The Imperative of Free Software

[Davis Remmel via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>]

Dear all,

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but I am really tired of the 
ultra-wealthy.

They are a self-enriching plutocracy, and I mean that in the most 
literal sense. I am not just throwing fancy words around. I mean: the 
rich use their riches to woo and shoo ordinary folks to enriching them 
even more by stoking fear and influencing the public's collective 
actions through their control of mass media. Our entire country has been 
captured by a legitimate plutocracy, a society ruled by the wealthiest, 
which is fundamentally an existential threat to the mass' ability to 
democratically govern ourselves.

I don't know how to fix the mess that's already been created, but I do 
know that without free software, the masses are forever captive to their 
wealthy overlords. The exchange of information and work, and therefore 
the core of society, is totally controlled by the decisions of software. 
That software and its control, today, is dominantly proprietary and 
unaccountable.

Software control is social control. That it, too, was ever thought legal 
that one could posses not only a billion dollars of wealth, but a 
billion dollars of sole discretion, was the greatest swindle ever 
pulled. The amplification of the wealthiest's messages through 
proprietary technology, and their ability to censor, quell dissent, and 
influence public opinion give them unthinkable power.

Today, the masses will get fucked by them. Tomorrow, the masses will get 
fucked again, forgetting about today's. And this will repeat.

Some of the population, perhaps, even desire being controlled, and feel 
comfortable and cradled, without worry. These people are authoritarians; 
if not overt authoritarians, then submissive ones. And this behavior is 
anti-social, anti-liberty, and contrary to American values.

And, I feel so horribly grossed that the wealthiest's schemes keep 
working every goddamn day. I am _exhausted_ of living with the richest's 
wooing and shooing, and my constitutional liberties, which I dearly 
treasure and which legions of people died to leave me with, discarded 
because nearly everyone else has been intentionally and subliminally 
feared into authoritarian, corporate comfort. The masses don't have the 
vocabulary or time to gaze at the power structures that control them, or 
if they do then still be helpless and too socially weak to do anything 
about it, until they finally reach their limit and either submit or bust.

Free software might be the only thing that can restore our republic's 
democratic control. It's cheapness to copy, plus its ratcheting and 
blanketing legal copyleft, catalyzes its propagation and crystalizes the 
power of the people. The only way to break authoritarian manipulation is 
to choose against using their tools and vocabulary, and to stand up for 
what we know to be true, right, and just. Our fears cannot be 
manipulated if we choose against consuming the programming of those who 
stoke them. The decisions and future of our technological society can 
only be free if we choose free software _now_.

Be well,
Davis


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