freedom

Today I found an excellent small website about the gender imbalance in Free software. There's been a lot about the topic on the linux/free software news sites too.

Large parts of the free software community are rather hostile towards women, as unfortunately is usual in communities with a huge male majority. Which then prevents the community from becoming balanced because it will be unattractive to women.

I think it is odd the proprietary software industry is closer to gender balance. Aren't people who care a lot about freedom supposed to be more friendly to others who are different from them in any way?

I wish everyone reading this site, from regular members to anonymous readers, the very best new year and all the success and happiness you desire. In light of that I wish everyone be free as they deserve to be and I wish for 2007 to be the year of wins for freedom rather than losses. Let's defeat DRM this year. Let's make Free Software ubiquitous! Let's spread the Free Culture far and wide, from music to drawings to movies that escapes the hands of senseless restrictiveness.

In 2007 Libervis.com will continue to promote an open dialog on freedom in a digital world in order to maintain awareness and cut through various relevant issues that will have to be dealt with this year. We will have articles, interviews, commentaries and discussions and possibly much more.

Thank you for being with us last year. You're invited for the ride in 2007. It ought to be exciting!

If you want to know what freedom is, read on, we will define freedom and explain some of the important issues regarding its preservation in our society, which we believe you should care about. We will also try to shed some light around some of the common misunderstandings regarding these issues.

When we discuss freedom on Libervis.com (as we so often do one way or another) we are usually talking about rights people should always have and be able to exercise in any situation. In basically all cases the freedom comes down to a rather simple and easy to understand principle:

Freedom is the right to do as you wish, so long as it does not harm others' ability to exercise their right to do as they wish. Metaphorically, freedom is whatever floats your boat, if it doesn't sink mine.

If you would decisively want to evaluate the concepts of ethics and morality from the ground up where would you start? What is that most fundamental moral layer on which all other moral layers build? This most fundamental bottom layer is the one which has to be considered before all others in a society, as without it, all other moral points are potentially compromised. This article argues that the fundamental moral layer is the "state of freedom" and hence the most fundamental moral question, the first one to ask, is how free is the society and its individuals.

There are many ways people define freedom and indeed freedom represents different things to different people. However, there is something that is common to all of these definitions and perceptions and can be summarized in one word: ability. To elaborate, the ability here means being able to exercise your moral rights. In other words, it means that there are no legal or deliberate practical constraints imposed by others to deny your ability to exercise your moral rights. For example, if it is moral for you to share a copy of software on your CD with your friend, you have to be free to do so. To be free in this sense, however, you have to be able to exercise this moral right which means that there should be no legal or other deliberate constraints designed by anyone else which would prevent you from exercising this right and sharing a copy of software on this CD with a friend. The act must be legal and possible to undertake.

My dear reader. As you may have noticed we are living in an extremely interesting time. Things are changing so fast that every year may count numerous defining moments for our future. Alot of the future depends on you, whoever you may be. This article is for you, a person who just wants to live a good life and occassionaly have some fun. You need to be given an opportunity to prove yourself and freedom to be yourself. I am sure you have certain passions in your life and I am almost sure that whatever this passion is, it involves a certain amount of creativity. Every person is a potential creator. Every person is driven to create not only for profit, but for fun and for fullfillment. Every person needs to communicate in order to learn or teach, make friends or enemies, inspire or get inspired. Many ambitions require cooperation and to cooperate you need to communicate.