Re: [Fsuk-manchester] "Selling" Free software to the masses

[MJ Ray]

Iain Roberts wrote:
> Having spent a good chunk of the last few year promoting free & open
> source, and working with other doing the same, I'm afraid I'm not
> too optimistic about the ability of the four freedoms and the
> philsophy behind free software to appeal to a wider audience.

Don't give up yet!  Freedom, fairness and sharing are still rising.
Manchester is now home to the largest consumer co-op in the world
(the Cooperative Group and Britannia Building Society merger) and
the United Nations has just proclaimed 2012 International Year of
Co-operatives.

Free software is a good embodiment of those values, as explained at
http://www.software.coop/info/coopdev.html
although I admit we rephrased the four freedoms and dropped the 0123
to make it more punchy and memorable.

[...]
> I defy anyone who's used the latest versions of MS Office to
> seriously claim that OpenOffice.org is as good (though it may be
> good enough for their needs, as it is for mine).  Likewise, free
> software for editing movies and doing DTP is clearly and often
> painfully inferior to the better proprietary alternatives.

Actually, I'd go the other way.  The latest version of MS Office is a
confusing garish technicolour experience for occasional users and
produces files which yet-to-upgrade MSOffice users can't read.  The
use of open standards and general lack of forced upgrades is a big
selling point for free software.

Editing movies - OK, that seemed to be right last time I checked.

DTP - depends what you mean by publishing...

> To promote free software, I would concentrate on the free apps that
> genuinely offer something either better than the proprietary
> alternatives (e.g. Firefox) or that you couldn't legally improve
> without paying a significant amount of money (e.g. Gimp, Inkscape).
> Ubuntu's also worth a punt.

Do you mean that IceCat is better than Firefox, or are we ignoring
Firefox's minor non-free-software bits?

I would mention those things, but there needs to be a core of the
values of freedom and cooperative effort, else we're recruiting
fellow travellers more than supporters.

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  Webmaster and LMS developer at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op