[libreplanet-discuss] Free as in Freedom Services

[Patrick Anderson]

User Freedom requires Free Services.

Free Services require we share hardware ownership.

We already share with corporations when we use *their* hardware.

We, the Users, finally pay for all the costs of that hardware and for
all the wages to workers and even more when we pay Profit, but we have
no real control because we have no real ownership.

We must learn to share the hardware currently provided by profiteering
ISPs and cell-phone providers, and of course all the rest of the
productive infrastructure required to keep those things operational,
including our food supply and the roads and the mines and the electric
plants and the hospitals, etc.

We do not want to admit that we are dependent upon them.

We want to pretend we can do it all on our own.

And so we hide in our corners clutching our FreedomBoxes growing food
in isolation and making meals in solitary confinement.

But working alone is never effective enough, and so we resort to
connecting to networks owned by our oppressors to get what we need.

But those corporations are not on our side, and so they do things that
we wish they would not.

And they charge us far more than it really costs for those Services.

We support the destruction of our planet when we pay more than the
real costs of operation - for those funds are used to eliminate
competitors and also used to make it difficult for us to fully reach
our goals.

Our Planet will become less and less Libre for as long as we refuse to
share the ownership of hardware needed to make Services Free as in
Freedom.