As promised yesterday, I will report on the struggle many of us face as free software enthusiasts and activists, when it comes to living by our values. Before I continue, I want to stress that here I am expressing my own personal views; I am writing as Marianne, not as a board member with April or a spokesperson for the Free Software Movement.

As Nat tried setting up a fully FLOSS1 gaming environment, she run into many technical issues, because there is always a piece of software which is unstable, conflicting with other dependencies, or something. And even though she is motivated, talented, and currently available to dig deeper, troubleshoot, and patch, this is just frustrating.

I have experienced similar journeys myself, and Nat is certainly not the first person to open up to me about this (it is hard because we do not wish to give free software any bad press). Nat identified very rightfully that it would take a manual on how to deal with frustration, guilt, and other emotions which arise in the context of running, promoting, and defending free software.

First of all, she asked me whether I knew of such a resource; I do not. It might be a good project to put one together… Although, ultimately, my personal preference is to turn to classical culture. The question at hand is one of ethics. So, how is it that I keep this radiant smile on my face, while promoting and defending free software?

The answer is that I am a political activist first and foremost. My goal is not to win a virtue contest. My goal is not to ensure that I only run free software while the rest of the world runs Microsoft and Apple products2. My goal is to create the legal and cultural conditions for free software to flourish and proprietary software to perish.

  1. Free/Libre and Open Source Software. 

  2. Note that this blog still runs via GitHub, which is being acquired by Microsoft…