Libre Software

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"Libre software" means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

In particular, four freedoms define Free Software:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Placing restrictions on the use of Free Software, such as time ("30 days trial period", "license expires January 1st, 2004") purpose ("permission granted for research and non-commercial use", "may not be used for benchmarking") or geographic area ("must not be used in country X") makes a program non-free.

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.

Placing legal or practical restrictions on the comprehension or modification of a program, such as mandatory purchase of special licenses, signing of a Non-Disclosure-Agreement (NDA) or - for programming languages that have multiple forms or representation - making the preferred human way of comprehending and editing a program ("source code") inaccessible also makes it proprietary (non-free). Without the freedom to modify a program, people will remain at the mercy of a single vendor.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

Software can be copied/distributed at virtually no cost. If you are not allowed to give a program to a person in need, that makes a program non-free. This can be done for a charge, if you so choose.

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Not everyone is an equally good programmer in all fields. Some people don't know how to program at all. This freedom allows those who do not have the time or skills to solve a problem to indirectly access the freedom to modify. This can be done for a charge.

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How to focus my time on creating free/libre software but still survive? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi all

I've been working as a software developer for the past few years and frequently decided to leave a company/project myself because I could not find the motivation to keep working for it.

First, I was questioning whether software development was really for me. But in my spare time, I still enjoyed writing small useful tools, configuring my linux desktop and self-hosting.

I recently realised that my demotivation is mostly due to the kind of software I was working on for the companies I worked for. Usually building APIs to facilitate sales/marketing for products I don't really care for. Or configuring some unnecessarily complicated ERP/CRM microsoft stack.

Instead, I would like to work on software that I use myself. Or at least on something that will useful for other people in the future, not just boost the sales of some company.

But I'm not sure where to look. It seems like jobs focusing on free/libre software are difficult to find (Or I don't know how to look) and the few I find seem to be looking for senior profiles much more experienced than me.

Anybody have some tips or places I can start looking? Honesly I would prefer to just contribute to some project for free, but I don't really have the option to do so at the moment.

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Best you can do is work for an opensource company. That might take a lot of research (unless there's already a website for it). Otherwise you'd have to start a project and hope to get funding (e.g NLnet) from somebody. Unfortunately, there aren't many options at the moment 🙁 Until citizens vote for governments that make opensource preferable or even mandatory, the situation is probably going to stay the same.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What I'm surprised with is that libre software is not more commonly utilised in goverments and libraries. For services that should provide open resources for all people, it would make much more sense to use similarly open software (and remove the overhead from paying for proprietary licenses)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

They'd still need to pay for support of libre software. But I'm convinced the major reason there's a lack of libre software in governments and libraries is that there is little to no marketing and no lobbying for it. It's basically word of mouth. Politicians can't make shady backroom deals with opensource vendors because those vendors are broke af.

Also a lot of opensource software doesn't have any support at all. It's basically a side project for many people with no commercial offering. Especially governments aren't going to sign on for something where the response to a support request is "PR welcome".

Finally, citizens aren't conscious of opensource, much less of its benefits. Most people I talk to don't know, nor care if it's on a political party's agenda. IMO, the biggest reason opensource is becoming more popular is digital sovereignty: not everybody wants to be a digital colony of the USA. Governments are realising the dangers of relying on USAian megacorps and the easiest way to get away from them is building upon what those megacorps did: opensource.

If the opensource community also got its ass into gear to proselytize opensource to their governments, friends, and family, maybe the transition could be faster.

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