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^rooker
February 6th, 2007, 12:26 PM
I have to deal with proprietary software users a LOT!
It's often hard to explain to them why things should be free, because they cannot grasp the big picture, because they're usually unfamiliar with computer things and technical stuff in general.

So I usually end up inventing some sort of metaphor or fable about the current state of freedom and individuality, regarding computers.

Here's one of them.
It's called "The fiddle and the toy-piano"

I've really tried to keep it short, but classical fairy tales with important messages also aren't, so you might take your time and read this to your kids before they go to bed ;)


----------------------------------
Two kids "Hans" and "Gretel" wanted to learn a musical instrument.
Hans was given an electronic kids piano, and gretel got a fiddle.

Both were eager to learn their instruments and started playing. Hans was able to impress with his electronic toy pretty fast, mostly due to the pre-programmed melodies that came with it, while Gretel only produced ear-torturing squeaks!

Gretel was in desperate need of a teacher, or at least some information about how to handle her new "friend" properly - while Hans found he didn't need a teacher: his kids-piano was playing tunes automatically!


Time passed by and Hans still wasn't really capable of playing more than the pre-programmed tunes that came with his instrument.
Gretel meanwhile has managed to learn how to play impressive melodies with her fiddle.

And because it's more fun playing together, Hans and Gretel joined their instruments together. Unfortunately, Gretel was somehow forced to follow Hans' melodies, because he couldn't just "jam" with his kids-piano.

One day, the manufacturers of electronic kids pianos had an idea:
"What if we promote home-music heavily, but only our electronic kids pianos?"

So they did. And due to clever marketing and advertisement they became leader in the home-music sector. It was soooo easy for everyone now to play an instrument: Just press a button!

Kids in school weren't even offered anymore to play a different instrument than electronic kids pianos, those toys became THE standard.
Since TV and magazines only told about those electrical pianos, kids, parents and teachers didn't even know anymore that other instruments existed, too!

The rest of the industry adapted quickly:
Songs were only written for electronic kids pianos, sheets-of-music were only available anymore for this one brand of instrument.

Manufacturers of other musical equipment slowly ran out of customers, so most of them signed agreements with the electronic kids piano's manufacturer in order to stay in business. They supplied add-ons, melodies and books for it.
Even amplifiers, cables, plugs, etc... were only made for one brand of toy piano anymore.
It became very hard for Gretel and her friends to buy strings, drum sticks, pickups, etc... for their instruments, because almost no shops offered them. When they asked for it, they were only offered equipment for kids pianos...


Now almost everyone had one of those electronic pianos at home, because now everyone could "play" music.... So everyone wanted one of those toys!

In newer versions of that famous electronic kids piano, the manufacturer removed the possibility to play single notes. Why? Because noone wanted
to play them anyway.

Additionally, they crippled the "home" versions of their pianos to limit the number of simultaneously played notes.
Thus, "professional" piano-musicians had to buy more expensive models.
After all, those kids pianos were still toys, but because noone could play real instruments anymore, those toys could now also be found in professional environments.


Gretel became sad, because she knew that there were more songs, melodies and tunes out there to be played, so she started surfing the Internet for other "real" musicians.
She found out that there are numerous other instruments with different sounds, styles and possibilites out there! What an amazing new world!
And those instruments could be played freely. Not like that kids piano which could only play what a new, costly melody-upgrade allowed you to.


So Gretel and some others formed a band, writing impressive songs -but... They hardly found places to perform publicly: Every bar, every festival only wanted electronic kids piano players, because that was what the majority was used to.

Gretel and her friend musicians kept on going and they managed to "infect" others with their way of thinking about the freedom of playing.
The freedom of choice, the freedom that people could make their own music - build their own instruments and play together like they want to.



Unfortunately, the greedy manufacturers of electronic kids pianos became
afraid of this way of thinking, because they would lose their monopoly - and thus, plenty of money!
Since they were filthy rich already, they were able to direct the industry, politicians and media into directions THEY desired - this made it possible to invent new laws, preventing "own music" or improvements of existing tunes by making them illegal.

They even came up with their own, proprietary musical scale - undocumented and kept secret on purpose.


Now Gretel and her friends could not play together with any electrical pianos anymore, because they were out of tune! To their rescue came some musicians with golden ears which reverse-engineered some of the
proprietary tuning of the kids pianos, in order to be able to play together with them.

But as if it wasn't already hard enough for those poor kids to learn and improve playing their instruments, the evil manufacturers of electronic kids pianos slightly changed their musical scale with every new model they put out on the market.

*sigh*

Makers of free musical instruments had a hard time surviving, because when someone bought one of their "real" instruments, they complained that they couldn't handle it like the piano they knew from everywhere else - furthermore, it didn't sound anything like it! (and also most people weren't able to get a single well-sounding note out of it, too...)


Now some of Gretel's friends had the idea that if they'd "clone" those kids pianos, they could address more people out there! So they started bulding their own versions of the famous electronic kids pianos.
They were able to promote them easier than real instruments, but this only led to another set of instrument that limited your possibilities.


Desperately, Gretel went out to promote her fiddle! She got out on the
streets and played in public...
Some stared at her and whispered to each other: "what's that sound? I've
never heard anything like that before. Sounds strange and unfamiliar."

Others, mainly kids-piano-musicians, became interested and asked Gretel
if they could try playing her fiddle, too! But oh no! Suddenly, so-called professional music artists were only able to play "squeeeeks", "pluck sounds" and "chaotic sounding noise"!

They became deeply insulted and damned those "non norm-conform"
instruments, not seeing that it was THEM who couldn't play it - and NOT
the fiddle being broken.

The people were already bound to their electronic toys!

Excellent.... That's the train the evil manufacturers hopped on, and proceeded with their marketing plans.

...and they lived happily ever after until mankind became extinct, due
to lack of music.


"But, how could this happen?" you might ask. "Everyone had toy pianos!
They WERE making music!"
Indeed, but the people who originally programmed melodies into those devices and others, who were responsible for tuning the instrument became old and their knowledge got lost.

Noone learned this knowledge in school or in universities, because it was proprietary, patented good of the electronic-piano manufacturer.
Those with knowledge about building and playing real instruments have become extinct. Leaving the rest of the world with only a handful of songs: the ones on the existing toy pianos.

Unfortunately, those pianos have intentionally been made in a way that they would, after a certain amount of time, turn themselves off.
Forever... - Forcing music artists all over the globe to buy new ones!
But NOW, there were none left.

Almost all melodies ever created by men and women were locked away in a pile of electronic kids toys - which were defective by design.

jvc26
February 6th, 2007, 02:37 PM
I think thats a classic story. :)
Il

renzokuken
February 6th, 2007, 03:33 PM
that is ******* brilliant........i love it.......

i have a clear picture in my head of a kid's fully illustrated pop-up book. perfect for bedtime stories

Patrick-Ruff
February 6th, 2007, 03:36 PM
why must we emphasize how wonderful what we have is? seriously, it's like we're becomming a religion.

why can't we just be and not push our views on others and let THEM figure it out fro them selves?

I mean, when you preach how much better ubuntu is to every other OS on the planet you sound like a preacher in a church, which sends off a sense of superiority that often offends people.

so, over all the best way to do this would to be not preaching or emphasizing. you should say "it's cool, you should try it out" but don't go all full-blown open source philosophy, that's just lame. if people did that to me before I got into linux I may have never tried it.

^rooker
February 6th, 2007, 04:00 PM
@Patrick-Ruff:

I totally agree with you.
I'm a programmer. Not a preacher - but as mentioned in the beginning of my article, I'm just trying to find a way for "normal" (=non technically interested) people to understand how THEY affect -my- freedom of choice (and theirs, too...)

I'm actually also like:
"it's cool, you should try it out"


...but most of the responses are something like:
"It sucks! I can't even play MP3s out of the box! What kind of crap's that?"

"WTF's ogg?"

"Where's Word? - This 'Open-whatever' isn't even able to open my .doc files! Why should I want this?"

"DRM? I'm no computer expert, why should I care?"

"It doesn't even support my webcam! Windows was all plug-and-wohoo!"

-------
or even worse:

"If you're going to use Linux at home you will probably lose your job here, because we cannot work together with you."
(no kidding!!!!)

"Everyone in the office is using Skype. I do not care about proprietary, secret protocols and why you are refusing to use them. If we're not able to communicate with you using Skype, I must reconsider your position in the company"

"I do not care WHY you cannot work properly with .doc files. THEY are THE standard - you MUST use Microsoft Office, so you cannot use Linux - even at home."

FuturePilot
February 6th, 2007, 07:20 PM
That was great! Put everything in simple terms. Brilliant!!:KS

Arisna
February 6th, 2007, 07:43 PM
"I do not care WHY you cannot work properly with .doc files. THEY are THE standard - you MUST use Microsoft Office, so you cannot use Linux - even at home."

And this is why I'm glad ISO has approved Oasis OpenDocument as a real standard. :D

^rooker
February 7th, 2007, 11:10 AM
Yeah, so?

Unfortunately, most people out there don't care about what's the standard on the paper. THE standard is what people see around them.

SIP's supposed to be THE standard for VoIP - it's well defined and got a nice RFC paper, but what do the masses think that THE standard is? Skype.
Why? Because that's the only thing they see and hear about.

I find it very difficult to explain these problems to non-technical people.

renzokuken
February 7th, 2007, 11:23 AM
Yeah, so?

Unfortunately, most people out there don't care about what's the standard on the paper. THE standard is what people see around them.

SIP's supposed to be THE standard for VoIP - it's well defined and got a nice RFC paper, but what do the masses think that THE standard is? Skype.
Why? Because that's the only thing they see and hear about.

I find it very difficult to explain these problems to non-technical people.

true, sadly clever marketing defines the standards, and usually marketing success is directly related to financial backing, something which open-source lacks

steven8
February 7th, 2007, 11:29 AM
why must we emphasize how wonderful what we have is? seriously, it's like we're becomming a religion.

why can't we just be and not push our views on others and let THEM figure it out fro them selves?

I mean, when you preach how much better ubuntu is to every other OS on the planet you sound like a preacher in a church, which sends off a sense of superiority that often offends people.

so, over all the best way to do this would to be not preaching or emphasizing. you should say "it's cool, you should try it out" but don't go all full-blown open source philosophy, that's just lame. if people did that to me before I got into linux I may have never tried it.

*sigh*

I just knew you were going to get hammered by someone like this, Rooker. I don't feel your story was preachy at all. It is a nice painting of the truth in a creative fashion. very well done.

BuffaloX
February 7th, 2007, 11:43 AM
That's a pretty good analogy.
But if you want to make the comparison to Free contra non free software.
You might want to change the bit about the instruments turning themselves off.
And instead explain how new instruments couldn't play with old instruments, because the scales were changed for each new model.
The new models would then have more fancy colors, and a new set of built in rythms.
And maybe new built in tunes that could be played by pressing just one key.
Some instruments might require payment of a license each month to continue to work.
Upgrading your instrument to the new generation is almost as expensive as bying a new one.

None of this covers the difference between the promised safety of closed source, contra the much better safety in Linux.
Any ideas on how to put that into the story?

^rooker
February 7th, 2007, 02:11 PM
None of this covers the difference between the promised safety of closed source, contra the much better safety in Linux.
Any ideas on how to put that into the story?

That's the difficulty when trying to explain complex things in a simple way. I know that my "fable" ain't covering the whole thing.
I even don't think it's possible to find a perfect 1:1 analogy of our current technological situation regarding a "proprietary vs open" problem.
That's why I usually have to use a combination of several of such "short fables" to make people understand - each problem in a different story.

What I'm desperately in need of is some good advice how to explain *why* there even *is* a problem, when all that counts for the masses of users is:
"does it work for me?" and "how easy is it?"

If things work for "them", there is no problem. And if your explanation is technical, then they simply reply: "I'm only using these things. I'm no developer. This is none of my business"
The feeling I get from talking with people is that they *only* see things as soon as they hurt themselves - Everything else is practically non-existent.



btw: Which "safety" of closed source are referring to?

BuffaloX
February 7th, 2007, 07:48 PM
As to why there is a problem, and the nature of the problem.

I think a good comparison would be to a totalitarian system, that use technological barriers to control the population, by controlling the information.

Examples: TV and radio that cannot receive signals from other countries, record players that spin the wrong way. Control of every popular media (newspapers/TV/Radio/music/theaters)

Proprietary software ALWAYS attempt to lock users to proprietary formats.
Just think of any popular commercial program, and compare the ability to import with the ability to export.
Most software can import from a multitude of formats, so you can use the program.
But once you use the program, you cannot export to the same or similar formats, or the export function limits the usability of the data.

Examples:
layers for image editing.
Relations for databases.
formatting for word processing and spreadsheets.
Things get even worse, if you move to more specialized software, like 3D graphics or music.

You also have absolutely no option for checking, or having others check, if the software includes spyware, virus, malware, except by using an antivirus, which may or may not be able to detect this.

Commercial application, are comparable to evil domains, that will try to keep you locked in, brainwash you to believe it's good, and everything else is bad and so on.

Microsoft actually claims closed source software is MORE secure than open source. :lolflag:
Yeah history clearly proves who is right, and who is lying.

Microsoft claims open source is bad for the economy. Which economy? not mine! :)
Not ANY country or company except companies developing of proprietary software.

Microsoft claims open source doesn't innovate.
Comming from a company that hasn't invented anything themselves. That's a rather hollow statement. But I guess the free software environment never would have come up with a thing like DRM, MS genuine advantage and so on...
The biggest killer app of all time Visicalc, was open source, unfortunately the GPL license didn't exist back then, so it was heavily exploited by commercial developers.

^rooker
February 8th, 2007, 05:40 PM
...couldn't you tell me something non-depressing?

BuffaloX
February 8th, 2007, 06:06 PM
...couldn't you tell me something non-depressing?

Don't know if this was aimed at me.

For open source freedom means freedom to use, change, innovate, share.
This can be said for music too.