Fight monopolies with free software

This is an extremely fundamental topic to "FOSS", and yet awareness is extremely low, and it is consistently neglected at IndiaFOSS.

Do you know what the "F" in "FOSS" stands for? (Hint: it's not "free of cost"...)

What is the software freedom movement? Why is it important for end users?

Why is decentralization an important aspect of software freedom?

How does cooperative governance complement free software in empowering users?

Can we get paid to write free software?

All my friends are on a centralized service! How do we fight network effect?

Software freedom exists to prevent anti-user monopolies.

Decentralization and federation ensure that users have software freedom even with networked services.

Cooperative governance complements software freedom by giving more power to users and workers.

There are a number of business models that can work with free software, even outside the infamous freemium/open core model. The threshold pledge (or "fund and release") model is especially promising.

There are a number of ways to fight network effect at every level. At the end of the day, platforms don't exist without users - we give them their power, so we should be careful in what we choose.