Christopher Allan Webber

Friendly intro to the FSF / free software on http://fsf.org/

Christopher Allan Webber at

There's a new video up on http://fsf.org/ and I'm very excited about it... it's a nice, clean, friendly intro to the ideas of what the FSF and software freedom is all about. Done by friends Bassam and Fateh over at Urchn, it's a made-with-free-software-intro-to-free-software (well, kind of mostly focusing on FSF turning 30).

Making accessible, engaging materials on what free software is and why it matters is important. I'm glad to see an uptrend here, with both this video and the Email Self-Defense Guide.

If you agree with the above, and want to see the FSF do more to continue making the messaging around free software welcoming/engaging, why not donate as encouragement?

Great job to everyone involved!

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@Jacob Barkdull It's being fixed... this was done on a limited time / budget is my understanding, so a couple things slipped but are being corrected. Which, within those constraints, the Urchn/FSF collab worked hard, kicked butt, and delivered something awesome.

I think the video stands very well on its own, but I most especially hope it's a symbol of things to come. This is a direction of messaging people seem to be responding to... what could happen if we got more resources so the FSF could produce a broader series of materials to bring messaging about user freedom to everyone? (Which, I know I'm echoing myself, but hence my suggestion that you donate to show your support... given fundraising season, the FSF is paying close attention to what people react to in terms of contributions!)

Christopher Allan Webber at 2014-12-30T14:39:30Z

Audio says "GNU General Public License", sign skips the "General". So I guess detailed knowledge was unevenly spread throughout the team. :-)

Or someone missed one bit. Anyway, glad to hear it's being fixed.

Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) at 2014-12-30T15:15:53Z

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Glad to see the FSF working more on positive campaigning.

Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) at 2014-12-30T15:17:48Z

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I also notice that the video refers to the operating system as "GNU Linux", without an audible "slash" or "plus", this is something the FSF (via the GNU Project) advises against doing: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#whyslash

It makes it sound like GNU is just another distribution, like how there's "Ubuntu Linux", "Red Hat Linux", etc. Using "GNU" that way makes their insistence on calling the system "GNU/Linux" seem unjustified, because it deemphasises the rest of their long standing work.

It's still a great video, second only to the one with Stephen Fry, however, it looks bad to have contradictory terminology and information in a video about something as monumental as FSF's 30th birthday.

Also, /usr/lib is a bad place to compile software ;-)

Jacob Barkdull at 2014-12-30T16:36:48Z

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