Importance of Free Software

There are currently two main ways of thinking among the creators of software. On one side are the programmers who defend the proprietary software and on the other those who defend the free software.

The latter advocate that all users have the right to have the software they need free, and to make the code of that software public, accessible and visible to anyone who wants to modify it (Open Source), to adjust it to your needs.

This concept, although it may seem a bit utopian, has behind it a whole philosophical stream, seconded by millions of programmers who daily collaborate in the creation of new programs and in the development of more and more code. As such, it was born at the end of the 80s, by the hand of Richard Stallmann, to oppose the monopoly that the big computer companies were trying to impose.

And here we must make a small paragraph to clarify a very common confusion regarding the free term. Free does not necessarily mean free. A free program whose code is not open cannot be considered free software, nor can a program stop being free because it is paid for.

He free software is one that, in words of the founders of this current, gives freedom to the user: freedom to examine the code, to use it without restriction, to distribute it if you wish, and to modify it if you wish. Sharing free software is not actually a crime, but rather the very reason that the program was created.
When a user acquires free software, he becomes the owner of it, without conditions, since the programmers renounce any right over it.

Returning to the topic, the main question is: Why should I as a user care about using free software and not a proprietary one? Well, for multiple reasons. For starters, most large proprietary programs contain malicious code, hidden from the user and used to gather information or run subroutines without the user's permission. By not being able to see the code, it is not known exactly if that proprietary program is clean or is really taking advantage of the user. The complete opposite of a free program, which is software with nothing hidden.

In addition, another important aspect is that, at least according to its defenders, it allows a continuous code improvement shared and therefore of the programs. By being shared, any programmer can improve the original code to make it work better or do something different, and that code at the same time reshared can be modified infinitely, while a private program can only be changed by its owners, who may want to do so or not, following strictly economic and business criteria, and not the best user service.

The importance of this motion is such that the Free software has transcended the field of computing to extend to other fields such as cinema, art, television or even the literature.