Ten Reasons Why Free and Open Source Software is Good for Society
August 11th, 2008 by Joshua Kagan
- Free software1 promotes the study and improvement of computer programming methods.
- Free software licenses like the GPL ensure that the whole community of users can benefit whenever an improvement is discovered, not just a few who “discovered it first.”
- Open source code can be used to solve absolutely any problem for which it is suited or can be made to be suited, including new problems that the original programmer did not foresee.
- Widespread use of certain free software applications like browsers promotes better security by making code available to audit by security experts.
- Free software licenses like the LGPL promote efficiency by ensuring that good code snippets can be used again and again in new programs.
- In the private sector, companies that contribute to free software can increase commercial innovation instead of participating in expensive patent cross-licensing lawsuits.
- Free software promotes competition and improvement in the computer support industry because everyone has equal access to learn about the inner workings of open source code.
- Free software projects provide outlets for the creative energies of populations who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Don’t believe me? Look at Firefox, which sparked an entire movement toward more standards-compliant HTML rendering.
- Free software, when made available for download from the Internet, puts power in the hands of computer users worldwide, even in developing and oppressed areas of the planet.
- Free software promotes global unity by permitting people from all over the world to contribute to projects and collaboratively resolve real-world problems.
- It’s important to understand that I’m not referring to software that is merely “free as in beer” meaning that it is given away without cost, but specifically software that is “open” in that its source code may be used, studied, and modified without restrictions. Another term for this is “free, libre, and open-source software” or “FLOSS.” [↩]
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