I’ve been on app.net for two weeks now. In the excitement about it, people raised the rather legitimate question about why people are excited about it when identi.ca and, more generally, StatusNet have been doing it for years. And there has been general questioning of why people are jumping from one closed service to another. And how only open source services are are real solutions.

I’ll table the questions of relative energy for now. I think that app.net is more likely to succeed than identi.ca has, especially since they’ve already gotten a lot of the types of people that made Twitter fun early on, but that is mostly irrelevant to my primary point here.

In general, I insist upon free/libre software for as much of my computing, especially day-to-day, as possible. Why, then, am I excited about app.net, and do I willingly embrace other services, such as Pinboard, to which I do not have access to the source code?

Many, in their zeal for free software, think that not only software they run, but software they interact with on other servers, needs to have source available, modifiable, and redistributable. This results in things such as the Affero GPL, which requires that administrators who deploy covered software as a user-facing network service make source code available.

On my commute in to school today, there was a green-vested City of Minneapolis employee handing out survey cards to bicyclists on 15th Ave. SE.

Bicycling (and other alternative transit), while amazing and lots of fun, isn’t all roses. Last April, a bicyclist was killed by a semi truck at 15th Ave. SE and 4th St., an intersection I ride through every day.

But shortly thereafter (in response?), the city did some major work on 15th Ave. through Dinkytown, adding additional signage, painting the bike lanes bright green when they go through intersections, and other paintwork to increase bicycle path visibility (including a nice big box for bicyclists waiting to cross University). With the exception of the bike lane-bus interaction as southbound buses approach the on-campus bus stop, I think that these improvements have greatly improved bicycle visibility and navigability of this street.

And today’s survey? Now that the new signage and paint has been in place for a year, they’re surveying bicyclists to see whether they have noticed the new features, and whether they feel safe on the street.

Lee argues well that, while drivers enjoy freedom in a variety of environments, walkable urban settings (often with good transit) provide freedom for those unable to drive to live full and independent lives.

We’re somewhat in this situation ourselves - Jennifer cannot drive at night, but in a walkable environment, she can still go places in the evening (which, in Minnesota, is much of the day during some parts of the year).

I’ll just add that, though I can drive, I generally feel more free on foot, bike, or bus/train than in a car. I enjoy the wind on my face, the feeling of truly being in the city, the ability to take shortcuts and paths inaccessible to cars. I also have the freedom to enjoy my journey, destination, and company without worrying about where to park, or if I paid the meter enough. When I am finished, there will be another bus to take me home. I can live with freedom from worrying about if I need to fix the car, or how much registration and insurance will be.

Basically, I’m free to live rather than maintain, care for, and worry about the state and location of a silly metal box.