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Introduction

What is meant by “Freedom Technology?”

Freedom technology is any creative tool that is built with principles that put first the beings that need to use that tool. The opposite of this would be the myriad of “Big Tech” options that generally exploit the user as a product, at best. When referring to software, we will often call this spyware, malware, or adware. These terms accurately reflect the True purpose of the tools.

Freedom-respecting technological tools are extremely powerful and widely available. Despite this, the allure of “convenient” alternatives remains the default, desipte the massive costs incurred by becoming the product of these services.

Terms

Below are categorized terms you will hear often, let’s get them defined now. You may want to use this page as a reference, and it may help to save or bookmark it until these terms are familiar to you. This is not exhaustive, and it is not expected that you will memorize these immediately.

Natural Law

  • Natural Law - Immutable and binding conditions that dictate the consequences of human action.
  • Morality - Right and wrong action. Often used as a synonym for Natural Law.
  • Sovereign - Originally from the Latin supranus, meaning “being above.” One who is Sovereign does not need a ruler, because they rule themselves in harmony with Nature.

Open Source

  • Open Source - Something that can be modified because its design is publicly available. There are endless types of ‘licensing’ within the Open Source community, but for our purposes, we just need to know that we can find and audit everything needed to recreate a tool.
  • Closed Source (Proprietary) - The opposite of Open Source. Design is privately held by creator, generally under threat of legal action if copied.
  • Licensure - In the context of Open Source tools, a license is the author’s intended use, and regulates how their tool is to be distributed. Common Open Source licenses include the MIT and GPL, but there are far too many to list. Theoretically, a license creates a legal defense of ‘intellectual property.’ At Neuromancy, we understand the intent, but generally consider licenses to be nonsense (see the Neuro website license), and defer to Natural Law and Common Sense respect to the wishes of a tool’s creator.
  • Big Tech - These systems have been weaponized against the user in most cases, likely despite the Good intentions of their engineers. We hold no ill-Will towards individuals at these organizations, but we refuse to use, recommend, or assist any of our fellow Men/Women in the use of their products. We believe they are moving our species in the wrong direction and are unlikely to change.

General Tech

  • Hardware - Physical components of a tool
  • Software - Digital components of a tool
  • Firmware - Technically software, but very low level. Hardware usually needs this to run software, such as an Operating System.
  • Architecture - Computer architecture is the low-level makeup of a machine and dictates what software it can run. Commonly, we will run into x86 and ARM architectures.
  • PC - Personal Computer, a “mini PC” is just a compact version. Both are used as desktop computers and usually require a monitor and keyboard for desktop use.
  • Malware/Spyware/Adware - Mal, as in, malicious. These are softwares that are designed to act as they are named. Big Tech Operating Systems and software are usually included in this category, as far as we’re concerned.

Operating Systems

  • Operating System (OS) - Key software components that allow a user to interact with hardware.
  • Unix - A family of Operating Systems (OSes) originally dating back to the 1960s.
  • GNU - a recursive acronym that stands for Gnu’s Not Unix. The GNU project was a series of tools and utilities built in the open. Once Linux was created, GNU/Linux became a fully functional OS, and in later years simply became known as “Linux.”
  • Linux - A broad term for a class of Unix-based OSes, although it was originally just a core OS component called a kernel, which is responsible for more direct interactions with the hardware.
  • Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) - Another class of Unix-based OSes, usually extremely lightweight, even more so than most Linux OSes.
  • UI - User Interface
  • CLI - Command Line Interface
  • GUI - Graphical User Interface
  • Desktop Environment (DE) - This is essentially the entirety of the GUI that you interact with on your OS.

Networking

  • Client - A node requesting data or using a service
  • Server - A node accepting requests for (serving) data, or providing (hosting) a service
  • Peer - A node which both requests and serves data, or provides one end of a mutual service