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Why?

1 Goals

In general, The Peers Community has several long term goals:

2 Projects

For specific tasks, please visit the issue trackers for each respective Peers project.

3 Reasons

We have many reasons, in general, why to use free software and to use decentralized, private/anonymous services, instead of proprietary software or services.

Ethical reason: we all benefit by sharing knowledge.

Personal reason: with free software, our computers do what we want them to do! On the other hand, with proprietary software computers are controlled by other people.

Economic reason: users lock-in. Switching away from proprietary software can require significant time or financial costs.

Convenience: forced to do what a company thinks best (for example you must use their software or files type).

Privacy: you become constantly watched by somebody who can do pretty much whatever they want with your personal data, because you've "agreed" with the "license agreement" that they can. This is by very far the most serious argument that people seem not to understand, because they always say "so what? What I'm doing with their service is of little value anyway!".

4 Testimonials and Examples

We searched the web for Non-Peers Community people who had shared their own experiences and expertise.

5 Recommendations

As an alternative to some proprietary communications, and gaming platforms, we recommend the following.

5.1 Software

For catalogues maintained by other organizations for free software:

5.2 Hardware

5.3 Highlighted Projects

Project Description
Arduino/Genuino,2 Libre prototyping platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software.
F-Droid,3 Android application package manager
Firefox,4 Free web browser by Mozilla
FreedomBox A personal server that protects privacy.
GIMP,5 cross-platform image editor
gnusocial,6 Federated social networking/communication software for both public and private communications.
IceCat,7 GNU version of the Firefox browser. Also, with the FSF directory list of IceCat Addons.
keepass2,8 A light-weight and easy-to-use password manager.
Kontalk,9 End to end encrypted chat, based on XMPP
LibreOffice,10 A powerful office suite, including word processor, spreadsheets, and slidedeck maker.
Minetest,11 An infinite-world block sandbox game with survival and crafting.
Mumble,12 A voicechat (VoIP) program originally implemented for gamers written on top of Qt and Speex.
OpenPhoenux Independent Mobile Tool Community, whose devices run free software.
Replicant,13 A free fork of Android.
VLC Media Player,14 A cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

6 Footnotes




  1. PRISM Break license↩︎

  2. Arduino FAQ↩︎

  3. fdroid source↩︎

  4. firefox source↩︎

  5. gimp source↩︎

  6. gnusocial source↩︎

  7. icecat source↩︎

  8. keepass source svn↩︎

  9. kontalk source↩︎

  10. libreoffice source↩︎

  11. minetest source↩︎

  12. mumble source↩︎

  13. replicant source↩︎

  14. vlc source↩︎