New FSF Campaign Celebrates Smaller Steps Up 'Freedom Ladder'

This summer the Free Software Foundation campaigns manager said that while they'll never stop aiming to be a "lighthouse" for others, "we recognize that a stance like ours can sometimes be a deterrent to people making important incremental improvements in their practices." So while they'll continue holding up the principled finish line, "Now, we're developing a clear set of steps to help support individuals in making the step-by-step improvements that they can." By supporting them in taking a step at a time, we're confident that we can help bring more people to a fully free setup than ever before. We're calling this campaign the "freedom ladder," and we need your support to help others begin climbing it.
This week the Free Software Foundation's program manager explained that "Free software can only be a sustainable idea if we are continuously bringing new people into the free software community," and provided an update on their Freedom Ladder campaign: Since we recognized the need for community input at every step of the way, we started off the campaign by holding four interactive Internet Relay Chat (IRC) community meetings... In the community meetings, we once again confirmed that the "typical" free software user does not exist. It's not "one size fits all," and there are as many particular use cases as there are free software users. How do you create one single message for people that range from absolute beginners to lifelong programmers, and who span all walks of life? The answer is: you don't...

As everyone's steps will be different, we need to meet people where they are. Our goal, and something important to keep in mind, is to explain the steps on the path forward in a way that allows one to step in from anywhere. We want to recognize the progress they've made so far, while still motivating them to strive towards full freedom...

A clear result from our first conversations about the new campaign was the need for educational resources... We believe people's stories about the use cases of free software, much like the free software stories we collected for the thirtieth birthday of the FSF about how people got into free software, as well as on the difficulties that sometimes need to be overcome, will help us better represent and address the multitude of audiences we want to speak to. It will show that free software really is for everyone, and for everyone there is a step forward. The goal of the Freedom Ladder campaign is to deliver an ever-expanding journey towards free software. The ideal result would be a combination of resources, information, connections, and motivation for the future. This is a major undertaking and the campaigns team's main goal at present: delivering a framework we can accelerate building upon that will help people in their journey to freedom.

We need to help people identify with other members of the community by delivering these stories, and letting them know that it's more than acceptable to move towards freedom gradually and incrementally... We're interested in both written statements and videos, and we would love to receive yours. You can add them to the Freedom Ladder pages in the wiki, or you can email [e-mail] with your ideas. In the meantime, we will work on the infrastructure to start building this initiative and be able to integrate any information and resources we need. But we need your help...

Our work on the Freedom Ladder campaign so far has been inspiring; the community meetings were fun and everything in this post is a result of the interactive, open, and welcoming nature of those events.

Is the "S' for "Splitters"?

[Entrope]

Don't say this:

In the community meetings, we once again confirmed that the "typical" free software user does not exist. It's not "one size fits all," and there are as many particular use cases as there are free software users.

Instead say this:

Free software users recognizes that software freedom helps everyone, and within that, there is enormous and wonderful diversity of who uses free software and how they use it!

If your goal is to encourage participation or membership or whatever else, don't start out by saying a typical user doesn't exist. That practically turns people away at the front door. Focus on the core that unites your audience, and then recognize the variation in the rest of what characterizes those people. Build from the commonality while still celebrating the variety, and then you can further your mission while expanding your audience.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

don't start out by saying a typical user doesn't exist.

"You're all individuals!"...?

Re:

[jellomizer]

Your version makes it sounds like they only want Liberals and left leaning folks to join the FSF. Our culture is already drastically split, failing to recognize that will only play into the division.

The FSF needs conservative members and voices as well, which in general they are kinda lacking in that regard. Left leaning folks tend to be good a change, and adaption, spotting problems in the system. While Right leaning folks tend to be more of the get it done, see the goal and stick to it, and if it works

Re:

[jellomizer]

So you welcome Unity, but not "THOSE People". You are bringing division back where you don't need to.

The Woke left, tend to bring up the fact that their is harmful institutionalized racism in our system, and the reality on how much racism has affected our history. That in itself isn't bad, as America and many other countries become more diverse in race, ethnicity, and religions. These systems which were designed to "protect the majority" have become a system that is keeping a larger and growing chunk of

Re:Is the "S' for "Splitters"?

[Entrope]

Your version makes it sounds like they only want Liberals and left leaning folks to join the FSF.

That was not my intention at all. I am -- to say the least -- deeply skeptical of the modern left/woke enterprise. I also don't think that crowd has the only legitimate claim to diversity. The FSF can be welcoming to lots of different users and developers without adopting "progressive" ideology, and the kind of language I suggested should not be taken as code words for leftist ideas.

Re:

[phantomfive]

Our culture is already drastically split

It's not in fact, there are more similarities than differences between the two sides. Nearly everyone in the US believes that black lives matter (for example), and nearly everyone believes that all lives matter, but 30% of the people are afraid to say one phrase, and 30% of the people are afraid to say the other phrase.

But there is a division that was created over decades of media, where we are taught that the other guy is the enemy, who is lying and trying to deceive us,

Here is the core of the problem, there are people who get advantage by trying to divide us over trivial things.

Re: Is the "S' for "Splitters"?

[ArmoredDragon]

Diversity doesn't necessarily mean woke.

Diversity means you exclude non-transgender heterosexual white males.

Woke means that you just realized that you're a closet racist, and feeling an incredible sense of white guilt, you feel that you need to make up for it by denouncing everything you see as being racist, regardless of whether race actually has anything to do with it. For example, you'll denounce milk.

Re:

[eclectro]

I did not see it as that. I saw it as less Stallman hardness and more as a soft outreach. Who was it that said "you get more with honey than you do vinegar??"

Re:

[Krishnoid]

Uh, I saw it less as soft outreach and more as, "hey, we've finally all reconfirmed that not everyone is like Richard Stallman. Or to use a car analogy, not everyone drives the same model car for the same reason in the same patterns." To which I'd have to say ... great? I mean, Tim O'Reilly kind of figured this out over two decades ago, but good for you for catching up to the year 2000-ish?

Re:

[Krishnoid]

Oh right, and Google and Apple and everyone who runs end-user services on Linux/BSD. Their end-users are also affected by Free Software, albeit using it over a network.

Listen carefully!

[Latent Heat]

We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction.

Make sure you bring an adequate size attache . . . I advise you to be rested.

Delivering stories?

[Larsen E Whipsnade]

Oh. So that's what they do.

Gather round, children. It's story time.

Re:

[TuringTest]

Oh. So that's what they do.

Gather round, children. It's story time.

And... that's a very good thing. Religions use storytelling as their core tool to propagate, civil rights campaigns are entirely based on telling stories and gathering people to listen... Even so-called "neutral ideologies" are telling a story about how good they are for their participants and how people coming from all social groups should be following their tenets.

In essence, telling stories is how we humans coordinate to achieve goals that we may recognize as worthwhile of being pursued

Not applicable.

[Anonymous Coward]

This applies everywhere, and to all software. Except Qt/KDE, which is is still cast into the outer darkness. And they smell.

Ladder

[cascadingstylesheet]

Rung 1: RMS must go, because mattress or something

Rung 2: Google and Facebook shall decide what you can say about various topics. Not all topics, mind you - we care about freedom! - just the important topics.

Rung 3: ... hey, where is everyone going?

Re: Ladder

[ArmoredDragon]

They're bringing you RMS technology to put you on the ladder to total freedom. It's modeled after this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

Someone else's plans for your work. Typical.

[Seven Spirals]

Don't you just love how "experts" and "organizations" and random political hacks seems to want to to pwn coders and "organize" them? They don't like the fact that we can just put our heads down, tune out their politics (since they can't code, they spend time writing manifestos and codes-of-conduct also known as CoCs). They are pissed we don't want to stand shoulder to shoulder with them on some idiotic crusade or another. I believe it's because they know people recognize them as useless gadflies and hangers

Is the FSF still relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the FSF still relevant? They shot themselves in both feet (and some other appendages too) due to their incompetent handling what should have been a reasonably straightforward cleaning up of their organization. The name is now toxic to too many. It is time for the FSF to burn themselves to the ground, and let their ashes support the growth of another organization that supports the original goals.

Re:

[phantomfive]

FSF is extremely relevant. They promote the philosophy of free software, and also build it.

The name is now toxic to too many

The people who can remember the difference between the FSF and EFF is very small, and the number of people who hate on Stallman is even smaller.