GPL - Getting Pretty Liberated

	Getting Pretty Liberated... "How to GPL your way off of the Upgrade Train" By The F@t Guy

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What is this "GPL"
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All right, I might be dating myself with this next remark (which is Ok, cuz I can't get a date with anyone else anyway), but here it goes:

Back in the old days, just after the dinosaurs died, there was this band named "The Kingston Trio". I don't really think they were from Kingston, which is in Jamaica, but there were three of them. They were a really good band for their time, but that isn't the point.

The point is actually one of their songs, known as "The MTA" or "Charlie and the MTA". Or maybe "I fight the Transit Authority, the Transit Authority Always Wins". Whatever it was called, the song is a rail against the Boston Metropolitan Transit Authority and is wrapped around the MTA raising fares all the time.

Poor Charlie pays his last nickel in fare and gets on the train to go to work, but when he reaches his destination, he finds the situation has changed since he boarded - he has to pay a nickel to get off too!

Well, Charlie is stone-broke, so they won't let him off the train. He's bound to ride the MTA forever, with his wife chucking a sandwich at him through an open window "as the train comes a-rumblin' through".

One might ponder why Charlie's wife never figgered out to chuck him a nickel instead of a sandwich, or why Charlie couldn't talk somebody into loaning him the money, or where Charlie might be going to the bathroom throughout this perilous time, but that isn't the point either.

The point is that just like poor Charlie, you just never seem to get done paying do ya? It just never seems to stop getting bigger, and "better", and "more and more"... You have unknowingly boarded the "upgrade train", and now that you are on that train, how do you get off?

The computer isn't big enough for the software, or the software isn't big enough for the computer.

Whatever it is that the software does, you NEEEEED it. But then your computer isn't big enough again, which of course, naturally means you need more software.

Just as you get nicely settled in, it's off to the races again, with your wallet emptying out like a drunk office-jockey's bladder on "free beer night" at the bowling alley. That is not to say that there ever is a "free beer night" at the bowling alley. That was just a figure of speech. Don't get so distracted.

I don't like it. I want to stop now. I want to get off.

But you keep paying because you have to. There isn't any choice... Or is there? Well, yes, in fact, there is. There are excellent choices, many more capable than what you have been relentlessly forced to buy, but most folks won't have the determination it takes to find them, until they are so sick of their personal status quo, that they are saying something like:

"That's it. NO MORE. I am getting off this train, even if I have to close my eyes, jump off, and hope some rotting hulk of an abandoned 69 Freightliner is in the way to break my fall. I have HAD it."

If that's where you are, then this section is definitely for you... I was like you once upon a time. Herein I will describe the various ways I have simplified my computer life by using GPL'd (and other free) programs.

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