The Great Cause

The great cause, the cause of true virtue as understood by Professor Bloom, today is freedom and the place where that great moral test is being fought is in the open source software movement.

The reason why this is so important is not necessarily for the software itself, though the software is of vital (life-giving) importance. The reason why the test for freedom in software is so important is because free software enables freer expression. There isn't even a pay-to-play requirement, though hardware is still an issue.

So it is important for any creative person who might be able to use a computer to better enable his or her art to learn what free and open source software alternatives there are out there.

Wikipedia is just the beginning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source