I though it would be best if I go through why I believe floss/foss ethics are important. Technology is ubiquitous in our world, where every part of our life has been digitised or implanted with technology to some degree. These technologies are usually under strong restrictions by their original manufactures by the us of warranties, patents and bespoke software and hardware controls. These features are in the technology to stop the user from having full control over their technology, with the user eventually being controlled by the device or being a controlled aspect of the design.
Proprietary software have been copyrighted and patented so that if you like a piece of software and you know someone could benefit from it, you aren't allowed to give them a copy. This idea of protection of the software for the sack of the corporation goes against an important aspect of computers, of the copy. The copy was one of the most important feature in which it allowing us to develop better technologies and to spread of knowledge. Proprietary software also denies you access to the source code so you can't fix problems and modify it to suit your needs better, it becomes a point of making do with what is given to you. Richard Stallman (rms) found this a problem in 1980 when he had problems with a printer which always jammed and he wasn't able to fix it due to the closed source. In 1985 rms produced the GNU manifesto (http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html) in response to this problem of proprietary software. GNU is based around the idea of the golden rule, which is “that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it”.
In creating the GNU the “Free Software Foundation” was also formed to advocates for free software ideals as outlined in the Free Software Definition. Which is Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
Freedom 1:The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
In our connective world, we need to set up standards and rules that allow us to communicate between different area's of the world. Like http and tcp, these protocols allow the internet to work. This standards need to be open and freely available so that people on the networks are able to communicate with one another easily and with no problem of miscommunication. If these standards where proprietary then there would be strong restrictions over how and who can use them, it would also lead to communication problems. When you use a document format like doc or pdf you expect to be able to use the file on any computer with out a problem. If these formats where not open standards then you would have problems or even not be able to access these file's data from different computers, specially if they don't have the same system set.
Our ubiquitous world relies and has been created around the Floss/Foss ethics even before they where defined. So the idea of restricting our access to how these technologies work at any level could damage our relationship with these technologies. The art group “Critical Art Ensemble”(CAE) describes this act of restriction in one of their essays, they said “The corporate futurologists talk of evolution, revolution, new horizons and global vision. Well, their global vision is blinding me. My computer has a program that counts my keystrokes. It watches me all the time, and tells me when I am not working hard enough. It's like the computer is my boss. Every time I leave my computer, I return to find a message “insufficient data entry” posted on the screen. What's really frightening is that I've actually begun to care. I hesitate to leave my workstation for any reason. I question, and even ignore, my own needs and desires, and instead concern myself with the demands of my computer.”
GNU Manifesto http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
Free Software Definition http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org/
Critical Art Ensemble, 1996. Tactical Media. In: Alberro, A., 2009. Institutional Critique : an anthology of artists' writings, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. Pp 432-439
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