Growing domination of companies over users, malicious functionalities, tracking and widespread surveillance. The leading campaigner for software freedom discusses the present technological landscape and the political relevance of the campaign for free software.
Software Freedom in a Post Open Source World
(Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Software Freedom)
Freedom Isn't Free
An inquiry into the failure of the free software movement, and a proposal for recovering its radical soul.
How markets coopted free software’s most powerful weapon (LibrePlanet 2018 Keynote)
Several months ago, I gave the closing keynote address at LibrePlanet 2018. The talk was about the thing that scares me most about the future of free culture, free software, and peer production. A …
Our Responsibility to Defeat Mass Surveillance • Erik Doernenburg & Martin Fowler • GOTO 2014
freedom 'for users'- which users did you mean, exactly? (or, of users, user-deployers, and user-consumers)
Published: 2007. "Free software...
software
Software freedom is the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose, to study how the program works, and change it, to redistribute copies and your modified versions so you can help others.
Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software
Choice Outstanding Academic Title Software is more than a set of instructions for computers: it enables (and disables) political imperatives and policies. Nowhere is the potential for radical social and political change more apparent than in the practice and movement known as
Google's Software Is Malware - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
Our work begins by asking ourselves, “Is it free?” because our purpose is to respect your individual user needs, autonomy, and right to decide for yourself. We empower people to build a future built on free software that, above all, puts the user first. By supporting our work, you help support everyone's rights. Please help us reach our goal of $400,000 USD!
Front Page — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software
The technology overrunning our communities isn't built for the benefit of humanity: it's built so that billionaires can control us. Our lives don't have to be this way. The FSF empowers users with free software, technology built through global collaboration, mutual respect, and above all, freedom. The FSF will always continue to resist the encroachment of nonfree software. We're fighting to protect all computer users and build a better future.
Cory Doctorow: IP
You’ve probably heard of “open source software.” If you pay attention to the politics of this stuff, you might have heard of “free software” and even know a little ab…
Free software for freedom, surveillance and you — GNU MediaGoblin
Jacob Appelbaum's keynote at LibrePlanet 2014. The talk was delivered remotely via Tor-anonymized, 100% free software videochat.
Blockchain versus pipeline: uncensorable protest against fossil fuel development
54K subscribers in the freesoftware community. "Free software" means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the…
Chapter 1. Introduction
Free software — open source software[3] — has become the backbone of modern information technology. It runs on your phone, on your laptop and desktop computers, and in embedded microcontrollers for household appliances, automobiles, industrial machinery and countless other devices that we too often forget even have software. Open source is especially prevalent on the servers that provide online services on the Internet. Every time you send an email, visit a web site, or call up some information on your smartphone, a significant portion of the activity is handled by open source software.
THE DEGRADATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREE PRESS THROUGH THE PEGASUS SOFTWARE IN THE ERA OF SURVEILLANCE, AS A THREAT TO INTERNATIONAL SECURITY. A DEBATE OF CIVIL LIBERTIES AND CENSORSHIP
The evolution of cyber spying technology presents new and rising dangers; coupled with the easy justification for use of the on-going terrorist crisis these dangers have now become major threats to the international security system. This article aims to provide analysis of these threats, using the new software Pegasus as a focal point of discussion. Developed by the Israeli ‘cyber-warfare’ company ‘NSO’, this spyware signals a danger not only to security but freedom of the press and journalistic integrity. This paper’s focus will centre on how this software is used for censorship rather than to combat terrorism and will examine the social and political ramifications of said use. As highlight, the case of UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor and his contemporaries who were writing against authoritarian governments will be discussed. This article will urge that strict global legislation is needed to stop the abuse of spyware as a tool of censorship.
It is a shame that "democratization" in software has come to mean broader access to products instead of participation in democratic processes — there is talk of LLMs democratizing software production, but I have yet to see social, collective and democratic processes govern the design of software.
