What's in your BIOS? What's in your NIC's firmware? What's in the firmware of the router you're wire{d,lessly connected} to? What's in the microcode of your CPU? What's in your south and north bridges? What's in your USB controller? What's in your display's firmware, if you're running with monitors? Every single chip in your machine? The design of the motherboard itself? The architecture of the system?

What's in your modem? What's in your Xbox? What's in your cable box? What's in your car? What's in your microwave? What's in your automated toll tag and the receiver that processes your payment? What's in your digital thermostat? What's in your mobile phone? What's in the baseband of your mobile phone? In the cell tower that's talking to your mobile phone? In the computer systems routing your calls? In the SCADA systems in the factory that built your mobile phone?

What's in the systems keeping you alive right now in your apartment building, home, or neighborhood? In the power grid? At the power station? In the water system? In the computer flying the aircraft? In the computers tracking the aircraft so they don't collide? In the mail system? In the traffic light system? On the Mars rovers? In the systems watching for a tornado headed for you? Or a nuclear missile? Or an Iranian flotilla?

What's running on Blogger, who's hosting your blog?

Sure, you can come back to me and say that some of those have examples of free software or utilize free software in some way; I noticed in particular that the trailer mentions a lot of the power grid runs on Linux. But I don't see "Power Grid v2.0" on Savannah, because the vast majority of planet Earth is built upon a proprietary model. To dispense with all of that and say that free software is the only way is an incredibly myopic view that focuses only upon the personal computer. The personal computer is not the only software in the universe -- not even close. To conquer proprietary software to benefit the personal computer, you're also dispensing with millions, perhaps billions or even trillions of man hours to build the life that we know today. For what? An ideal? It's ironic, too, because free software is built upon collaboration of the whole, but they can't dream of collaborating with the proprietary whole.

Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say free software is the absolute best thing in the world. IPv6 might be the best Internet protocol in the world. There will be private networks using IPv4 until all of us are dust in the ground. Metric might be the best measurement system in the world. Americans and, to a lesser extent the British, will be using imperial units until all of us are dust in the ground. Momentum is a powerful force, and when we're talking about the mind-bogglingly enormous portfolio of human innovation that was paid for by proprietary organizations, that's a huge fucking aircraft carrier worth of momentum to stop on a dime.

What do you want, as a free software proponent? Do you want proprietary software gone? Okay, organize reinventing planet Earth. I've given you a small list to get started. You can't win on the personal computer alone. There will always be compromises. I'm saying you should compromise more. I guarantee you that Siemens is never going to wake up one day and say, "gee, we should write that new SCADA controller using a completely free software model; there's no need to provide any competitive advantage to our company". Shareholders would bust down the door in minutes. Companies have given you the life you know today because of the system given to us before you and I were even born. Maybe they're inherently evil; then, I pose to you the question, what is evil? Keeping my lights on with proprietary grid management might be evil. Shit, then, I like evil.

We have the system we have. Many of the world's economies are capitalist. You operate in the system you are given and take full advantage of it. If the world wasn't wired the way it was, perhaps you'd have a shot at the utopia that you're envisioning; really, I do see the benefit. I promise. I see the benefit of a world without violence, as well, but it's just never going to happen and we have to cope as well as we can. The only world without violence will be a world without living creatures.

I don't know if you can tell from this minor essay that I wrote to you (and, I apologize for drowning you in it), but people working together for the common good is the single most important thing to me as a person. It makes me feel horrible that humans default not to getting along. Life is really, really confusing and partisanship like this confuses me even more. I'll never understand why humans can't agree on the simplest things and do everything in their power to discredit and mock the other side, and it's something that tortures me as a human being on occasion. When I see Obama and Boehner go toe-to-toe on what should be a pretty simple governmental decision, and the full weight of rhetoric and disagreement gets thrown behind each side for days of our precious time, I just want to grab them and shake them and say "we're all humans trying to figure out this existence together! Is this fight really worth it in the long run? What have you gained?"

I hope, after death, I get an answer. Otherwise, wow. What a weird existence.