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@cwebber I'm not sure where I picked it up but I've started using "user empowerment" more recently as I feel it focuses more directly on addressing the power imbalance in the status quo

users of proprietary software don't necessarily *feel* "unfree" but they can more readily identify the fact that they have been disempowered

(and because "freedom" is teetering on the edge of semantic satiation in a lot of contexts)

@technomancy @cwebber well, freeing and empowering for programmers at least. everyone else is at the mercy of our whims

@aeva @technomancy @cwebber In my mind, user freedom (or user empowerment) has to involve also making that freedom more accessible to people who wouldn't consider themselves programmers. Think HyperCard, Dynamicland, Siri Shortcuts, etc

In other words, it's not just free software. Source code access alone isn't enough

@technomancy @aeva @cwebber Yeah. And I do still think some focus on licenses is warranted; ultimately you're limited in a big way if you're legally unable to change your software. But it's a building block, not the whole story

@jfred @technomancy @cwebber users *love* licenses

@aeva @jfred @technomancy @cwebber

Because they always click 'Accept." #QED

@mdb @technomancy @jfred @aeva I think in addition to "easy to use" there's also "easy to adapt to your needs"

@mdb @technomancy @jfred @aeva both of those are empowerment in a way. One of them (making it "easier") is really baseline, and critical. But allowing users to adapt and *participate* in software is really important too.

Minecraft (pre-microsoft purchase at least) can be an interesting example of something that across one axis was incredible in terms of user empowerment, even though it is really bad across other angles and is definitely nonfree. And the nonfree angle has really shown itself to be important too, in the way that empowerment was crushed by microsoft over several updates.

@mdb @technomancy @jfred @aeva Here's a new phrase to play with: "participatory computing"

@luis_in_brief @mdb @technomancy @jfred @aeva @cwebber Part of that with LibreOffice is surely that it tries to emulate a proprietary standard that is poorly documented, overly complex, and arguably not even a proper standard. Hard to produce quality when constrained like that. I am partial to Beamer - yes it has other issues, but it won't eat my slides

@martinvermeer @luis_in_brief @mdb @technomancy @jfred @aeva @cwebber I'm also partial to LaTeX slides but as soon as I need to do a diagram I'd much rather deal with LibreOffice's drag and drop than spend hours fighting with tikz. Hence why basically all my slides are LibreOffice

@ehashman @luis_in_brief @mdb @technomancy @jfred @aeva @cwebber Never could be bothered to learn tikz either. For text boxes and lines diagrams I use amscd with some macros of my own for the text boxes. Probably overkill, but produces a precisely controlled layout.
https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/41334/isbn9789526088723.pdf#figure.9.1

@martinvermeer @ehashman @luis_in_brief @technomancy @jfred @aeva @cwebber I use google slides 90% of the time

@mdb @ehashman @luis_in_brief @technomancy @jfred @aeva @cwebber Probably good enough for 90% of use cases.

@mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber empowerment on the other hand is a concept that is broad and wonderful, and something that freedom programmers neither have the monopoly on nor does their software intrinsically embody it.

software is empowering when it enables people to pursue their dreams and live their lives as they like and support their communities and so on.

@mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber source code is only empowering to programmers and aspiring programmers, and I think that's where a lot of freedom programmers get stuck, because if you fixate too hard on that the only way to broaden your movement's reach is to insist that everyone to become programmers so they can become just as empowered as you are.

@mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber of course the two concepts are compatible. for example the federated web is not empowering because it is generally built on open standards and open source code (it exists that way by necessity), its empowering when people are able to build communities on it that then control their own infrastructure and are able to effectively self moderate.

@shauna @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber about 7 years ago I was trying to change careers from "misc programmer" to "graphics programmer", and excitedly purchased an old thinkpad someone fixed up to only run entirely free software. I figured it could at least be a minspec for my projects, but the graphics stack was so neglected to the point of being unusable, and nobody I asked seemed particularly concerned about that.

@shauna @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber If I were to stick to that kind of environment, I'd have to had given up on that dream. Maybe people would say something rude like "you could go fix the drivers" if I made enough noise about it. I don't want to be a driver developer.

@aeva @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber Yeah, empowerment requires being able to trust others. We are constantly, in our non-software lives, relying on others to do things for us. Why would software be any different? Because it's made up of 1s and 0s?

Empowerment isn't doing everything for yourself. It's learning how to collaborate with others, to ask questions, to draw boundaries, to advocate, to compromise. That's why empowerment is a collective project, not an individual accomplishment.

@shauna @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber @luis_in_brief I'm not familiar with the Capability Approach concept, could you elaborate on that?

@aeva @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber @luis_in_brief Sure. It's a framework first put forward by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, that says people should be able to achieve well-being and that they should be able to define what well-being means to them. It says that societies should focus on nourishing a diverse set of "capabilities", which can be thought of as "real" "actualizable" "substantive" freedoms.

@aeva @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber @luis_in_brief So, they would not say you have the "capability" to fix the graphics problems on your laptop just because you have the legal right to. You would also need to have the time, education, resources and desire such that it would feel like a legitimate investment to you, not something you were coerced into.

Here's an overview, happy to suggest other resources (books, etc):

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/capability-approach

@shauna @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber @luis_in_brief wonderful, thanks!

@aeva @shauna @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber yeah, my talk on that is here (obligatory note that the FSF board is actively damaging free software and I no longer endorse the organization or this event): https://lu.is/blog/2016/03/23/free-as-in-my-libreplanet-2016-talk/

@shauna @aeva @mdb @technomancy @luis_in_brief @cwebber For example you might use ocaps to give someone the ability to participate in a social network while only allowing other people to contact them directly with their consent

So it's true that ocaps don't necessarily provide capabilities as in the capability approach, but I think they *can* depending on the system design

@jfred @shauna @mdb @technomancy @luis_in_brief @cwebber The work Christine is doing is transcendent in a way that I think is very much in line with the Capability Approach. As with all technology, that can only really be proven by how it ends up getting used by people, but I really do believe she has the right ideas and will build a better world in time.

@shauna @jfred @aeva @mdb @technomancy @luis_in_brief @cwebber The term "capabilities" in the ocap sense is regrettably vague; it's not even the only infosec thing it's been applied to. E.g. posix caps have nothing to do with ocaps and are kinda antithetical to the approach. "O" got added later because it was too prone to people spontaneously giving it unrelated and contradictory meanings. I think the word "capabilities" is much more likely to actually mean something when talking about people.

@shauna @aeva @mdb @technomancy @cwebber But this isn't inevitable! One of my favorite examples is Excel: Excel formulas are programming, though most users wouldn't think of themselves as programmers. But nonetheless it helps people do things they wouldn't otherwise be able to do

Emacs similarly has a low barrier between using and programming it, but by modern standards the initial learning curve is high

@jfred @shauna @mdb @technomancy @cwebber excel is such a great example, since its easily the most widely used database software, and possibly one of the most prolific programming languages. I'm pretty sure it also burns to the touch for the more devout followers of saint ignutius

@aeva @mdb @technomancy @jfred @cwebber

(Argh. "Foe" not for.)

And they would never name those poor, affected customers who sued IBM or Microsoft for their shit software.

But still, corporations are the largest employers of developers (free or not).

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