Iszimation - Free Software Foundation

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Spirituality

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What is the FSF? I recently went to the University of Virginia Colloquia to see speaker Richard Stallman talk about free software--free as in free speech not free beer. While his ideas have been around for two decades, they are fairly fresh and new in my head, as are they in many of my programming peers. Ideas that question:

1. What is software?
2. What is freedom?
3. How is society enslaved by this?

I will first admit, I am a pervert of information either free or otherwise, but so are we all I think. The software we use, which even though may not be free, is used freely to create information that may or may not be free. Herein is the paradox of freedom. Thinking polymorphically, software may be thought of as derived from abstract class BaseInformation which implements some interface IKnowledge. If I write software, the tools I used to write said software are from sources that some of which are not freely available to me. Yes, I accept that the absence of this freedom coordinately creates oppositional enslavement, but the information I create with said tools must itself be subjected to a choice between disclosure and nondisclosure, freedom and enslavement, less I too be enslaved by "Free" contracts (GNU, BDL. etc) enforcing me to always disclose even when I freely desire not to. Such is irony that to enforce freedom is not freedom. Let's take a step deeper and propose that all software is information, as is all the information floating around in your head at any given place-moment in space-time. If demand states that information must be free, after all, software must as well, then so must every thought you occur to have must be free as well. This works well, in theory, as long as the theory does not entertain the idea that information is simultaneously packet-ized as it is interdependently streamed. So when I share an aspect of information with anyone, that packet is interdependent with packets I do not wish to share (secrets if you will), such is my freedom to impose or not. To operate in freedom would consequently enforce that all information I contain be rendered free to the totality of knowledge as we are capable of co-experiencing. I don't think I want those I share something with to have access to everything it depends on. Stepping back up a bit, if I share software with another, must I surface every line of code if even one line I desired to be is a secret? Does this infringe on my right to "free silence"? Perhaps the conundrum of freedom is a bit more clear. What does society want?

Though, with all that philosophical quagmire behind, free software is an inspiring idea nonetheless. Quite simply it offers individuals the choice to to accept another's information, or deny it for whatever reasons. Within this seed of choice-based action is the likely hood for growth and propensity toward natural selection of those open ideas over those that are closed. Over time, if society so recognizes the choice, the containers of humanity will evolve to favor only open ideas. If this is the trend then information based behavior at the individual level will be sought by those holding no shame in the public domain. The concept of sin, iniquity, defiance (which suggests rebelion) would fall obsolete and be reflected upon like bones in a museum. This is what appears as the underlying vibration spoken by the FSF promotes as a likelihood for humanity, willful disclosure of all information.

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