Book. A guide to free software to regain control of our digital uses

At a time when digital giants are imposing their ever more restrictive conditions on users, Thierry Pigot's work, “Practical Guide to Free Software”, published by Puits Fleuri, comes at the right time. This exhaustive publication reminds us that another path is possible, far from the economic models based on subscription which are becoming widespread among traditional publishers.

Adobe, Microsoft, Autodesk… The list has, in fact, grown of software publishers who have switched to the “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model. A trend that transforms the user into an eternal tenant of their digital tools. This development marks a major paradigm shift in the software industry, moving from an ownership model with a lifetime license to a perpetual rental system, with costs accumulating month after month.

A citizen rampart

Faced with this mercantile drift, free software appears to be a citizen bulwark. The guide presents in detail credible alternatives to proprietary solutions: LibreOffice for office automation, GIMP for image processing, or even Kdenlive for video editing, gImage Reader for optical character recognition (OCR), VLC as a reader and encoder multimedia, etc. These software, developed by committed communities, now compete in terms of functionality with their commercial equivalents.

The book also highlights French initiatives in this area, such as the State's Free Software and Digital Commons Mission which lists software and supports administrations.

This movement in favor of free software has also seen numerous initiatives such as those of the Framasoft association, on the front line. In 2014, through its “Let's ungooglisons Internet” campaign, it offered free alternatives to GAFAM services: Framapad for collaborative work, Framadate for planning, or even PeerTube for video sharing.

We can also cite the Capitole du Libre, a weekend dedicated to free software through around 100 conferences, 25 workshops for experts and the general public, the 2024 edition of which will be held on November 16 and 17 in Toulouse.