 Today, I wanted to scratch the surface on a rather deep topic, and that topic is, should information be free? So for those of you that are part of the free software movement, the open source movement, you guys really champion freedom, free as in freedom, right? Should information be free? And that's, it's a bit of a touchy subject. So let's talk a little bit about the history of this. The first recorded cases of people really advocating for information to be free. That really sprang up in the 1980s. There was a slogan that started being used back then. That slogan was information wants to be free. Now, what does that mean? Information wants to be free, because it's kind of a paradox, really, when you think about it. Information is valuable. We all know that. Every single person knows that information is valuable. When you gain some knowledge that actually helps you in life, right, something that changes your life, right, that information has real value. And people recognize that. So in some ways, information actually wants to be expensive, right? Because if I have some secret knowledge, right, I have some secret information that I know is really powerful information that will change people's lives, then I'm going to charge for it. Why shouldn't I charge for it? Why shouldn't I profit from that? So information wants to be expensive, but at the same time, it also wants to be free because think about it, information, it starts getting spread around. More and more people know it. That means that the price of that information, the cost, right? This starts dropping, right? The more this information is out there, the more readily accessible it becomes, then the lower the value is placed on that information. You couldn't sell that information even if you wanted to at some point because it's too prevalent. It's too easy for me to just go get that information on my own. I don't need to pay you for that information. Now, I mean, think about it. Would you pay someone to get answers to questions that you could easily look up on Google or answers that you could probably call a friend and get, no, you wouldn't pay for that information. So these kinds of people, the information wants to be free crowd. They typically use that expression to criticize laws that limit transparency and general access to information, anything that tries to hide information typically behind a paywall they would be against. These are the people that are often critical of intellectual property, copyright, patents, subscription services, anything, again, that's a paywall to prevent people from just being able to gain access to information these people are staunchly against. And if I want to just briefly interject some of my own opinions, I will say there is an argument that these people have, especially with patents, because I really think that patents, I think we all know that the patent system, it stifles innovation, it stifles human achievement. Obviously, I could use software patents as an example, but I won't hear because I talk about free software and things like that all the time. Let's use a different example here. Let's talk about scientific knowledge, scientific research. Typically, it's hidden away, right? It's kept behind the closed doors of academic publishers. And now the research, it's difficult for others to access for scientific, social, economic growth. And that's what I'm talking about with, it stifles human achievement. And with more people having access to this research, more people could contribute to their work or take that work and go in a completely new direction. And it's kind of like proprietary software versus open source software, right? When the source code is open, more people can view that code and do a million different things with it. And we get so much more out of that code than if it was proprietary closed source hidden away, nobody could ever look at it. Why is so one person or one company can profit from the proprietary software rather than opening it up and having the entire human race benefit? In my example of scientific research being locked away behind closed doors, what's really funny about this is that all of this work in scientific endeavor, most of this stuff is funded by public institutions and governments, right? So it's public money that is funding this stuff. And yet they don't put it out there for the public to see, right? That's not the way it works at all. The business model of information seekers, whether it be software development, scientific knowledge, medical research, whatever, the business model is putting the information that is most valuable behind a paywall. Now, is that right? Is that moral? Honestly, I think this is easy to answer because I think everyone would agree that making it difficult to access information is clearly not a good thing for humanity at large, right? Clearly, we would achieve more in every area of study, right? In every area of endeavor, we would achieve more if information was free for anyone to access and anyone to use. And I don't think this is even up for debate. Now, where I'm going to get some pushback here is there is a problem here. And the problem is that the people that work to discover this information, right, these people that are knowledge seekers, you know, and they put in all this time to discover whatever it is they discover, right, these people must be paid for their work. And fair enough, I think everyone should be paid for work, right? But we need a better business model than locking information away and forcing people to pay for the key. Richard Stallman has actually talked about this topic a little bit in the past, but he has a little bit of a different take on it because he mostly focuses on information should be free as in freedom, not necessarily free as in cost. And I think Stallman actually makes a good distinction here because should the information contained in a textbook? Should that information be free? Yes. Right. I think many of us would say, yes. Should the textbook be free? No. Printing books is expensive. Somebody had to put real cost into printing that thing. Somebody had to put real work into formatting everything. You know, a lot of work goes in publishing a book. So should the book have to be paid for? Yes. Should the information have to be paid for? No. The words on the page should be free. But the actual textbook should be paid for. But where we go down a slippery slope here with this information wants to be free mantra is we've got too many people that are involved in criminal activity, such as hacking and treason. And many of those people like to use the information wants to be free mantra. That slogan, they like that argument to defend their criminal activities, right, why they hacked a company and then released a whole bunch of information. You know, they did it is to put the information out there because information wants to be free or why some government employee leaked classified documents like WikiLeaks and things like that. Right. Is because information wants to be free. Right. These people want to defend what were clearly illegal actions on their part, but they want to drum up some kind of sympathy because they have some higher moral purpose and what they're doing. I think I'm not sure if the actions of such people really do much for the cause, though, I think in some cases, these kinds of people do more harm than good. Again, this is kind of a deep topic that I just wanted to scratch the surface on because ultimately I think it's one of those that each of you, each and every one of you guys need to go and investigate this on your own, especially if you're new to the free software movement, the open source software, you really are going to have to spend some time developing your own concrete opinions and thoughts on this stuff. Some of this, you know, my opinions have changed over the years. And again, because of how deep this topic is, you're going to have to spend a few weeks, a few months, maybe a few years thinking on this. And don't be surprised if somewhere along the way, what you initially thought about this topic, you know, you change your opinion down the road. Now, I don't want to be a complete cop out here, right? I have a YouTube channel you guys are watching for my opinions. So I will give you just briefly a little bit of what I think personally on this. I think information is a dynamic force. I think it's this dynamic force that is always evolving and it's always spreading. It's constantly spreading like a virus, right? And it is impossible to contain. You can't contain information, even those that try, you know, these corporations that are trying to lock their information behind paywalls that's pointless, right? Because ultimately information wants to be free and it always achieves that freedom eventually. And before I go, I want to thank a few special people. I want to thank the producers of this episode. Devon Gabe James, Matt and Michael Mitchell, Paul Scott, Wes Allen, Armadragon, Chuck, Commander, Angry, Diokai, Dylan George, lead Linux, Ninja, Maxim, Mike, Erion, Alexander, a piece, Archon for door, Polytech, Red Prophet, Steven and Willie, these guys. They're the producers of this episode without these guys. I couldn't do what I do. I also want to thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now, each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen are one of my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux free software, open source software, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace. It's like the Queen's Song. I want to break free.