The Missing Software Freedoms

The 21st century highlights the incredible progression of technology: the internet, smartphones, and various technological inventions that provide great convenience to their users. Most notably, software becomes a commonplace in these technological items. While making huge strides in the direction of innovation, modern-day proprietary companies in the United States are seeking more ways of exploiting their users in their software products. Proprietary software, with its source-code hidden from the public and its enforced constraint in distribution, becomes an everyday item that every software user is used to nowadays. As a response to the unethical foundation of proprietary software, free software, software that grants its user freedoms to use, study, modify, and distribute the software piece ("What is Free Software"), is on its way to fight back the lost freedoms. Although proprietary software is more popular among everyday users, software users who care about freedom and privacy should seek free software alternatives due to free software's respect of its users' and developers' cyber freedoms and a free society that it promotes.

In the early 1970s, when coding was not as sophisticated as it is now, shipping a software product with its source code attached to its users was the norm. Computer companies such as IBM granted open access to the source code to its average users, knowing that they do not possess the expertise or resources to perform anything on the software that would be detrimental to their business (Williams). Since the 1980s, there has been a gradual turn in the software world: the source code started to become increasingly more complicated, and more businessmen came to realize the increasing value of software (Williams). As a response to protect their "intellectual" property, the corporate leaders decided to enforce non-disclosure agreement on its developers, preventing other tech competitors from taking advantage of their existing code base by keeping the code secret to the public (Williams). While it seems like a strategic business move by the company to prevent overtakes, this act of keeping the source code a secret also directly impacts its users and developers. When companies decide to close-source their software, they inadvertently introduce security concerns to its users due to their unawareness of how the program works exactly and a barrier to the public developers to study and build upon the code. The closing of source code, because of its effectiveness in software monopoly, became more and more popular over the last several decades, during which everyday software users have grown used to such jailing practices of software companies. Witnessing people's rights being taken away in their cyberspace, Richard Stallman, a then MIT AI Lab researcher, initiated the Free Software Movement in 1983: a movement that promotes freedom in software through the openness of its source code and the permissive nature of its distribution (Williams). While this movement has decades of history, nowadays, proprietary software greatly outnumbers free software in the average user group: in the desktop operating system market, the free software operating system, GNU/Linux, is only about 2%, where Windows is 73.7% and macOS 15.3% (Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide); although Android, a mobile operating system that uses the free Linux kernel, accounts for 70.96% of the mobile operating system market (Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide), the Google services employed by the core software that it comes with are mostly associated with proprietary networks (Leom). While there exists the abundance and prevalence of proprietary software, most software companies are also proprietary. More than two thirds of the corporations are using proprietary software for more than 50% of their product ("Open Source vs Proprietary").

The reasons why most of the daily-used software applications are proprietary is the proprietary companies' attempt in creating technology monopolies through user-focused innovation and advertising effort. Aiming to gain significant profit, software companies create appealing proprietary features in software to secure a large everyday software users group. In 2011, Apple launched FaceTime, a proprietary software that allows face-to-face video conferencing between two end users; due to the unprecedented feature it brings, this new innovation gained large popularity (Tibken). Similarly, the Amazon app makes shopping online one click away; YouTube allows people from all over the world to share video content on the internet with little hassle. These innovative creations are the selling points of these proprietary companies: with exclusive right of selling their product secured by restrictive patents or copyrights, they draw millions of users and are highly profitable (McWhinney). Free software developers, on the other hand, do not feel the need to monopolize a product for profiting purposes; instead, they favor free software projects due to their desire to learn more about software (Chopra et al.). While developers prefer free software more than proprietary software because of the pedagogical value free software brings, the market of free software in the average software user group is small due to the monopolies proprietary software companies have already created. Free software alternatives to their proprietary counterpart are usually lesser known and thus not able to win the customers over due to the lack of advertisement or reputation. Mainstream free software, not corporately owned, does not have a dedicated professional marketing team for building eye-catching advertisements for features that are seen in proprietary software. In comparison, an average proprietary software company has a budget about 10% of the revenue for their marketing activities (Shepetyuk). When the advertisement combined with appealing software features, the proprietary companies are able to generate more profit and invest more money for further development and marketing, gradually snowballing the market.

Unlike proprietary software, which considers profiting as the primary goal, the freedoms granted by free software ensures code quality and customizability. Software developers are able to freely study how a piece of free software works behind the scenes ("What is Free Software"). Thus, when a public programmer comes up with a more efficient algorithm for a piece of free software, he can freely contribute and benefit the entire project's quality. By cooperating over the development of an existing source code with developers all over the globe easily, the process of development also speeds up drastically (Oehmke). This healthy open development can be found in the GNU/Linux operating system: 27.8 million lines of its code are contributed by the software engineers from around the world (Bhartiya). This huge contribution power across countries makes the operating system robust, fast, and stable. Nowadays, 96.3% of the top 1,000,000 web servers use the Free GNU/Linux operating system (Elad) due to its superior code base and efficient algorithms. GNU/Linux excels in computing because of its free software nature: the most powerful supercomputers also run on GNU/Linux. Because free software allows the users to modify the source code as he/she wishes ("What is Free Software"), free software is also greatly customizable. In comparison, proprietary software, with its source code hidden, is often inflexible and can only be customized in limited aspects (Castilloe).

In addition to better code quality, free software provides its users with a wider range of choices, instead of forcing them to stick with one single software provider while being charged for variable fees. There has been an effort made by free software communities to create free software alternatives for commonly used proprietary software ("High Priority Free Software Projects."). Existing replacements are available such as GIMP or Krita for Adobe PhotoShop, thousands of GNU/Linux distributions as opposed to macOS or Windows, Android AOPS instead of iOS. These pieces of software are all developed by the community: no one entity owns it, or another way to put it, everyone owns it thanks to their equal rights to freedom in these software pieces. This way, free software also ensures people from developing countries also get to enjoy the commons of software due to the high price proprietary software counterparts have (Chopra et al.). Proprietary software, on the other hand, tries to addict its users to their product. The addiction coming from proprietary software can be easily seen in children. Youngsters who use the Windows early in their lives gradually develop dependence on the proprietary operating system (Stallman).

Moreover, the freedom of code access ensures code security for the users. By the definition of free software, when a new innovative piece of free software is released, everyone has open access to it and can use it as he/she wishes ("What is Free Software"). Due to its openness, free software is often less prone to issues or security flaws. As Linus Torvalds, the free software Linux's initiator, put it, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (Oehmke). Therefore, users can safely use free software, knowing that due to its nature of open source, developers from all over the world could spot the holes and patch them before any malicious programmer could exploit any of them. In contrast, proprietary software refuses to publish its source code and prevents any distribution without monetary conditions from the company, making it hard to trust what the proprietary program actually does. This practice also arouses other development and privacy concerns while limiting customers' freedom in choosing which software to use. When a proprietary software stores users' info in their centralized servers, when a breach appears, all data would be compromised. There have been multiple reported large-scale proprietary data leaks in 2022. In July, Twitter confirmed a major data breach: the data of 5 million users were leaked from this event (Aadeetya). More recently on November 16, Jurgita Lapienytė, chief editor of Cybernews, reported that WhatsApp leaked 487 million user records (Lapienytė). On the other hand, because free software services are decentralized, meaning the users have exclusive control over their data, when one server is down, it would not affect other peers. The free software for online messaging, Matrix, has "no central point - anyone can host their own server and have control over their data" ("What is Matrix"). The hacker-proof code and decentralized construct of free software applications ensures most users' data to stay intact from breaches.

Although free software ensures security, critics commonly contend that, because they do not have anything to hide in their devices, the security in software does not matter too much. This is, however, a flawed argument. Like walking on a tightrope, one does not feel the pain until he/she falls. People oftentimes do not realize the importance of privacy until their loss of privacy directly causes something unpleasant to happen. Digital privacy, physically intangible, makes it even harder for people to realize its importance. Proprietary software exploits people's lack of knowledge in digital privacy and poses potential danger given that its source code is unavailable in public. With the software companies holding 44 zettabytes of user data (Barrett), there is unlimited potential of unethical activities that they could perform with them without the users' knowledge. Proponents of proprietary software might argue that Apple advertises for privacy in their product. However, this argument does not capture the whole picture. When proprietary software companies claim that their users have "privacy", what the users actually have, at most, is the barrier from a third agent other than Apple to steal or manipulate users' information. But due to the closed-source nature, Apple has the power to peek and perform unjust manipulations with the user data while the data creators are fully unaware how their data is being involuntarily used. In fact, Apple looks at email history for sensitive information from its cloud databases (Ballenger), indicating that the company does indeed have direct access to their users' data. Even if the software companies promise they will not manipulate the data for now, it still poses potential issues when in an extended amount of time period, the users' data are still at the company's disposal, in which the data creators would most likely not get any credit for the profit sharing their data brings upon signing the privacy agreement the first time they open the application.

Other critics of free software often emphasize the fact that developing Free software is a supererogatory act, comparable to charity, that has little economic value when everyone has access to it for free (Rappaport). Nevertheless, open source companies such as Red Hat, Inc. thrive to profit billions of dollars by promoting open source software. Facing the rising closed-source giants such as Microsoft and Apple in the early 90s, Red Hat was confident in the openness of their unique business model. As the founder of Red Hat, Bob Young, put it, "You never buy a car when the hood is permanently closed" (Oehmke), emphasizing the trust factor that customers value in open source software. Heavily engaged with the free software communities, Red Hat took advantage of the efficiency in cooperative software development in the open-source community. By encouraging building free software products upon existing ones already maintained by the community, Young described the software development in Red Hat was "like a car assembly plant" (Oehmke), cutting the time in developing basic components from scratch. While the public developers have open access to Red Hats' software products, Red Hat also contributes to other non-corporate-leading free software programs they deem as important (Oehmke), strengthening its bond in the network of the free software communities. Maintaining a healthy software development environment inside the firm, Red Hat also focused on their premium user support subscription program to generate profit. Their user base, centered around computer hackers, was also a main source of the company's development of their projects; users who did not have the time and effort to install their product themselves would have purchased Red Hat's services, contributing a significant amount to the companies' profit margin (Oehmke). This open business model stands out in the typical modern businesses, yet indicates the viability of capitalizing over free software. Relying on customer support offerings and its open-source brand recognitions, the company's revenue continues to climb to this day (Oehmke). This open source model can be successful thanks to the economic potential free software possesses. By using free software, they can cut the expenses from licensing and copyright to account for the free price that the free software product has (Chopra et al.). In fact, more companies are realizing the benefits of free and open source software and are starting their own open projects. Proprietary companies' starting of open-source branches, such as Microsoft's Open Source Labs, are indicative of the positive progress toward a free and open source society (Chopra et al.).

While progress has been made in the direction of a free software society, in order for people to realize the danger of proprietary software and the benefits of free software, the law, education institutions, and companies need to change and act, respectively. The lawmakers in the United States need to consider removing software patents. Because the U.S. patent law restricts the use of an idea, when common software algorithms are patented, software engineers will have a hard time avoiding the algorithms' code so as not to get into any legal trouble. This greatly hinders the development of free software (Chopra et al.). If more software ideas are patented, it would be harder for individuals to innovate upon the things already existing, while worsening the monopolizing situations that companies with patents create. Additionally, the idea of software freedom needs to be instilled at a young age through education institutions. It is crucial that schools use all free software in their systems. Growing up, most children have limited concepts of free vs proprietary software: they would most likely gauge their level of preference based on the usability, functionality, and other apparent features of the software rather than the social justice aspects. But when the world is full of proprietary blobs, it is hard for free software to stand out and fight the battle for freedom. Schools should, instead of forcing its students to use a Google account, seek other free software alternatives out there such as microG (Leom). This way, students would have their right to software freedom intact early on in their lives, while not developing dependence on proprietary software. Consequently, more people would realize the danger of proprietary software at a young age. Moreover, software companies need to consider making more free software instead of proprietary software. By shifting to free software development, companies not only benefit from the monetary values of free software, but also contribute to addressing injustice in software freedoms by promoting free software (Chopra et al.). With these changes being made, the number of proprietary software could shrink tremendously, and more people would be engaging with free software, claiming back their digital freedoms.

Although proprietary software does present appealing short-term convenience, the development of software should not signal the deprivation of fundamental human rights. Just like the United States, many other countries, too, are heading toward a cyber dystopia created by proprietary software. What proprietary software promotes is a centralized society, where one major entity controls all. Free software, decentralized in nature, provides everyone with equal power of freedoms. When free software replaces all proprietary software, there is not only the regain of freedoms but also more chances of innovation due to free software's focus on utilitarianism. The Free Software Movement not only signals a regain of human rights, but also emphasizes the importance of commons of knowledge, in which we humans have thrived by building upon existing ideas. The world outside the proprietary jail is not barbarism: it is the world of free software.

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