[Reader-list] Free Knowledge requires FOSS

[A. Mani]

>From the wikipedia founder's blog
(http://jimmywales.com/2004/10/21/free-knowledge-requires-free-software-and-free-file-formats/
)

Free Knowledge requires Free Software and Free File Formats
By Jimmy Wales

People sometimes ask me why I’m so adamant that Wikipedia must always
use free software, even when in some cases it might be the case that
proprietary software might be more convenient or better suited for
some particular need that we have.

After all, the argument goes, our primary mission is to produce free
knowledge, not to promote free software, and whlie we might prefer
free software on practical grounds (since it is generally best of
breed for webserving applications), we should not be sticklers about
it.

I believe this argument is seriously mistaken, and not on merely
practical grounds, but on grounds of principle. Free knowledge
requires free software. It is a conceptual error to think about our
mission as being somehow separate from that.

What is free knowledge? What is a free encyclopedia? The essence is
something that anyone who understands free software can immediately
grasp. A free encylopedia, or any other free knowledge, can be freely
read, without getting permission from anyone. Free knowledge can be
freely shared with others. Free knowledge can be adapted to your own
needs. And your adapted versions can be freely shared with others.

We produce a massive website filled with an astounding variety of
knowledge. If we were to produce this website using proprietary
software, we would place potentially insurmountable obstacles in front
of those who would like to take our knowledge and do the same thing
that we are doing. If you need to get permission from a proprietary
software vendor in order to create your own copy of our works, then
you are not really free.

For the case of proprietary file formats, the situation is even worse.
It could be argued, though not persuasively I think, that as long as
Wikimedia content can be loaded into some existing free software
easily enough, then our internal use of proprietary software is not so
bad. For proprietary formats, even this seductive fallacy does not
apply. If we offer information in a proprietary or patent-encumbered
format, then we are not just violating our own commitment to freedom,
we are forcing others who want to use our allegedly free knowledge to
themselves use proprietary software.

Finally, we should never forget as a community that we are the
vanguard of a knowledge revolution that will transform the world. We
are the leading edge innovators and leaders of what is becoming a
global movement to free knowledge from proprietary constraints. 100
years from now, the idea of a proprietary textbook or encyclopedia
will sound as quaint and remote as we now think of the use of leeches
in medical science.

Through our work, every single person on the planet will have easy low
cost access to free knowledge to empower them to do whatever it is
that they want to do. And my point here is that this is not some idle
fantasy, but something that we are already accomplishing. We have
become one of the largest websites in the world using a model of love
and co-operation that is still almost completely unknown to the wider
world. But we are becoming known, and we will be known, for both our
principles and achievements — because it is the principles that make
the achievements possible.

Toward that end, it should be a strong point of pride to us that the
Wikimedia Foundation always uses free software on all computers that
we own, and that we always put forward our best effort to ensure that
our free knowledge really _is_ free, in that people are not forced to
use proprietary software in order to read, modify, and redistribute it
as they see fit.

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Best

A. Mani



-- 
A. Mani
ASL, CLC,  AMS, CMS
http://www.logicamani.co.cc