Why Open Source?

Why open source is a question I have been asked a lot lately, in fact only a few hours ago was the most recent time. I will try to answer that here. I may use names or terms that you are not familiar with, I will try to link back to wikipedia for the most common ones, if I miss one, please forgive and bounce over to http://en.wikipedia.org/ and drop that term/name in the search box. 

I have had a collision of worlds...my passion for the technical world had met my passion for the Kingdom of God. I like freedom, no I LOVE freedom.  Here in the USA, we currently have many freedoms and liberties.  I say currently because anything granted by legislation can be removed by legislation.  As a Christian, I have freedom in Christ through His Word and His Spirit.   Again, I love freedom.    Thy why would I want to burden or bind myself when it comes to the software I use?

Non-free software bind you in many ways from the features they offer to the licensing they use. Remember, I love freedom.  Wanting free software doesn't mean I'm cheap, poor or a pirate.... it means I want freedom on how I use my software.  Time for some definitions. 

In the English language, we have some problems when we have too many definitions to the same word.  The adjective "free" has two definitions that can be exclusive of one another.  Free as in "for zero price" is where we have the word gratis.  Gratis comes from a Latin word meaning "free of charge" in the sense that a good or service is supplied without payment, even though it might have a great value.  The other definition of "free" is 'having freedom' which we get from another Latin derived term, Libre.   As you might guess we also get the word liberty from this term as well.    

In the computer world, freeware is obviously gratis, but most of the time NOT libre.  A great example of that is a Windows program called E-Sword.  It is an amazing gratis Bible program, but it is locked into a proprietary code, on one platform (Microsoft Windows) and while there are many free and paid plugins to the program, you still are limited as to what you can do with it.   Then there is free, libre open source software (FLOSS) such as the SWORD project, which is the launchpad for several Bible applications that run on Linux, Windows, Mac, Android and iOS.  The reason that it is so flexible and has so many off-shoots is because it's licensing allows others to not only see the source code, but to make changes to it and redistribute those changes. 

So what is the simple answer for why I have chosen to go the open source route? I enjoy the freedom to legally and ethically do what ever I wish with the software I am using.