Openness and Democracy

So, I've decided I need to weigh in on the topic of the day, Wikileaks. (I know it doesn't have anything to do with IT, but it fits with the spirit of this blog). Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and the many "leakers" believe that Wikileaks is doing a very good thing. There are, however, many detractors that say Wikileaks is an "enemy of democracy". 
The argument against Wikileaks is that (A. There was no grand information shared and (B. By this stuff leaking, the government is reversing its "openness".
First, it may not have been big, top secret type information. It may not have affected things, in the grand scheme. Funny thing is, if it had leaked and the government just acknowledged it and moved on, it would have been just that, no big deal. Leaks are going to happen, if you react to them well, they can help you. If you react to them badly, well, we can see how that works out. But the type of information leaked isn't really what I have the problem with. No, the issue I have is that these leaks somehow reversed the policy of transparency and openness the government was working on. See, this information that was leaked was given to mid-level soldiers, not civilians. That's not openness. I haven't seen one bit of openness in the government since that promise was made. That's like the CEO of a company saying he's going to share information with his customers and then give them to the middle managers instead. The government hasn't gotten any more open with who matters most, the people. All they've done is allow some slightly-lower-ranking than before soldiers access some information that doesn't matter. I would argue that Wikileaks is helping democracy by giving access of information to the people yes, the people. If a government is not willing to let the people have information, important information, then it is not a democracy, it is an oligarchy that shuffles figureheads around every few years. Wikileaks is just trying to make the U.S. the democracy it has always claimed it was.

You Have a Choice

The problem a lot of people have is that they would like to get out from under big software, but can't find any real alternatives. So, to start out, I'll give you some everyday software that can be replaced with open source versions. All these open source alternatives I use personally. Yes, they are common, but I want to build a base to get started. So, without further ado, here are some great alternatives to common software.

Office Suite: Big Name: Microsoft Office. Some good alternatives are OpenOffice.org(For Now) and LibreOffice OpenOffice.org is good for now, but since Oracle has acquired Sun Microsystems (the people behind OpenOffice.org and a few other things) it may get very closed, very quickly. LibreOffice, on the other hand, is based off OpenOffice.org and is being made by a group of former Sun employees who left after Oracle acquired them and is of very good quality.

Media Player: Big Names: Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime. The best alternative here, if you want to be able to play whatever, is VLC. VLC is an open source multimedia player that can handle just about anything you can throw at it. It doesn't have advanced library functions like Windows Media Player or Itunes, but if you want something that can just play what you want it to play, VLC is it.

Photo Editor: Big Name: Photoshop. The free one I like here is ClamWin(ClamAV for Linux). This one is just a pretty barebones scanner, no live protection at all. If all you need is a reliable scanner/cleaner, then ClamWin is what you want.

Audio Editor: Big Name: Honestly, there really isn't anything big for Windows in this space. (Garageband is big for Mac). Audacity is a good one. It works on all the major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac), has powerful features, but a dead simple interface anyone can use. If you ever needed to edit some sounds for some reason (or just wanted to make your voice sound funny), Audacity is what you want.

Here are the links to all the open source software mentioned here.

LibreOffice
OpenOffice.org
VLC
The Gimp
ClamWin
Audacity

If there's an important category I missed, or if you prefer something else in one of the above categories, don't hesitate to hit me up, I'd love to hear from you.

What is IT Freedom?

IT Freedom is  a blog dedicated to what would be called "IT". That is, implementing and maintaining computers and networks in personal and business environments. Here, we like to do that as freely and as cheaply as possible. We like to get things done without all the hassles and restrictions the big software corps put on their stuff, so we try to stick to open source software whenever we can. Here, you'll get plenty of IT tips (for both beginners and veterans) as well as open source news and maybe a dash of mainstream tech news. IT freedom is about the people who do tech, not the big companies.