Free your web: Part 1 – Intro
The last question I asked Simon Martin in his interview got me thinking. I asked him whether the choice of Google as a search engine provider compromised the aim of promoting Free Software.
I’ve always tried to pick web sites that run Free Software, such as phpBB forums and preferring ibiblio.org/webster or Wiktionary, but it’s not really been as part of a conscious decision. I’ve never sat down and thought that I’m only going to use web sites that run Free Software, but recently I’ve started to realise this issue’s importance.
That was one of the reasons I moved this blog from Blogger to Blogsome. You can see some of my thoughts at the time in my "Blog Move" post. It was also behind my recent decision to move my web mail from GMail to ippimail.
I’ve been guilty of using the convenient web services, such as Google, but I want to start putting that right.
For that reason, I’ve decided to write this series of posts, called “Free your web”, which will look at what Free Software web services are out there. I’ll also go into some depth about web search and some ideas about what can be done to make a competitive Free Software search engine.
This issue has also been discussed on the gNewSense mailing list. Try starting here.
Changes
Thinking about web software in the same way as desktop software, there is no doubt in my mind that it should be just as Free. For that reason, I’m giving this blog a freedom audit and some things are going to change.
You know that I want this site to generate some income so that I can spend time developing Free Software; well, I’m going to have to find some different methods.
I use AdSense contextual advertising, and links to products on Amazon. Neither of the corresponding sites are running on Free Software. Until I find suitable replacements, advertising on this site is suspended.
I use Google Analytics to handle the statistics for the site, so I can see which posts are popular, but that will have to go.
I provide a link with each post to enable readers to ‘digg’ it; but digg isn’t Free Software so that too will go. That one’s more of a shame because I’m grateful for those who have ‘dugg’ posts in the past, and it has generated traffic. However, I shall talk about alternatives to digg (and del.icio.us) quite early in this series, so I hope you’ll try them out.
The series
As mentioned above, a good part of this series will talk about web search and some ideas of how a competitive search engine could be made, but these are some of the issues the earlier posts will cover:
- Why should we care?
- Is Google the enemy?
- Business models for Free Software sites.
- Alternatives to digg and del.icio.us.
And we shall finish the series with an interview with LinuxQuestions.org founder, Jeremy. LinuxQuestions.org runs Linux Bookmarks, a successful alternative to del.icio.us.
I hope you’ll stick with this. I think it could be one of the most important issues facing Free Software at the moment.
Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Michael J Kaye.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the content of this blog post under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
Hi, it’s good to see how committed you are to software freedom. I was listening to a recent speech by Richard Stallman the other day (http://www.hosef.org/media/audio/PFOSSCON-RichardStallman-2007.01.20.ogg), and he had a very interesting response to a question about this subject. He said that in order to have freedom over your own computing, you shouldn’t use anyone else’s copy of any software to do it, because you can’t control what it does, whether the software is free or proprietary. He said that even if the software is free, and the person gives you a copy, you still can’t change what their copy does, and rightly so.
He said that you therefore shouldn’t use any webmail, web office applications or any other software like that for your own computing, if you want complete control over it. However, he said he didn’t see anything wrong with something like a search engine, because that’s a group’s computing, not just yours individually, which you can’t do on your own computer anyway.
I think these are very good arguements which you should take into account with your articles on this subject.
Thanks,
Guy
Comment by Guy Johnston — March 5, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
Thank you for that link. It’s a good speech.
Essentially, he rules out using any web applications, because they all retain your data, and you can’t control them. I’m not talking about static web sites here. I accept what he says about becoming tied to the likes of word processing web service, if they hold your documents on their server. If I was to use such a service, I would want to process documents on my local machine (if that application is Free Software, I can, of course, add that feature and submit it for other users to enjoy). However, I don’t think we can ignore web applications. This is the direction in which software is moving; and it is right for Free Software to be at the cutting edge of that movement. I believe we can also do this in freedom.
If we can find web applications that have acceptable policies regarding our data, I think that most ordinary users will be in the same position they are with desktop applications. They don’t have the programming skills to change their software, and so have to rely on that application’s developers to add their requested features. Even those of us who do have the skill, normally have to rely in the same way, because of time restraints. Besides, if it came to it, and I really needed that control, I could download a Free web app and run it on my machine, with my desired modifications, or create my own web service. Perhaps we should move towards having web apps that are designed to work with local modifications.
I disagree with the distinction for search engines. Web search, to quote search.wikia.com, is broken. The ranking algorithms, upon which we rely every day, are proprietary, and therefore cannot be trusted. In fact, we already know that high rankings are bought. Free Software can fix this, and make web search a more fair, reliable, and productive experience. Hopefully, we can also assert the “group control” that RMS talked about.
Thank you, Guy, for raising those points. They have already changed some of what will be in the next post. You should find some more answers there. You may find that the posts about web search are also quite relevant.
Michael.
Comment by Michael J Kaye — March 7, 2007 @ 6:09 pm
it may sounds weird, but meanwhile there is a GPL-licensed free Alternative to Google Analytics. It is called piwik and can be found at the website piwik.org.
Found it at a german website called kontrolausschluss.de or so, which seems to have privacy and free software topics.
I am against collecting visitors information, but of course its your choice - I just gave you the info.
Comment by Reader of the Free World — March 9, 2008 @ 6:33 pm