Are you giving your loved ones holiday gifts they can use freely, or something a company will control?

Electronics are popular gifts for the holidays, but people often overlook the restrictions that manufacturers slip under the wrapping paper. Companies like Microsoft and Apple can and will use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to prevent your loved ones from sharing apps on the laptop you got them or remixing the songs on their expensive new iPod. If the recipient of your gift is as unlucky as one woman this year, Amazon might even block all the books on their Kindle and refuse to explain why. Companies want us to accept this kind of intrusive control, but when you think about, it's annoying and unethical.

Give freely

The good news is, for every device that uses DRM or has a remote "kill switch" like the Kindle, ethical companies have made a better one that doesn't, one that your loved ones will be free to enjoy however they wish. Here's a list of these awesome gifts, compared with their more well-known, but more restrictive alternatives. While you're reading, please remember that donating to a charity in your friend or family member's name is at least as meaningful as buying them an electronic device. Some of our favorite charities are the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons.

The Free Software Foundation's Holiday Giving Guide

The gifts in the left column respect your freedom much more than those in the right column.

Operating System: Give the gift of free, flexible, and ethical computing

Trisquel Completely free operating system: transparent and modifiable Support community development, not corporate bottom lines Break the cycle of forced upgrades and planned obsolescence Visit trisquel.info to download the gift of GNU/Linux		Windows 8 Proprietary software that profits from controlling how you use your computer Invades privacy and exposes personal data to Microsoft and to malicious attacks Dependent on mandatory upgrades and devices that don't support older versions of Windows