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FLOSS and open standards are not a luxury...

As with the Internet, software running on your computer should be made in a transparent way and its source code should be available to studied and modified as needed. Not only that, the author of the modifications made to the source code should be able to distribute those modifications freely, along with the source code for it.

Also, you should have the freedom to redistribute the software you have freely or share it with others. Just as we share books, and other media, with our friends and family, we should be able to share the software we have with others that might find it useful. And if you find that the software you have needs to be modified to better suit your needs, you should be able to do so independently and be able to share those modifications.

FLOSS offers everyone these things, along with communities that share the same goals that you have.

Not only that, FLOSS gives people a common framework to work around so that all work around a single standard. This way users and developers are insured that they have a reference point to work around, so they know that what changes it's the way they interact with the standard.

What needs to be stable for all to work with are the standards, not the software used to work with them. Both standards and software need to be free and open source, so that all can contribute to the them and be free to use them without fear of lawsuits or losing their data because one or the other are no longer supported.

As computers, and thus software, is becoming more prevalent in our lives there is a bigger need for them to be free and open. Also the standards that are used to interact with them need to be free and open, otherwise there is the real danger that a single person or company to be too powerful or our data be lost simply because of choices made by third parties.

FLOSS, and open standards, are not a luxury. They need to be that way, so that we the people don't lose our freedoms.

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