Working together for free software: Our interview with Melanie Punz

Melanie Punz lives in Austria and has been using GNU/Linux and free software enthusiastically for almost twenty years now. Melanie has several years of experience in legal counsel in the international field (especially international contract law) and as a mediator. Below are Melanie's responses to questions posed by the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) Outreach and Communications Coordinator Eko K. A. Owen as part of our Working Together for Free Software series.

FSF: What role does free software play in your life, either at work or personally?

Melanie: Using free software gives me the sense of real freedom in the IT sector. I was able to get to know the difference between free and closed software because I used both in parallel for a while for professional reasons. Due to that experience, I definitely know why I choose free software.

In my former working environment, I was required to use Windows OS, but privately I used a Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution. The differences that I have seen from my user's point-of-view were that every time there was a Windows upgrade to a newer version, all previous settings/functions had been rearranged, so much so that everything I had memorized before was partly obsolete and it took me a lot of time to search for the old now-rearranged functions, and besides these issues, the update was not made intuitively.

Comparatively, when I use the XFCE desktop privately, arrangements remain the same (despite a newer version), which I like very much because it saves time and energy. I can choose which distribution or desktop I want to use and combine packages. It is not predetermined. I am able to adapt it to my needs (even if I needed someone to do it for me). This choice alone is fantastic. Functions in general are also intuitively made.

If I use proprietary software, I don't know what is happening in the background, even if I could program by myself. If I chose to use proprietary software, I would need to trust the producer blindly, but too many examples show that it is difficult to trust any provider (e.g. MS, Apple, Intel, Google, Zoom, etc). With free software, I know that so many many other experienced people are able to look at it because they have access to the source code, which is not possible with proprietary software.

Furthermore, I have seen what's possible with shell commands. Wow! So many things to be resolved, merged, split, moved, etc. in an easier and faster way. I use Bash and I am still learning how to use it for my user needs. One of the commands that I like is the magic sys-request "Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring" (which is easy to remember for users) when I need to shut down the computer properly. I also worked for the semiconductor industry in the legal department and have a rough idea what is possible with microchips.

However, the most important for me are the freedom to choose, especially what happens with my data, and the mindset behind free software. The freedom that free software gives me is especially important, both generally and personally, in the IT sector (e.g. tracking all over and personal data misuage). That's why I use free software. That's why I promote it.

FSF: What free software issue is most pressing right now, in your opinion?

Melanie: That there are still prejudices, and in my perception, there is also little knowledge about free software, but mostly the fear to change habits. Well-known proprietary operating systems, for example, still make it impossible to simply open LibreOffice documents, which creates the impression for users that free software is too complicated or is not working properly when the opposite is true.

Working together for free software

This article was submitted as part of the FSF's Working Together series. See also Melanie's profile at https://www.fsf.org/working-together/profiles/melanie-punz