Am Donnerstag, den 20.07.2006, 21:53 +0200 schrieb Matthias Kirschner:
Now, what do you think? Do you have good approaches which might help me? Or have experiences that a certain approach did not work with a non-programmer audience?
I think to explain the concept of Free Software to non programmers or non technicians you don't have to show software but you have to show people using software. You have to tell stories about non technical problems solved thanks to the freedom provided by Free Software!
My experience telling the story of the OpenOffice.org translation project for a local Ladin minority language (be aware it's a language not a dialect) was very very positive. The audience understands the problem of a language disappearing on course of glabalisation and digitalisation of communication in the digital age. They are happy to discover that being OpenOffice.org Free Software a translation team of the cultural institutes was able to start the translation project independently from decisions of a single company based on a cost calculation for the company and not for the Ladin culture.
Also the recipe example of precooked soaps, which provoke troubles to allergic people, used by Kurt Gramlich had a very positive impact on the audience at the SFScon2005. People know about precooked soaps and they know that its easy to cook them, but they know also that this goes at the cost to be forced to eat the ingredients chosen by the producer. You cannot change the ingredients. At the end they get the picture that proprietary software is like precooked soaps and Free Software is like grandmas cooking book ;-)
My recommendation, use real life stories and show people which are no technicians, but had evident benefits out of the use and/or adoption of Free Software.
Happy hacking! Patrick