Free Software is Winning

Free Software is Winning

   The Free Network Movement owes an incredible debt to the Free Software Movement, and pledges them our ongoing support.

It was pioneers such as Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and John Perry Barlow who initialized this struggle for our freedom. It is to these pioneers that we turn for inspiration and guidance. If not for early and decisive court victories won by Stallman, Moglen, and the Free Software Foundation, it is doubtful that we would today be in a position to advocate for the liberation of cyberspace.

   The legacy of the Free Software Movement, however, goes beyond ideology. 

Open-source networking software will be integral to the development and growth of the Free Network. As such, members of the Free Network Movement are currently contributing code to the Diaspora* project.

Diaspora* will be a secure, elegant, and open-source personal web server application. It is being designed to facilitate the creation of a full featured, highly customizable, and privacy aware peer-to-peer social network. Diaspora* is currently in alpha release, and a large community of programmers has taken ownership of building this software for a new type of network. We believe that the wide release of Diaspora* will be a seminal event in the evolution of our nascent global network.

Still, Freenet’s commitment to free software goes beyond a single application.

We hold that certain types of essential software should be free. 

The invention and improvement of the digital computer over the last sixty years has given humanity the ability to reproduce some of its most valuable tools at zero marginal cost. The ethical and philosophical implications of this changing mode of events are many. The notion that we abstain from distributing useful software to those who could use it, despite the fact that it costs nothing to reproduce, is absurd not only from a theoretical standpoint, but also from the standpoint of real and applied economics.