Since the creation of the Internet the freedom of knowledge has been a hot topic. Diderot created the first modern encyclopedia, a compilation of the world’s knowledge. People could purchase sets of encyclopedias for their homes or go to the library to read it there. The encyclopedia was limited though, it was only updated every ten years and it could only hold so much information. Fast forward to the digital age, the age of the Internet and specifically Wikipedia, and people now have access to far more information and it is often easier to obtain. Traditional encyclopedias obviously have the advantage of being more authoritative, only experts are allowed to write for them; anybody can post things on the Internet after all. However because sites like Wikipedia are viewed and edited by so many people the majority of users make sure the information is correct and keep the jokers in check. There is still the risk of false information though. That being said it is very obviously on the side of free information; Wikipedia is a great example of the Internet striving to keep information free.

Many sites (especially academic ones) make an effort to limit access to information, making people pay to see it. This is also true for programs. People create programs and then copyright them and do not allow other people to edit them. Obviously people should be given credit for their work and should not be expected to work for free however this restricts the growth and improvement of programs and the Internet as a whole. Apple is infamous for this. Richard Stallman, the author of the “The Four Freedoms of Software” and the creator GNU/Linux, firmly believes in the open source software movement. Open source software allows users to constantly improve and share improvements of software. It is typically not as user friendly though.