For those who are #NewHere, I'd like share another aspect of #mastodon that brought many of us here much before the current wave. Mastodon is Free Software (sometimes called as Open Source or Free and Open Source Software). It means anyone is Free to use, study, modify and share the software. This means we are not dependent on any single entity (person, company, country...) and we can be self-reliant.
Some of you may think freedom to modify software is useful only for techies. I'd like share the story of #scribus, a page layout software replacement to Adobe PageMaker and InDesign. This software only supported English and other Latin languages initially. Then a programmer from Oman, Fahad Amar Salim All Saidi added support for #Arabic with funding from Oman government. Along with Arabic, this change brought support for all Indian languages. #FreeSoftware