The claims keep coming!  Perhaps you have seen it other designers state that they want to protect your privacy or they want to give you the freedom you crave from their current web designers. Always google search that designer, see if they support open source and GPL projects (or if they just leech from them).

At Goldsboro Web Development, we understand more than most what the value of freedom and privacy is.  Our company is run by an Operation Enduring Freedom War Veteran that has been abroad and lived in areas that lacks the simple, basic freedoms we enjoy and take for granted every day.  A common line I hear from our director is,

[blockquote sub_text=”– Michael L Wells” blockquote_border=”border_top_bottom”] “If a customer chooses another designer, just be thankful they still have the right to make that choice.”[/blockquote]

We see many developers that state they’re protecting your privacy, but they really have no idea what privacy is.  What is privacy?  Is privacy the simple solution of repelling peeping toms from your site?

We don’t think so. While we believe that keeping a peeping tom out of your site and email is implied, we define privacy as defending your content against unwarranted searches and seizures. While we are more than willing to cooperate with law enforcement when we know there is a crime being perpetuated on our systems, we have no issues with telling local authorities, “Go get a warrant” — just as we have done for clients in the past.   That, is protecting your privacy, and that is what a company does when they take your privacy seriously and guard it as their own.

Now, you may believe what you hear, other developers state something along the lines of, “We protect your privacy and take security very seriously”.  This is just not possible when 99% of web developers don’t even have root access to their systems — they are using shared hosting environments where they have the inability to perform security audits.  At Goldsboro Web Development, we have full-time staff on our payroll that does nothing but monitor, optimize, and maintain our information systems hosted in Florida and Georgia.

What about Freedom?  Well, nothing says freedom like the GPL (General Public License).  This is a standardized license that allows recipients of software to freely copy, modify, redistribute, resell, and customize the software to any extent they wish so long as they KEEP the GPL license present in the modified or derived software.  Goldsboro Web Development regularly makes both monetary contributions as well as labor contributions to many open source and GPL projects.  We even host our own GPL projects, which has garnered international attention and limelight.  We even give our clients FTP and SOURCE CODE access to all software we develop (unless otherwise stated and agreed upon); while assessing this software may void any warranties or agreements, the customer still has the explicit right to copy our software that we have developed for them to any other server of their choosing and use it however they see fit.

— THAT, IS FREEDOM.