Linux

Ok, but it's different in the way that before you HAD to use these platforms, now you don't have to. The transformative power free software had in me is that I saw a community where the priority isn't making something that will please the market or that will be beneficial to everyone (as in, I make profit out of it giving you the boon of software applications). This community doesn't care about that. Even if there are discussions about what kind of software would be good for society and companies, there are many applications that are out there because the devs think they should be.

Example: ots (open text summarizer) is FOSS and does the exact same thing that profit driven websites that summarize books and texts, with the difference that the profit driven ones reinforce that they are just doing it for the money or because they had a "brilliant" idea that needs to prosper, while ots is just there as a service to the community, something someone wanted to make that they thought would be useful.

Being introduced to this niche made me think: "Wow, this is actually possible." and try to thrive in this context (as a programmer and as a servicer to society in general). I know community driven things comes before software or even computers, but this was what gave me release from thinking that everything must be profit driven. That's what I meant by getting released from capitalist control - I don't think profit is necessary anymore. It's just a concept that mainstream media and overall political and corporate culture pushes on us daily to believe.

Heck, I'm going through my undergraduate course and every single professor talks about how profit and making software for profit is good. How the Big Tech companies are awesome. It's hell, but it's worth it.