Free to Begin

04-15-2008 | 05:15 PM EST

The first post on a brand new blog is a weird thing. On the one hand, you feel all kinds of pressure to set the right tone from the start. You have a lot of expectations about the future of the blog, what'll be covered, and what the response will be. On the other hand, unless you're already famous for something, you've got to realize that probably nobody beyond a handful of your friends and family will ever read that first post . . . or maybe the first five posts . . . or first hundred posts . . . Still, there's a lot of pressure to get it right.

Well, in this first post of my new blog, I've decided to take the somewhat cliche advice of so many other authors (blog and otherwise) and start with what I know. Actually, I'm going to start this blog exactly where I started thinking about this whole topic years ago — software freedom.

I've been a user and creator of free software for many years now, and I've spoken about the ideologies behind free/open source software to countless people. Honestly, I can't remember anymore exactly when I first heard about the idea or even if I was already unknowingly using free software before I knew what it really meant, but I do know that the first time it all really sunk in was when I learned about the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL for short).

As far as I'm concerned, you can't write about the current generalized battles over culture and content without pausing to acknowledge the GPL, the Free Software Foundation, and the work of Richard M. Stallman. And, while I'm not going to try to give a full account of all three of these in a single blog post (there's no way I could do even one justice), I do feel like acknowledging them at the beginning of this project is very fitting. I'm also assuming that the vast majority of people who'll have any interest in what I have to say here will already be very familiar with this particular history, but for those of you who aren't, I'd definitely encourage you to spend some time checking out these things:

1. The Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org): To truly grasp what's going on these days in the fight between producers and consumers, you need to understand that the word "free" in the historical sense of free software refers to freedom not price.
2. The GNU GPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html): This is the legal groundwork that the entire modern notion of "free to create" is based on.
3. Richard M. Stallman (www.stallman.org): This is the often controversial figure who was a pioneer of the free software movement. His thoughts on freedom and copyrights have greatly influenced both sides of the greater cultural debate being focused on here.

Well, that's it. More an introduction and acknowledgment than news or philosophical tangent, but a beginning anyway — and that had to happen one way or another.

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