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Welcome to **Friendly Computers**! Computers one of our biggest
passions.
We have been very worried about the level of understanding that people
have about computers. It is our belief that the level of computer
literacy in our community that people have is far too low. We wanted to
do something about that, we created **Friendly Computers**.
This community worker's co-operative aims to be very humble. We do not
want fame or riches. All we want to do is provide reliable and safe
computers at a very low cost, and provide computer literacy lessons.
We ask people in our community to donate unwanted computers to us, which
we refurbish and repair, and then repurpose to new homes at a nominal
fee. Many of these computers are old, but given the state of software
technology these days, this is no problem. We can make old computers
run fast again. We can do this because the bedrock, or fundamental
software--the "operating system"--that we install on our **Friendly
Computers** is called "Free Software", or "Open Source Software".
It aims to respect the freedom of the computer user. The Free
Software Foundation defines free software as:
“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and
community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run,
copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
The operating systems that large industrial corporations (like
Microsoft and Apple) sell are *not* free software. We like to think of
their software products as like a "black box": you are permitted to
use their software if you purchase it, but they will not tell you how
it works, or how you yourself can change it, and, sometimes, even
configure it.
The point of software freedom is that you should be able to
interrogate your computer's inner workings, to whatever level of
mastery you feel comfortable. 'Free' software may be sold for
money--like Microsoft's or Apple's, we suppose--but the fundamental
difference is that its blueprints (the 'source code') must also be
given along with the product.
It is, however, common practice to provide 'free' software at no cost,
and this is what we do. All the software that you will be able to
access on a *Friendly Computer* will cost you nothing. This is a great
benefit, and will save you a lot of time and money.
We are able to do this because the software freedom movement is made
up of tens of thousands of volunteers, software engineers, and
technical writers. You are benefiting from the hard--and frequently
unpaid--work that so many of us do in order to make sure that
computers remain friendly, and not scary and dangerous.