I’ve been thinking about ways to frame “Free software is actually paid software, including literally (if not somewhat deceptively) that” which doesn’t piss people off, even if people disagree. Which given that even bringing this up results in a lot of men in free software circles getting on the defensive, if not acting out in overtly hostile ways, is a challenge.
I think what people don’t always get when I criticize free software is that I’m doing so because of the culture around much of it. The same thing goes for music producing and western classical music traditions.
It’s not that I’m saying that free software itself is bad. Perhaps using “free” in a way that isn’t what “free” as in…well, you know, usually means is not ok, but I think “free as in actually free” as well as “free as in liberating” are both good.
In the not always pleasant world that is software, “free” is rigged to be anything but that, including “as in speech”. It borders on being a scam, but it’s not, because everybody who manages to stay in the room is willing to play along — and if not? “Well, who cares? I guess you can”t cut it.” “So toxic that people just quit en masse, especially if they’re trans, non-binary, queer, not a cis dude, or not white” is as per usual. It’s the same as the worst aspects of the commercial, closed source tech industry, except nobody (or mostly nobody, save for IP holders and infrequently, employees) is getting paid. I’ve seen people try to bring this up, including (fwiw) synth bros at times, and all of that gets shut down by fan boys, or if the discussion happens to be on a forum, the admin.
So then, you’ve spent all this time and effort (and possibly money) into a given project, and for what?
Some software license nerding for a bit: after digging into what “free as in speech” actually means, I came to the conclusion that “free software”, especially in its “purest” form, really is “free as in speech” and nothing but, inferences of additional benefits be damned. The hype around it, and the labor that people volunteer behind it, is definitely more than that, but it’s like the whole thing is gamed to make some of the worst aspects of US copyright law even worse, frequently while enabling whoever holds the IP for the “free” software to act as a sort of petty dictator, just one that has a kind of “frequently inactionable software plebiscite” regarding the code itself. Alternatives exist – heck, even MIT licensing is an alternative in the sense that there’s no hidden or obscured mechanism to game “free” in ways that, much like “free” speech, push things back towards hegemonic stakeholders, although MIT arguably is one that benefits the same privileged classes/demographics, or worse, overtly as well. In other words, the idea that corporations are “freeloaders” who cower at the idea of their precious code being publicly available is at least a somewhat valid point, and as such, an OK argument for more restrictive “free” licenses, such as GNU. That said, the overt anti-corporate mechanism embedded into some “free and open source” licenses can be not as applicable as it may seem, especially in practice. Besides, arguing with FOSSbros about the limits of ideologically driven free software is like arguing with flat earthers about applied geometry. In any case, licenses can be their own kind of cluster headache.
In my “not a lawyer” opinion, open access to a functioning product released as a pre-compiled binary (regardless of whether or not the code itself is free), along with pricing tiers relative to how much money a business or individual makes using it (which is already true for many software titles, including Reaper) is a lot closer to actual parity and fairness, overall. Given that having code-level access in and of itself is a positive effort, this is sort of disappointing — but it seems to be holding out as the best practical alternative in practice at this point in this regard.
There’s an intent in this approach towards creating social and economic scale, if not parity, in other words, rather than solely relying on ‘free as in speech”. It’s closer to things such as equitable ratios in pay between the least-paid and most-paid in a given company. Unfortunately, parity and fairness in “free” software was never the goal; if anything, all revenues (both cultural and as it turns out, economic) default back to the original IP. Which is a lot like how “free speech” gets used to enable and further empower white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Software that’s marketed on the basis of equity still doesn’t address pay gaps based on factors such as race, gender, class or ability, but it’s a start.
In addition, there’s a sort of taboo around bringing any of this up. The deflection if not hostility is usually almost immediate, and scales to how close you get to the gaggle of dudes that are at the core of such things, power and influence-wise. I’m not saying that someone acting as a “not always benevolent dictator for life” for a given “free” project is equivalent to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos — the same goes for “free” software manufacturers running a very small business that is designed as a for-profit enterprise cashing in on FOSS as a trend. Regardless of that, it still can create a load of hassles, if not legitimate problems for folks, just not Amazon-sized super-disruptor ones. Efforts to address this tend to get dismissed or not get heard at all, unless they’re filtered through someone who is viewed as being “one of us”, especially among folks from a similar demographic. Even then, that’s not as common as outright rejection of concerns.
As a related aside: the same goes for the seemingly more well-intentioned question “Why aren’t there more women around?” — we’re definitely around, just not in your spaces! It’s more like “Why are we shut out” than that. That said, I’m glad that at least efforts are being made to make some synth-focused online spaces more, uh, welcoming to women, as well as posing the question at all in relation to the music business in general.
Making music independently has been and remains a threat to the status quo. Part of that is access to the means of production, in relation to software and/or hardware, but especially software – simply because software tends to be much cheaper, if not free as in “You don’t need money to use it” than its hardware counterparts.
But if “free” is more like “Free, but with a previously unconsidered catch” or “Free as in things that tie up all your time arguing with tech bros” or even “Free as in ‘blogging used to be a thing until Google sort of killed it, but it’s still around'”, that’s not actually free as in…well, anything. Including “freedom”.
