While there is nothing wrong with encouraging people to use software by word of mouth, that misses the advantage of using free software over using any other software.
Here are some advantages which should matter to people who do not read code: What if the company who makes this software goes out of business or stops supporting this program? Wouldn't you like somebody else to be able to support this program in the future so you can keep using it? IBM laid off a lot of the people who originally invented large parts of Lotus Notes. There are parts of Lotus Notes which cannot be updated because there is nobody left who understands the code, and the people who are hired cannot figure it out. What if the company who makes this software decides to stop supporting this program on the hardware that you have. They would make you buy a new phone, computer, or whatever. Wouldn't you want someone else to be able to fork off a version that still works on the equipment you have? What if the company who makes this software decides to change the behavior so that the software is less good for you, such as Tivo making it harder to skip the commercials in recorded television programs. Tivo lets you see the source, but they DON'T let you run the program after you change it, so if they decide you have to watch commercials, you have no choice. That is an important difference between Open Source Software and Free Software. What if you want one thing to work with another thing, such as being able to transfer photos to your email so you can send them to your mother? If the people who own the program decide making this camera talk to your choice of email is not important, you are stuck. If people have the source, then somebody else can make that work, and the owners of the program know this. Do you know that current versions of Microsoft Word cannot open old versions of Microsoft Word documents? If you keep a document on your computer, such as the announcement of the birth of your child, might you not want to be able to open it 20 years later? Part of being free software is not storing things in closed proprietary formats. If the format is open and standard it is more likely that whatever you use 20 years from now can still open the documents you create today. Some parts of American government even have laws about not storing their documents in proprietary formats. What if you stored your email in a place that uses your personal email as a way to pop up ads to try to sell you things? If you want to switch to a different email without the ads, can you? Not if the software gives you no way to export the email. Wouldn't you want someone to be able to solve that problem? The people who own closed proprietary source won't want to solve it. They want to lock you into their ads. When many people can see the source code, any bug will become obvious to someone, especially if people who understand different parts of the code can discuss it online. This means that if some evil people find a security hole in the software you use, wouldn't you want hundreds or thousands of people to be able to work on that problem, for their own sake, instead of waiting for the one or two people that the owners of closed proprietary software can spare? When security holes are found in Windows, they take months to fix. When security holes are found in Linux, it is hours. We keep hearing stories about voting machines that do not work right or that can be hacked. If you believe that it makes a difference who wins an election, you might want a lot of people to be able to review the voting software and makes sure that it records the votes correctly. I could go on, but you get the idea. Mary-Anne
