What Digital Independence Means
US Independence Day starts in a few hours from now in the "east coast" of the US [1, 2] (it all started in New England). Had the US or whatever it could call itself not fought for independence, it would still be part of the Commonwealth or the "Crown".
That day is historically significant not because of BBQ or fireworks, as people fought for it. The independence wars left many people dead, including Native Americans. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica said the conflict began in Massachusetts, the home of GNU/Linux, where in 1983 one programmer decided to resist corporate control over all computers including the source code which ran on them.
Right now there's still an ongoing battle over control... in computer systems. Who controls your data, your programs, your systems...?
Are you in control of your own digital life?
Something like GitHub (proprietary and governed fully by Microsoft) represents the attack and the attackers; they basically tell us to share our source code (our work) with them and then they misuse it. Then they steal it. Then they go to England and file frivolous lawsuits about people who object to that and expose scandals related to that. Because there are whistleblowers. There is a lot of hard evidence.
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software. Turning down proprietary isn't too hard. I see many people who do this. They are, on average, happier people. They have fewer problems in their lives. █