I’ve been thinking about the whole FLOSS thing after my last few posts. I’d like to try and be a bit more rigorous in pinning down what is perturbing me. I think the issue stems from two sets of arguments.
Firstly:
- I am using Ubuntu because that is what I have used for a while and it gave me a good route in to GNU/Linux and FLOSS
- I want to ‘do the right thing’ and support free software.
- I am concerned about where Canonical is taking Ubuntu (see this article and the follow-up post and comments for a better discussion than I could hope to give here).
Conclusion: Ditch Ubuntu, install a free distro and build up from there.
Corollary: I will, realistically, have to use Windows at work if I do this.
Secondly:
- I’m lucky that my work allow me to use my own laptop at work, and that I can choose to use GNU/Linux on that laptop.
- Ubuntu does everything I need to work effectively at work, except use Outlook for email.
- The totally free distros that I’ve tried don’t, at least not without a fair bit of time spent configuring them (leaving aside issues of having to work with other folks proprietary formats and programs).
- I can’t do the configuring at home as I need to be in the work environment to be able to check that the configuration actually works.
- Time spent configuring is time spent not working.
Conclusion: I can’t work effectively enough with a totally free system, I should stick with Ubuntu.
Corollary: I can carry on using Linux at work if I do this.
Clearly I should keep using Ubuntu and be able to use Linux at work and home. I’m convinced this is the best conclusion, and it’s one I have come to before, but I still feel a nagging doubt that I want to go with conclusion 1. This is where the title of the post kicks in, and where my solution has made itself apparent.
I will offset my ‘proprietary footprint’ in the same way that people offset their carbon footprint. For every proprietary app I have to use, for every closed-format file I have to save, I will donate some code, write some documentation, or evangelise to one more person about FLOSS. It’s time to stop thinking of just me and my setup and to think about being part of the wider community. There are clearly lines to be drawn, and I will always choose the free solution over the proprietary one where I have a real choice. But where that choice is taken away, by IT rules, by having to collaborate where others use non-free tools and files, I will use the non-free, but try and give back to the free community as much as I take away.
This is more positive than being wholly-free myself but not giving anything back to the community, which is where I think I would have ended up if I hadn’t spent so long pondering this. Ideally I’d do both, but I don’t live in an ideal world - this idea feels like a step in the right direction.