Panduan Memilih Kamera Menurut Mbah Stallman
Pada bulan Oktober kemarin, saya mengirim email kepada Mbah Richard Stallman. Saya meminta saran bagaimana memilih kamera digital yang sesuai dengan kriteria Free Software. Seperti biasa, ketika berinteraksi lewat email dengan Mbah Stallman, kita harus bersabar menunggu balasannya.
Beberapa hari kemudian, beliau membalas email saya. Saya rasa balasan email ini akan bermanfaat juga buat banyak orang, jadi saya bagikan di sini.
Hak cipta kutipan email ini 2023 Richard Stallman, saya kutip secara verbatim dengan suntingan format agar mudah dibaca.
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[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
Do you think a digital camera is a computer?
How do you choose a camera, what kind of camera is acceptable for you?
A digital camera contains a processor. Whether it is a computer or an appliance depends on how it is used. One can treat it as a computer, or one can treat it as an appliance.
A computer is a device meant for installing programs on, in order to run them. An appliance is a device that does a particular fixed job. A computer running nonfree software is an injustice because someone else controls the behavior of the programs that are installed init.
However, that issue doesn't arise for an appliance. One cannot install programs in an appliance. It has a fixed design and it does what it does.
If programs (other than those that came with it) will NEVER be installed on it -- if it can only take photos under the control of the settings entered by means of its buttons and their menus, and you extract the photo files on a card, then it is legitimate to treat it as an appliance.
Treating it as an appliance means no "upgrades". Installing an upgrade is installing different software -- changing the software that runs in it. The modified software could very likely be malware.
Also, you need to make sure it cannot EVER talk to the internet! If it ever talks to the internet, it might "phone home" and someone else could install programs in it. Those programs could very likely be malware.
Also, if it can talk to the internet in can spy on you. Many digital devices are built to snoop on the user -- I would not trust any internet-connected appliance to be in my home.
Why do I conclude this is a legitimate way to use a digital device, such as a camera? Because if you treat a device as an appliance in this careful way, it might as well have special-purpose chips instead of loadable software. Indeed, we as users cannot tell what its parts are or what its design is. All that can matter to us is what job the appliance doss. And by not allowing the device to communicate with anyone else, we block a lot of the potential for malicious functionalities to operate.
However, if you ever install software in it, or if someone else can ever install software in it, then it is being treated like a computer (a device made for running programs that are installed in it).
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Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
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Tags: free-software