Overtaking Proprietary Software Without Writing Code

"a few rough insights on sharpening free software". This lecture was given by Olivier Cleynen at the CCC in December 2007. The points in it were very good and remain relevant more than a decade later.

Olivier makes many good points. This one kind of stuck: Most people have a car with four tires. They mostly don't care what kind of tires or what brand they are, most don't even know. They got their tires with their care and they don't care what kind of tires they have as long as they work and get job done. The same applies to software: Most don't choose their own software and they don't care as long as it's there and it works. This is a challenge for free software; most people just use what's pre-installed and are happy with that. He makes many more good points, it's worth watching the video.

Free or "Open-Source" software, and in particular Linux, is doing extremely well technically. However, it fails to secure a significant portion of the protected, lucrative software market, especially for end-users.

Can Free Software finally make a full entry into our society? The main obstacles to overcoming the domination of proprietary software, most of them non-technical, require thinking outside of code-writing. "Overtaking Proprietary Software Without Writing Code" will relate experience gained from the activities of the GNU/Linux Matters non-profit, and provide some hands-on advice for community members, taking a handful of relevant examples.

Olivier Cleynen has a personal website, with a blog, at ariadacapo.net.

See also: Balancing liberties, privacy, and accessibility (by Cleynen, April 2020)

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