A group of established business operators collude to lock a radical new upstart out of the marketplace (O’Toole, 2013). Does this sound familiar? It should: as proprietary software vendors tried to lock GNU/Linux out of the computer market, traditional car interests are trying to block Tesla Motors’ direct sales business model.

Whether you'd like to admit it or not, the technology industry is undergoing a rapid paradigm shift from traditional desktop computing to mobile platforms that are growing increasingly restrictive. The embrace of an appified mobile web has made for a lucrative business model for numerous startups, but these platforms are, by design, problematic in regards to user freedom and privacy.

Free software is sometimes characterised as extremist because it is implacable and accepts no compromise. Richard Stallman has a simple explanation for why taking and holding a position is important to the long term uptake of an idea which was often dismissed as unrealistic and impractical.

Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age offers a counterpoint to the dominant view that file sharing is piracy, analyzing it rather as the modern form of long recognized rights to share in culture.
Go ahead. Take a copy

A few days ago, I had an epiphany. I, like many of my readers, have spent a good portion of my life advocating for libre software. There has always been a particular glow to the idealistic concept of information flowing through society, and to the possibility of adaptation to a particular context.

Synopsis: Mimi makes a copy of a Beethoven Symphony with a giant copy machine. Trouble starts when Eunice erases Beethoven's name and writes in her own. This makes Eunice look like an ass. Searching the Internet (itself a giant copy machine) confirms that Eunice is a liar.

As computers play an increasingly important role in the way we communicate, the people who control the software that runs on computers play an increasingly important role in determining what we can say, how we can say it, who we can say it to, and when we can say it. Control over technology is power. Free software is an attempt to say that this power should be wielded democratically.

I'm convinced that Linux needs to make greater use of tagging, but I'm also beginning to wonder if desktop Linux could abandon the hierarchical directory structure entirely.