Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Manchester Anarchist Bookfair, 7th June 2008

[Matt Lee]

I think I missed the earlier part of this conversation.

Who's going to the bookfair?

What is the goal of having MFS people there?

        If it's simply to raise awareness of the group, then no CDs are 
        needed, but flyers explaining free software would be good.

        http://www.fsf.org/resources/what-is-fs is good for that.

Is the role of MFS now one of converting people to using free software?

Pointing fingers at the group members for not running gNewSense is not
productive. gNewSense 2.0 is very new, and reinstalling a distribution
is non-trivial.

Also, the group is full of people who really get free software. They can
use Ubuntu or Debian and avoid the non-free stuff, much in the same way
the FSF previously ran Debian on systems.

New users, and especially people to whom computing is secondary, are not
going to be so wise in what is and is not free software. If you get
people on the goals, letting them down by recommending distributions
which distribute non-free software would be a bad thing to do.

Rather, explaining the goals of a completely free software operating
system, citing the reasons for its creation and then being able to offer
a CD that can be tried is useful. Use the opportunity to explain WHY
certain graphics cards don't work fully, explain WHY a wired internet
connection may be required.

If you want to grow the group, make free software advocates out of
people by showing them what is possible and what is not possible,
instead of tricking them into using a free operating system that
requires a bundle of secrets to make everything work.

Pushing GNU on the basis of accelerated video and wireless internet is
the wrong argument to make for freedom. 

-- 

 /(_____)\   Matt Lee <address@hidden>
 \_/~ ~\_/   Campaigns Manager
  (\'_'/)    Free Software Foundation 
   (o_o)     http://www.fsf.org/

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