>The most notable change in the email world is the influx of massive amounts of spam, which has been used as an excuse to implement another disturbing change. [...] These problems do reduce email software freedom by network effects.

This essay is fundamentally flawed.

Because tech people like us are intimately familiar with computer topics such as "hardware", "software", "TCPIP", "RFC", etc, we often frame phenomena in terms of what we know. (E.g. the writer really knows how to set up an email server from scratch and has done so since 1993.) In this case, the writer has isolated a particular component as "free" and then worked his thinking outward from that. The "free-ness" he's fixated on has distorted the thinking and is causing all other costs to be ignored.

  - The Unix sendmail,postmail,etc programs are free.
  - Mozilla Thunderbird, Roundcube, etc are free.
  - SMTP specification has no license costs and is free.
  - They are all free in both meanings as in libre ("free speech") and cost ("free beer").

However,

  - Trust is not free.
  - Reputation is not free.
  - Diskspace is not free.
  - Bandwidth is not free.
  - Time and attention for eyeballs to look at unwanted email is not free.
  - all the above contribute to umbrella effort of "fighting spam"

To understand why thinking outward from the phrase "softare freedom" is a flawed framework, replace it with "English Language freedom".

We can all use the ~200,000 words[1] of the English Language without paying EnglishSoft Inc a monthly subscription fee.

Despite my EnglishLanguage freedom, it is being blocked by other agents and gatekeepers. I should have the freedom to communicate my English to anybody including actors, rich people, and high ranking officials.

For example, all the following middlemen are trampling on my freedom:

  - The agents for Tom Cruise and Jennifer Aniston who screen everyone's calls.  
  - The secretary who blocks my communication with Warren Buffett.
  - The White House Chief of Staff and other gatekeepers to the President.

In another related example, we have the global phone network. In some sense, we collectively have a "phone dialing freedom". However, I wish there were big companies that I could pay to screen every call on my behalf. Many people would want them to keep centralized blacklists on annoying telemarketers, political pollsters, etc. For example, I'd prefer Verizon/AT&T maintained the blacklists instead of me keeping adhoc blocklists on my iPhone for every unwanted call. I don't want my phone to ring at all for such calls. I also don't want a spam voicemail that I have to later delete. If I use such a service, did I trample on your "phone dialing freedom"? I certainly did! I think many of us would like the "freedom" to do that!

Therefore, focusing on "English Language freedom", "phone dialing freedom", or "software freedom" will make one blind to the bigger picture of why blocking&filtering manifests itself as an emergent property of any communications network. The fact that it's also crazy hard to communicate credibility to get off those blacklists and honest people like the author suffered is unavoidable. Otherwise, spammers could also trivially remove themselves from blacklists.

[1]http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/how-many-words-ar...