Free Software Stuff

Diversity is Freedom

This might be obvious to anyone else, but today I’ve just had an epiphany (not the web browsing one :): Diversity in free software makes it more free.

Why? Because, although diversity means competition, it also means that there are multiple ways of reaching the same goal, multiple ways of thinking. For example, both the GNOME and KDE projects essentially have the same goal: To help their users kick ass. They just differ in their definition of who the user is and how (s)he should kick ass.

Both projects push in their respective directions. They share some technology (D-Bus), and they greatly differ in other (GObject vs C++, anyone?); but the diferences are a good thing. And that’s because both projects are free. And users are free to choose what they want, and how they want it. This empowers both the users, and the projects themselves, who then are not the only choice the user has - so they don’t have to satisfy everyone. And trying to satisfy everyone, as we know, doesn’t work very well.

So, each project benefits from the fact that the users can choose not to use it. The developers still have a responsibility to help the user kick ass, but they can decide how to reach that goal.

This is why, while loving GNOME, I really, really like KDE.