Free software helps a business be more competitive by avoiding high license fees. The free software I use has other advantages over propriatary software such as better documentation, better security, easier backup of data, and greater opportunity to customize programs.

Free software is developed by volunteers, often working together over the Internet, who donate their work to the public. The donation is not to the public domain, however. Free software is usually published under a clever contract like the General Public License ("GPL"). The GPL gives the owner complete freedom to use and modify the software as the owner wishes. But if the owner wishes to pass the software on to another, even if modified and improved, the owner must grant the new user all the freedoms of the GPL that the owner originally received.

This method of making software has always been popular in the scientific community. The Free Software Foundation attempts today to make free software available to everyone. The Free Software Foundation is led by Richard Stallman, the most important philosopher of computer science. Stallman argues that one should use free software because it is the ethical way to live. He also argues that it is unethical to use proprietary software that crowds out or inhibits the use of free software.

Although free software is free, lunch is not. It costs considerable effort to learn to use free software. But the task is worthwhile. When you learn about free software you become a bit of a computer scientist --- and not just the customer of another.

I use the SuSE distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. I like the KDE GUI, KMail, and the Konqueror or Firefox web browsers. For my document production, I use TeX, LaTeX, and LyX. (These tools typeset documents with a quality normally reserved for books.) I use OpenOffice.org for general office work like opening .doc files, making labels, and printing envelopes. For writing this web site, I use LyX and LyX2html. I upload to a Zope server operated by free-software guru Jeff Rush.

My GNU/Linux PCs were made by Rod Roark of Sunset Systems. If you are interested in new PCs to run GNU/Linux, get in touch with Rod.