"Making source codes available would safeguard users from infringements on their freedoms and prevent monopolies..."

"Labor’s controversial mandatory internet filter project is an attack on human rights, and Australians should beware of the project and other tyrannical government policies, free software luminary Richard Stallman has said [...] The news comes as Prime Minister Julia Gillard this morning reiterated the Government’s support for the filter project, despite the likely demise of its necessary legi

Free software has an importance that extends way beyond the world of software. But for most people, it's hard to understand why software freedom is really that important. So this new report “Killed by Code: Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices” from the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) provides a handy opportunity to get the message across.

In the past few days, WordPress has become entangled in a debate about WordPress theme licensing. It was specifically centered around Thesis, one of the last notable proprietary theme holdouts. Chris Pearson, who develops and sells Thesis, refuses to license Thesis under the GNU General Public License that applies to WordPress and all WordPress-derived code.

[…] this does result in the paradoxical situation that the GNU GPL actually *depends* on copyright, an intellectual monopoly, in order to spread intellectual freedom. Moreover, it seems to doom free software into a kind of symbiosis with copyright, forcing it to remain a supporter of that monopoly, since without it, the approach used to make the GPL so powerful would not work.

"The free software street is a street about 300 meters from the city of Berga, province of Barcelona (Spain), located from the coordinates 42.097168, 1.841567 to 42.096138,1.839265. The particularity of this street is the first in the world dedicated to free software movement, and which was officially opened by Mr. Richard Stallman, founder of free software, on 3 July 2010..."

"ACTA, a treaty designed to attack the rights of computer users in some 40-odd countries -- and others later -- is encountering increasing opposition. ACTA threatens, in a disguised way, to punish Internet users with disconnection if they are accused of sharing, and requires countries to prohibit software that can break Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), also known as digital handcuffs.."

People who use and promote free software cite various reasons for their choice, but do those reasons tell the whole story? If, as a community, we want free software to continue to grow in popularity, especially in the mainstream, we should understand better the true reasons for choosing it—especially our own.