Libre software is that which anyone can use, share and improve as they wanted. This has consequences far more important than what seems obvious: it allows people to retain healthy control over their digital life.
When software is non libre in practice who has all the control is the developer of that software. Since that control is broader than what it looks like, developers are frequently tempted to exploit it for tricking their users for their own benefit.
Common examples are:
The manufacturer of a device purposely makes old models work poorly with new software, encouraging people to constantly buy new devices they don’t really need.
An app which was initially free of charge to use suddenly changes its terms of use, and now users must pay for having basic functionalities. Since now this app has mostly all the users, people are forced to abide to the new terms.
A dating app is designed to keep its users in a constant state of insatisfaction, in an attempt to make them perpetually pay for expensive subscriptions. It analyzes which people you are more likely to want to date, and it keeps you away for being able to meet them. Since nobody knows what the app does, nobody can tell.
A social network collects information about which places, people and topics you visit the most, and feeds that info to an artificial intelligence which is capable to identify which are your weakest points in your personality, and start showing you adds you are most likely to consume compulsively.
An app has a security flaw that could be used to retrieve conversations, photos, personal information or financial information. Since nobody else than the company developing it has access to the design of that software, nobody external can review the code and notice it. People only notice it when someone cracks into system and publishes all the user data online.
Your company installs certain tool, but latter on they liked to change to a better one. Since all the files were created with the previous tool, which design is unknown and cannot be replicated by any other software, your company cannot afford to change to the better software.
You download a software to automatically upgrade drivers on your computer. But when you attempt to install it, it installs all kinds of other unwanted apps you find difficult to remove later on.
You install a gaming platform. This platform silently spies which other platforms you use, and what games you play on them in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage over them.
You install a free antivirus. This antivirus has been paid for companies to automatically mark as dangerous any tool that cracks other software, tricking the user into believing it is malicious.
Every time someone uses a software that is non libre, they are blindly bidding it won’t be anything harmful. For each single software.
Zenned was created to make libre software easily accessible to anyone, and to demonstrate that it is possible to make a fruitful business by always respecting its users best interest.
If something could benefit us, but would go against the user, we simply don’t do it. And if users felt we didn’t abide to this promise, all our software is libre and they could do with it what they wanted.
