This video is the second in a series of animated videos
created by the Free Software Foundation's (FSF), and this one is
themed around our campaign against the use of proprietary remote
education software.
We must reverse the trend of forsaking
young people's freedom, which has been accelerating as
corporations try to capitalize on the need to establish new
remote education practices. Free software not only protects the
freedoms of your child or grandchild by allowing people to study
the source code for any malicious functionalities, it also
communicates important values like autonomy, sharing, social responsibility, and collaboration.
Support our work
To further help us bring attention to, and start a conversation
with, institutions that are endangering students' futures and
jeopardizing their education by relying on proprietary software ,
please show your support for free software in education and this
video by promoting it.
If you enjoy this video, consider becoming an FSF associate
member or donating to the FSF to help us create more
videos like this to help spread free software awareness.
Help us translate to many different languages so we can share
this video across the globe! Translation drafts and the how-to
explanation can be found on our the LibrePlanet wiki. Once you have
finalized a translation, email campaigns@fsf.org and we will
publish it.
The University of Costumed Heroes by the Free Software Foundation LENGTH: 02:33 PRODUCER & DIRECTOR: Brad Burkhart STORY: Douglas J. Eboch ANIMATOR: Zygis Luksas
The FSF Board chose me at this moment as a servant leader to help the
community focus on our shared dedication to protect and grow software
that respects our freedoms. It is also important to protect and grow
the diverse membership of the community. It is through our diversity
of backgrounds and opinions that we have creativity, perspective,
intellectual strength, and rigor.
It is the community that has selflessly built the impressive
collection of free software the world now enjoys. The community must
be given credit for this achievement. The free software movement may
have started with Richard Stallman's passion and lifelong commitment,
and we all are grateful to that spark of imagination that gave us high
purpose. At the same time, we are all aware that this community has
grown large over the years. That's a very good thing.
It requires
renewed focus to achieve our goals. We must remember what unites us
and why we came to free software in the first place. What inspired us
in the past? What will keep us inspired, and what will inspire new
generations of free software developers? We must be kind to each
other and respect each other when our good faith arguments differ, in
order to produce the best solutions together. I pledge to support
honest dialog and emerging leaders in the quest to secure the future
for free software for generations to come, and not to alter the tenets
of the free software vision.
I have been an active supporter and contributor from the moment the
GNU Manifesto appeared, and by accident of time and space, I was lucky to
witness the birth of a movement truly great and wonderful. To be
honest, at the time my first thought was, "What a noble idea, but one
person cannot do all this." Then I saw how over time, many good
people from literally every corner of the planet gave of themselves to
make free software a reality. It is you who are important, it is you
who joined the effort to help the world see the virtues of free
software, the dedication of its thousands of contributors and
volunteers, the high quality of free software used every day around
the world, and its sheer endurance and ability to find itself in
widespread use even by those who were once fierce opponents to free
software. Take that to heart, let's keep it going. Tell it to your
children, and let's make sure your children have the freedoms you have
achieved, and more.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) tech team is the four-person
cornerstone of the primary infrastructure of the FSF and the GNU
Project, providing the backbone for hundreds of free software
projects, and they epitomize the hard work, creativity, and can-do
attitude that characterize the free software movement. They’re pretty
modest about it, but I think they deserve some serious credit: it’s
only because of their everyday efforts (with the help of volunteers
all over the world) that the FSF can boast that we can host our own
services entirely on free software, and help other people to become
freer every day. It’s also largely to their credit that the FSF staff
were able to shift to mostly remote work this spring with barely a
blip in our operations.
You can read a summary of their work over
the last six months in the most recent issue of the Free
Software Foundation Bulletin, but I wanted to give you a few highlights:
This March, the novel coronavirus swept in and caused the shutdown
of nearly all in-person activities at the most inopportune time in
the FSF’s yearly schedule: the week of the 2020 LibrePlanet
conference. After deep discussion, the decision was made to
take LibrePlanet online-only on Monday, March 9th; the conference
was due to begin on Saturday, March 14th. You can see all of the
details of how the conference ultimately ran on our blog, and
you can watch the session videos on our MediaGoblin
page. However, the thing that I want to emphasize here is that
the tech team successfully ran an entire conference online, which
they had never done before, and made it all run smoothly with only
five days to prepare, and every piece of software used was free
software. Like I said, they’re modest.
Next, the tech team set about addressing how proprietary remote
communication tools used for staying in touch and for
education are becoming a dangerous fact of everyday
life. Having used Jitsi Meet as one part of the livestreaming
process for LibrePlanet, they created a Jitsi Meet
instance that FSF associate members can use for work and
play. They can invite anyone to connect with them in a
freedom-respecting video chat room. Not only does this
instance enable you to chat with the people you care about
without the abuses of proprietary software, but it also makes it
easier than ever to demonstrate the advantages of free software to
everyone you know!
Finally, we’re so proud that FSF Web developer Michael McMahon
spearheaded the HACKERS and HOSPITALS project on the
LibrePlanet wiki, enabling the hacker community to share resources
and connect with activists who have been manufacturing an astounding
variety of desperately-needed medical and protective equipment. Only
free software gives hackers and makers the complete flexibility and
freedom they need (and deserve!) in order to meet immediate needs,
and Michael and many others have risen to the occasion
admirably. You can read a dedicated article on HACKERS and
HOSPITALS in the new issue of the Free Software Foundation
Bulletin.
If you’re finding these accomplishments as exciting as we do, we hope
you’re now motivated to chip in by becoming an associate member of
the FSF! At this writing, we are only 13 members away from our
goal of 200. The farther we surpass this goal, the more our tech team
can achieve!
The value of a membership goes far beyond the dollars and cents needed
to help us weather the challenges of this year: a membership is a vote
of confidence that helps us launch new initiatives and puts weight
behind our campaigns, licensing, and technical work. Plus, membership
comes with plenty of benefits, including merchandise discounts,
a bootable membership card, and the newest member perk: access to our
Jitsi Meet videoconferencing server.
We don’t know what the future will bring in many ways, but we know
that we can count on the ingenuity and hard work of the FSF tech team
-- and so can you. Thank you so much for supporting their efforts!
Even though the vast majority of software development and news
articles on technology still predominantly focus on proprietary
software, public pressure is increasingly shifting the conversation to
include ethical considerations. Whenever you feel that free software
is not making strong enough waves, I urge you to look at the
LibrePlanet conference video collection (or listen to the
talks), to strengthen your belief. Making free software a kitchen
table issue in every home can at times seem like an insurmountable
challenge, but there are so many community members doing incredibly
inspiring work driving user freedom forward.
This is why we have been updating our "Working Together for Free
Software" pages in the last few weeks, with new testimonials from
activists and enthusiasts. We have heard why people believe in free
software, and how free software can make a difference in all
industries. This third blog post in the series inspired by interviews
with community members will bring some attention to the success that
people have had advocating for free software through their
occupations. It manifests how appeals to user freedom, and successful
free software implementations, are driving forces behind the
advancement of businesses all over the world.
Adam Monsen, senior director of engineering at C-SATS R&D, and a
founder of SeaGL, the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference, puts it
simply:
Free software is the backbone of our robust software
supply chain at C-SATS. We know we'll always be able to improve
or customize it.
But for some people, free software is not an option their employer
presents for them, or it doesn't seem like a natural go-to for the
business or its customers. Alper Atmaca, a law professional, and board
member of the Free Software Association (Özgür Yazılım Derneği)
in Turkey, runs into this daily, and poetically explains:
A needle that refuses to go through certain fabric is as
ridiculous as today's computing restrictions. But we laugh
about the former, and continue to use the latter.
As a law professional who works in criminal and data protection
cases mainly, I see this is truer everyday. It is generally
accepted that a law office runs on overpriced, hyped nonfree
software. That expectation drives an unwarranted
standardization of tools that do not necessarily drive the
client's best interest in law spheres.
Alper starts conversations about free software every day, and
convinces his clients of its value in his professional field. You can
read his entire statement to learn more about how he invests time
in his clients to educate them. He states:
I am proud to have had some clients who became even fiercer
freedom advocates than I am.
Individuals who bring their advocacy to their workplace can make a
huge difference for the movement. We can benefit greatly if we bring
conversations around software freedom to the conference table as well
as the kitchen table. In recent years, we have seen organizations that
prioritize freedom secure a stronger foothold in a range of
industries. One example is Nextcloud, the popular file sharing
and collaboration platform founded by Frank Karlitschek:
Working in a global community where decisions aren't purely
dependent on boring company politics and where code is reused
instead of reimplemented is just so much more interesting and
rewarding!
He continues:
[...] when I was young, free software was still almost always a
hobby, something you did as a student, until you got a "real"
job. One where you showed up in a suit, did things you knew
were often useless, working on projects that were not going
anywhere and didn't help anyone. I wanted to change that for
myself, and later, also for others. And today, my company
employs several dozen developers, and we're hiring new ones all
the time!
As Adam, Alper, and Frank show us, the use of free software in
business for reasons related to freedom is not just viable, but
advantageous. You can advocate for free software within your industry
by making an effort to show how free software fits your clients'
needs, and your passion for free software can translate into a
successful business. Your advocacy through your workplace will help
make progress towards free software becoming a true kitchen table
issue.
Free software is an idea, a set of principles, and a community that's
been growing in both size and importance every day for over 35
years. This set of principles needs to be protected against constant
threats, like the novel coronavirus, and the billions of dollars from
governments and proprietary software corporations that we're up
against. It's an uphill battle, but we most certainly are making
headway.
Right now, we are very close to reaching our associate member
goal before August 7th. A larger community means more speaking
power, and a greater ability to uplift community members who refuse to
accept the proprietary status quo, like the inspiring group of
people we have interviewed over the past few weeks.
To help raise awareness, you can also share your own story about your
work or business using free software and how you are defending
#UserFreedom via social media using the hashtag and one of our
beautifully designed free software images. You can connect with
community members on our LibrePlanet mailing list, or, if you
are an FSF associate member, on the forum. Knowing that there
are people standing up for freedom all over the world is so inspiring
to us, and we hope it's inspiring to you as well.
