Re: [emacs-humanities] Has Emacs made you appreciate software freedom?

[Christian Tietze]

Studying philosophy was many moons ago -- and in this thread there are
quite a few complicated, maybe even "loaded" terms. I don't know if we
agree on a shared understanding because they are so 'big'. For
context, I again skimmed the opinion pieces Prot linked to (esp
links 1 & 2, the reactions to Babel). I'll just try to not read too
much or too little into these terms and avoid whichever I can.

Like the questions seem to intend, the answers are personal, and not
at all general advice.

> Has Emacs made you appreciate software freedom? [Subject]

> Do you think that Emacs helped/helps you value your liberties, as
> those apply to your day-to-day computer experience?

I don't think it changed anything like that for me, really. "Value my
liberties", no; maybe I think of "civil liberties" too much when I
read this, though.

If I was no software dev, I probably wouldn't know how to tinker with
Emacs, and maybe had no need to. Since I am, though, I don't feel any
different since I got to know "The Emacs Experience"(tm) ;)

Without mentors to help me think in code when I was 13, and the
internet to teach me e.g. pixel art basics, game dev algorithms, and
sharing sources and then discussing and helping each other online, who
knows what would've become of me instead. I think this is essential.
It makes everything related to coding so much better than not sharing
knowledge, not sharing results, not offering tools for the next person
to get to where you are now just a bit faster.

> Do you believe that there is something to be learnt from Emacs and be
> applied to other parts of life?  Could/should, for instance,
> scientific research be conducted and publicised in a free,
> collaborative fashion?

Scientific research, yes; every-day effects I'll mention in a minute.

The Open Access problem looks similar to the OSS problems mentioned in
OP's linked articles: without Open Access, the public is paying
researchers to do research, then researchers hand their paper to a
journal, the journal now puts the result behind a paywall online and
sells the print version at high subscription cost back to the
University libraries, so the public effectively pays *double*. The
middlemen take (extort?) money. Of course the public also benefits
from the results being published. (I believe the public would benefit
more if it was avialable freely, and that any layperson should have
access to the information. Building upon other people's work is a
(the?) driver of progress, and if anyone can join in the scientific
progress, everyone could benefit. Sounds nice on paper, at least.)

Now to learn from open source/Emacs for our lives in general?

I think it's the other way around since forever.

My personal history with open source and learning to code stems from
coding for fun to make computer games, for whatever reason. Let's just
say tinkerers do their tinkering. Some want to even do it all day,
every day, and then have to figure out how to make a living off of
this, through trade/commerce.

The mentality of the tinkerer or craftsperson can be found in
programming aka 'hacking', when people share schematics for 3D
printing for cool gadgets, and when people e.g. love to craft with
wood/stone/metal/... -- I fail to imagine how to apply anything from
Emacs/F(L)OSS to the real world of wood-working, though.

Sharing videos online to participate in the public exchange of ideas,
to show mad wood-working skillz etc., sure, that does exist. One could
argue that Bibis Beauty Palace (German YouTube) is a labor of love for
cosmetic enhancements and sharing true life-hacks not dissimilar to a
craftsperson sharing how to sand a table to make it beautiful. The
content is available as a recipe to make this for yourself (with
yourself, even). Same with sports/fitness, cooking, music, meditation,
yoga, and programming. -- TL;DR: You can learn anything online for free.

Also, daily interaction in real life come first, Emacs is just a
distant afterthought. Everyone is educating everybody else all the
time in some sense. When we interact, we express how we see the world,
and e.g. children pick this up and form their expectations, too. That
often doesn't have a price. It just happens.

With regard to Babel, I think the following is how you'd say it in
English but I might be stating things wrong: nobody is entitled to
receive money for the things they share. I still had hoped Babel would
do better, money-wise, because they *earned* it. But apparently not
enough people/companies want to give back.

In a similar vein, I never *paid* my parents for nurturing me to become
self-sufficient. They helped me get through years of being too stupid to
even hold a spoon to feed myself :) Not only did I need their time and
attention, keeping me alive also did cost them. One *could* make this
into a trade, sum up the cost, then I pay off my debt. Not that I want
to encourage this.

On a cultural level, we do have means to 'give back' sometimes.
Superficially, we have birthdays to celebrate loved ones. And we have
e.g. Mother's Day. Consumerism/flower purchases aside, it's a day
dedicated to honor a person that gave you your life. Nice. I believe
it's not an accident this gained more traction than, say, honoring the
major of your city; I'd argue it's *evident* that one's mother is, for
most people, more important, and that everyone wins in the long term
when we don't de-value the burdens of parenthood.

I'm not sure about the following short summary, but let me try it on for
a while: instead of making the world mimick whatever open source
entails, merely continue replicate what a lot of humans apparently
already do. The open source label might go away, the libre label might
go away, but sharing will stay. Appreciation is nice, be it a pad on the
shoulder or, sometimes but not always, a bag of cash. (A gift freely
given is easier to remember fondly than a badly paid job. Doing real
work in the hopes of getting paid later can lead to disappointment.)

> More generally, do you see a connection between software freedom and
> politics/economics?  Could/should the lessons drawn from Emacs and
> free software in general (especially copylefted) be used as an
> antipode to repressive forces, be they corporate actors or state
> entities?

Not sure what "antipode to repressive forces" entails here, to be honest; like 
as in light vs. shadow, or law vs. crime?

Can you detail what brought this question to your mind? I could wildly 
associate things here, but I don't see a connection of sharing my code online 
with toppling tyrannical regimes.

I also don't see how the software I sell without publicizing its code 
*prevents* toppling regimes, either. An example: Developer Brent Simmons wanted 
to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia wherever he could in 2018:

> Is there an App Store for Saudi Arabia? I don’t personally have any
> apps on the App Store — but if I did I’d make them unavailable
> there. It’s totally a-okay for businesses and individuals to impose
> our own sanctions. We should, in fact.
(Source: 
http://inessential.com/2018/11/21/is_there_an_app_store_for_saudi_arabia_i)

After discussing this with a friend, we came to the conclusion that if
I did this, it would *prevent* people to make things better with the
power of my software (however minuscule the chance), which doesn't
make sense to me. In short, it would punish the peasant for the crimes
of his lord. Not a fan.

That's also an important point of 'access for everybody' I hadn't
considered before. But it doesn't require an open source license to
talk with friends about morality and the consequences of one's
actions.

To add something on the 4-point-list about Emacs:

Tinkering with the open source of a 'real', existing application
instead of tinkering on game code as a hobby got me into software dev
in 2010.[1] Still I am way more happy that Emacs is extensible at
runtime and documented so well to facilitate exploration once you get
a hang of it. I would use Emacs just as much if the source code was
closed and the extensibility still there: I don't want to go into the
Emacs source to make changes and then maintain a fork of the code,
merging upstream changes back into it, etc. -- I claim that this
factor is largely irrelevant, except for e.g. software like the stuff
made on suckless.org, i.e. software that's *designed* to be changed at
the source code level instead of being configured. I value my init.el
and thus all the open source packages and themes more than the open
source of the application.

That's easy to claim when Emacs is, in fact, open source and folks all
around the globe help make it run on any conceivable computer. How'd
that work with closed source? Probably not at all. Just like my apps
are only available for 1 platform because nobody can start porting the
code to other platforms in their free time.

[1]: https://christiantietze.de/posts/2010/10/markdown-hud-nv/

Thanks for the prompts to think about all this, Prot!

Cheers,
Christian

----
Sent from Bielefeld, Germany <3
https://christiantietze.de