Antifeatures

From Benjamin Mako Hill’s article Antifeatures, in the Free Software Foundation Fall 2007 Bulletin:

An antifeature, in the way I use the term, is functionality that a technology developer will charge users to not include… DRM and Treacherous Computing systems are, in many ways, extreme examples of antifeatures. Users don’t want either and they are hugely expensive and extremely difficult for developers to implement.

Region-coded DVDs, copy-protection measures, and Apple’s optional DRM music store–where users initially paid more for the DRM-free tracks–are also excellent examples. It takes a large amount of work to build these systems and users rarely benefit from or request them. Like blackmail (emphasis Pete’s), users can sometimes pay technology providers to not include an antifeature in their technology

Unfortunately, for the companies and individuals trying to push antifeatures, users increasingly often have alternatives in free software. Software freedom, it turns out, makes antifeatures impossible in most situations… Ultimately, the absence of … antifeatures form some of the easiest victories for free software. It does not cost free software developers anything to avoid antifeatures. In many cases, doing nothing is exactly what users want and what proprietary software will not give them.

This is an excellent example of what I mean when I talk about effectively marketing Free Software. It is not enough to simply say, “Try our product! We can do everything the other guy can do!” People already have something that does that, it’s the other guy’s product.

Where we can win, and where we must win, is in features that the proprietary software camp simply cannot match ever, due to the very nature of their business. There will never be Free Software adware, because somebody will code around it. Clicking on “About MS Word” will never give you a link to the developers’ personal email addresses. And my favorite example, the Debian repositories and the package management concept as a whole. Tens of thousands of Free Software applications, wrapped up, delivered, installed, and ready to run in seconds, for zero dollars. Those of us who take such a modern wonder for granted should really stop and examine what it means from the perspective of someone coming over from the other side.  “I can shop for software at three in the morning, naked and drunk off my ass? And it doesn’t cost me any money? Awesome!”

Proprietary software companies can’t touch this stuff, either because it would destroy their business model or because they’d just get their asses sued off. And that’s their Achilles Heel. I just named three features, off the top of my head, that proprietary software is not only not competing on, they can’t.

And this is how we win.

-p.

KDE 4: “Be Free”

A brief excerpt from Aaron Seigo’s blog:

a theme for our KDE4 promotion campaigns was also unveiled using the slogan “Be Free”. It was a long time arriving at those two small words… a lot of thought and planning in behind this. The core of the idea is that the freedom aspects of our software is a unique attribute of our projects, something our proprietary competitors can’t really match..

This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Stallman said in his essay Why Free Software is better than Open Source, “At present we have plenty of “Keep Quiet,” but not enough freedom talk.” There’s a commonly held (but still false) assumption among FOSS folks that Joe User doesn’t care about freedom. That’s a lie, it’s an excuse, and it hurts us.

Joe doesn’t know what freedom means. Why not? Because we have failed to explain it to him. Failed and failed and failed again. That’s job #1 here at Guerrilla Tech, it’s what I started doing this for. Spinning cubes aren’t going to win the battle for hearts and minds, people. They’re cool, I’m not trying to shit on spinning cubes, but they will not win the battle.

Here’s the bottom line. A very simple three step plan for everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present “How We Win:”

Show them that it’s better.

Show them that it’s free.

Show them that it’s better because it’s free.

Anyway, my hearty applause to those involved in this campaign for KDE! I very much look forward to seeing this (and the entire KDE4 project) unfold in the months to come!