Hi buddy!
A big thanks for starting to reading this.
I'm here to tell you, not the benefits of free software but the necessity of free software. My reference to free is not as in free beer but as in 'freedom'.
Almost all top tech companies live on surveillance capitalism. Before jumping into judgement, that this is too political or just a rant, let me tell you why how this affects you & why free software is necessary.
How do you differentiate free software? Here are the 4 signs:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Please read about it more @ GNU
These 4 freedoms ensure the usage of software benefits everyone & prevents monopoly. I ask you 2 simple things. Is the software you're using have all this 4 freedoms & is it a monopoly or not ?
Pull your phone out or your laptop, desktop and just ask yourselves.
A large part of computer science is the result of research funded by the people & for the people.Yet, the same people are locked away on the terms of security.
Today, we live in a world where we think that giving away our private data will somehow improve our lives. As you know, nothing is free. We trade our privacy with short-term happiness.We're tricked it is the benefit we get.
Free Software is something which respects it's user. Imagine you bought a bike & you were instructed not to modify it or share it with anyone. That' s the freedom we lose.
The cherry on the cake is that free software doesn't mean the cost of the software is zero. You can buy, sell, ,study, modify, rent, share all the pieces of code. Voilà! you have a software that respects you, your freedom and can be monetized ethically.
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