On Monday 26. March 2018 11.12.15 bruno@tracciabi.li wrote:
Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk ha scritto:
With such considerations in mind, does anyone else think that the topic of genuinely free communication might be worthy of a comprehensive campaign? One that would focus on solutions and not problems.
I'm too ignorant to seriously evaluate whether a campaign would be worth, so I'm not going to push my point too much. "Free communication" looks to me more like a personal topic, while "entities needlessly advertising proprietary [pdf] software" looks to me more like an institutional topic, worth of a public campaign.
A campaign, in the FSFE sense, can be many things. Document Freedom Day, PDF Readers, Public Money Public Code are rather institutional, but things like I ♥ Free Software and Free Your Android are more personal. Other campaigns could be interpreted as addressing both audiences.
Meanwhile, "free communication" does affect institutions as well. Indeed, it is the behaviour of institutions that often diminishes the freedoms of individuals, as I was reminded recently when having to pursue an employment application with the potential employer wanting me to use the full selection of proprietary Microsoft products (which had nothing to do with the actual job, of course) to interact with them.
My view is that most people won't change their mind about personal communications because of a campaign. What might convince them is a talk from someone they trust AND a viable solution.
Here, I agree, which is why I noted...
"In other words, promotion and advocacy are not enough. Support has to be given for people to actually develop and improve the solutions we suggest."
Something which is more or less working for me is helping people install F- Droid, Conversations and Riot. The recurring issues, after helping them register and connect with me, are android battery saving killing the app and notifications not working on riot-ios.
So I think that because you have experience with the technological situation you're not "too ignorant" to determine whether a campaign in the broader sense is worthwhile. You have identified deficiencies in a persistent Free Software "story" that just happens to have elevated relevance at this current moment.
I've been trying Movim, Dandelion and Tusky for a week, and I'd only recommend Tusky, unless one is willing to deal with a platform in developement.
Right. So we would want to identify solutions that could actually work for people and then determine what kind of support the developers might need to deliver something that fulfils all our objectives.
Paul