wide effortsinvolving the collaboration of thousands of people. Internet accesspotentially offers the poor the ability to communicate directly with therest of the world, to directly present their own ideas and perspectives.Combined with the free software development model, it allows them toparticipate in creating and moulding the technologies and systems thatwill determine their future.Free Software in ActionThe advantages of free software for community and developmentorganisations have been recognised by others: The arguments sketchedabove apply not just to development organisations but to governmentsand to some extent even to businesses. The United Nations [DEAD http://www.unesco.org/events/latin/cd_linux_ing.html]UNESCO is handing out free Linux CDROMs to community, scientific,and educational projects in Latin America. We believe LINUX can play a very important role in Latin American and Caribbean modernisation, constructing networks to permit a great number of universities, colleges, schools and educational centers, to connect to Internet in order to use this fabulous tool to improve their scientific and cultural levels. In a few words, LINUX is the tool which permits to reduce the "technological gap" between the countries. LINUX permits the acces to "the informatics the most advanced" implemented according to the reduced economic capacities in our region. LINUX is a new way to make informatics, where the most important thing is "the technical quality and people solidarity"And the UNDP is running a Sustainable DevelopmentNetworking Program[DEAD http://www.sdnp.undp.org/home.html], with support from Red Hat and Corel[DEAD http://www.corel.com/international/southafrica/news/august_10b_1999.htm].Mexico's Scholar Net[DEAD http://www.linux.org.mx/arturo/scholar/]I work as the project leader of the "Scholar Net", a program thataims to bring computers and the net to every elementary and mid-levelschool in Mexico. We expect to install from 20 to 35 thousand labs peryear to a total of 140,000 centers in the next five years.Due to matters of cost, reliability and configurability, we plan touse GNU/Linux to replace the proprietary server options and, now thanksto GNOME, the proprietary desktop application options.SatelLifeSatelLife is an international not-for-profit organization employingsatellite, telephone and radio networking technology to serve thehealth communication and information needs of countries in thedeveloping world. http://www.data.com/issue/981021/people.html [DEAD]For starters, the staff of Satellife had to seek out andmaster technologies cheap enough for users in theworld's poorest countries but reliable enough todeliver vital medical information fast. And theorganization didn't have the funds that corporate ITdepartments have for equipment and software-so itused free and open-source software to link users toforums. And as the Internet became a more vitaltool, Satellife had to make sure that users withoutbrowsers could still get information via the Web. Italso used second-hand gear where possible andrelied on research institutes and discussiongroups, rather than high-priced consultants, foradvice. The Littlefish Health ProjectDEAD http://www.paninfo.com.au/intro/littlefishproject_homepage.htmProject Vision:"To create a user friendly patient information and recallsystem on an open source basis with the focus on use by community based primary health care healthorganisations in the developing world or remote andrural areas or areas of need. (See also a newspaper story on Littlefish[DEAD http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/hardware/19990607/A44136-1999Jun7.html], and a paper by Daniel L. Johnson on free software in medical information management.)The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) An impassioned but carefully put together argument for use of GNU/Linuxby the CBAA [DEAD http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~matthewa/cbaa/cbaa-server.html]. Arguing on both technical and ethical grounds, most ofthis is directly relevant to development organisations.The open source movement, and Linux is particular, are massive volunteernon-profit projects which share the spirit of community media. It's aradical alternative movement creating successful mainstream software. Infact, it's the same movement that produced the software that the internetrevolution depends on. Now the movement has produced a cutting edgetechnology which suits the CBAA's needs far better than the commercialcompetition. The technology is Linux. A Linux server is one the CBAAcould be proud of. (Also mentioned in a Newswire story on the politics of software [DEAD http://newswire.com.au/9902/polit.htm].)Conclusion and RecommendationsThe free software movement embodies principles consistent with thoseof Community Aid Abroad and Oxfam International. Free software productsare tools which fit the needs of Oxfam International members, in manycases better than alternative proprietary products.It is therefore recommended that:Development organisations should include software in their policieson ethical purchasing and appropriate technology; such policies shouldencourage the use of free software. Development organisations should encourage and assist projectpartners in the deployment of software systems that will enable them to"take control of their own destiny" and to reduce their dependence onthe developed world. They should consider the major advantages freesoftware has in this area.Development organisations should ultimately try to free themselvesfrom the shackles of proprietary software. Danny Yee <danny@anatomy.usyd.edu.au>The author is one of the CommunityAid Abroad webmasters, a board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia, and anemployee of Sydney University.But the opinions expressed in this paper are personal and do notnecessarily reflect the policies of any of these organisations.Thanks to Cameron Tampion, Mike Gifford, Charlie Brady, Greg Taylor,Ronni Martin, and Richard Stallman for feedback on this document.Copyright (C) 1999 Danny YeeVerbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permittedin any medium, provided this notice is preserved.Free Software Advocacy <<Danny Yee |
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