Stefano wrote
On Wed, 2006-04-12 at 12:12 +0100, Shane M. Coughlan wrote: This is fine, we might also provide links to existing presentations given by FSFE members over time to different audience, so that interested people can use them directly or draw inspiration.
I maintain a list of the presentations that I remember doing: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/#roadshow
There are some recordings there, slides, transcripts, or whatever other materials I have.
Public speaking is not one of my strong points, and I currently make loads of mistakes each time I give a talk, but I always wish that others would put recordings of their presentations online so that I could get ideas, so I put mine online for others to get ideas.
A: quality of software depends on many factors, including peer review.
I think it's important to say at the start that free software is not always higher quality. Some is high quality, some is not, but everyone has the right to see the quality, and make improvements if desired.
Proprietary software is a black box that you use with one hand tied behind your back and you have to trust the marketing campaign that told you the box is full of magic dust.
- How should I characterise software companies like Microsoft?
Microsoft is a natural product of a wrong approach. They are the worst freedom-restricter, but that's only because they've been the most successful. Others are trying very hard to restrict the freedom of as many people as MS currently does.
We need to fix the general approach.
- What should I say if people suggest Free Software is for tree-hugging
hippies?
Point out that your handouts were unnecessarily printed on dead trees when you could have just posted them online :)
I don't like pointing at large company support as a proof that our cause is a reasonable one.
I prefer to say that we are trying to ensure that all software users have a certain standard of rights. Much like the free labour movement did when bonded labour existed. Much like the movement for mandatory food labelling did when it was not required that food sold publicly display the list of ingredients.
Software development and usage is stilla a new activity, and it's history and philosophical thinking is still relatively shallow. People using software don't have many rights and those people are being exploited.
You can point out that when mandatory labelling of ingredients was suggested, the food companies were fiercly against it, but today we see it as a basic right that you should be able to read the ingredients of food which is sold publicly.
We hope one day these rights will be as standard as food labelling, but today we can have those rights for ourselves by choosing free software. So it's not about avoiding MS, it's about setting a standard for how you should be treated.
If you're talking to a business audience, you can describe this as a procurement policy. Procurement policies usually spell out minimum requirements and we hope companies (and people) will start setting the requirements:
"Software providers must not prevent the company from seeing what the software does"
"Software providers must not prevent the company from making improvements, customising, fixing bugs - or commissioning others to do these things for the company"
"Software providers will not prevent the publication of any improvements which the collective users of the software make or commission."
- What about questions about the difference between Open Source and
Free Software?
They're the same thing. There are a small number of cases where software is free software but not open source, and there are a small number of cases where software is open source but not free software, but these are almost insignificant. GNU/Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, GNOME, KDE, Emacs, Vim are all free software and open source software.
The term "free software" is ambiguous, it has to be explained.
The term "open source" also has to be explained, but people think they understand it: software that is open (which would include MS's Shared Source, etc.). So not only does it have to be explained, but it also misleads.
It's also good to point out that "open source" is a term created to "relabel" (in the words of ESR) free software, and the the Open Source Iniative was set up as "a marketing program for free software", and that "free software" has been used since 1983, which "open source" only appeared in 1998.
- Where should I point people to find out more?
For information:
www.fsfeurope.org www.gnu.org
To participate:
www.fsfe.org and this mailing list.