GetFreedomware.com development has started

Hello everyone,

We have begun working on GetFreedomware.com, the successor of SoftwareLiberty.com. You are encouraged to participate.

some context
Landy DeField has joined the GLM Advisory board recently; he has been advocating the use of the term "freedomware" to designate free software for a long time. He donated the domain getfreedomware.com to GLM and we are going so start using that term on all our websites.
SoftwareLiberty is a nice little project, but it has had only limited success so far (about 40 visits per day, PR4). I think this is because it is a nice "intellectual" concept, but fails to be immediately relevant to the average user.

case use

Developer Alice has a free software project. She calls it open-source because "free software" is ambiguous and raises many questions from would-be users. Pointing them to long philosophical texts is neither effective nor relevant for her.

She only wants a quick, effective way for user Bob to understand why her software is better than proprietary freeware.

She labels her software "freedomware", optionally with a logo button, and makes a link to getfreedomware.com .

Bob is about to decide which program he is going to use for a specific purpose (say, edit pitcures). He finds Alice's project which says it's freedomware. From there, he visits getfreedomware.com, and in a 45-second read, has grasped enough to now prefer freedomware over freeware.

what we're looking for

I have already made a draft of the website, derived from the current SL site. You can download the built website from the wiki page on our tracker (direct link)

The text content is almost finished. It needs corrections, improvements. The 2 critical requirements are
1. to be extremely short. The target is 250 words
2. to be easy to read and comprehend
This primes over precision and exactitude.

The style needs to be changed. We are looking for a less "elegant intellectual", more sexy, attractive, young design - but again simplicity is critical here.

Finally, we are looking for a logo for freedomware.

how to contribute

The fastest way is of course to contribute in this forum, but you can be much more effective by making a checkout of our SVN repository at
https://svn.gnulinuxmatters.org:81/getfreedomware/trunk/

You can edit files locally; to commit to that repository, request commit rights by contacting us.

To build the actual site from these repository files, you need to have created an account on our website management system (run by Poliglota, the masterpiece of Gustavo), and then request editing rights by contacting us again.

intended roadmap

Once we are satisfied with the text contents, we will open up translation of that, exactly the same way that GetGNULinux.org is now translated.

We'd love to have this site, as well as a couple of translations, on-line by July. We will then change all the references to "free software" into "freedomware" on GetGNULinux.org, and announce everything with a press release in 3 languages.

That's it! I'd love to see anyone participate,

Olivier.

I've seen the draft and I really like it.

Some remarks:

1. I think it would be great if the text in the header could be more eye-catching (slightly different colors, bigger fonts, and a different background or perhaps wrapped around a box... for example).
2. Also, I'd rephrase that text as: "There's more to software than price. Freedomware is good for you, your business and society".
3. There are two points that are basically the same thing (source code): "Now you can trust your computer" and "It works through source code", so I think we should merge them. What about
   
   Quote:

   You can now trust your computer. Technicians may inspect the "recipe" of any freedomware to check that it really works as expected and doesn't violate the users' privacy under the hood. On the contrary, the real behavior of a lot of common software, like Acrobat Reader or Windows, is only known by their makers. Doesn't the "He who owes nothing fears nothing" saying tell you something?

4. We call it "Freedomware", but don't explain why it's a matter of freedom (I think "freedom and authority over what is happening inside it" is not a good explanation on why it's a matter of freedom). In SoftwareLiberty.com we have a better explanation, I think.
5. I'm not fond of the "non-free" and "proprietary" adjectives for that kind of software. May I suggest "freedom-trampling software" instead? Altough it's perhaps too offensive for the context (who has a better alternative?).
6. I'd rephrase the second paragraph of "You can copy freedomware" as:
   
   Quote:

   Freedomware is like mathematics: You can use it for any purpose, including commercial, as long as you don't impose restrictions on the things someone else made - very sensible, isn't it?

7. I'd rephrase "Freedomware is easy to use" as
   
   Quote:

   Freedomware is easy to use and often technically superior to freedom-trampling software, since it's supported by many more individuals and organizations. Some famous examples, often just called "open-source" , include the Firefox browser and the Linux operating system.

8. We should add a conclusion paragraph, something like:
   
   Quote:

   Because now societies and individuals rely on software, it's an essential item like education or electricity and therefore it must be transparent and its access universal - requirements that can only be met with Freedomware.

PS: Here's a typo: "Freedomware, also called open-source or free software, gives you freedom and and authority over what is happening inside it."

"Slaveware" comes to mind, a direct opposite to Freedomware. But of course, that's too extreme, but perhaps there is a way to use a milder version of the opposite to Freedomware, like maybe "restrictionware", but that doesn't sound so good.

Ideas welcome, but maybe we can try avoiding talk about freedom trampling software altogether and focus only on defining what freedomware is. This may also be known as the pro instead of the anti strategy, positive rather than negative advocacy. We point to what we believe is good and point out that this is the only thing we believe is good and just ignore everything else.

Something about "freedom over what is happening" doesn't sound right to me. It seems it could make more sense as "control over what's happening". Freedom is more about being allowed to do anything you as an individual can do that doesn't hurt someone else. One of those things may be to edit the source code, but that's just an act through which we exercise control over something that rightfully belongs to us (by running on our own computer).. so in this context control comes out of freedom.

About the design, it currently looks like a page of the book, which is nice, but probably not fitting the context so well.. As mentioned, it should be "cool" and exciting.. But anyway, I think it's ok to take this gradually, since we don't even have an approved Freedomware logo and since the logo discussion has stalled. At a point at which we will have a logo we can adapt the design of the site to fit it.

Picking a logo is not something I think we should do alone. We should start with a few definite proposals picked from the submissions we could get if we ask for it through news sites (something that was planned in that thread) and then do another round of feedback to check acceptance. Only then can we adopt it as official. This is because "freedomware" is supposed to be joint marketing effort on behalf of the entire, or the large chunk, of the FOSS communities. It's not just a site.

I will be more focused on Nuxified.org and therefore freedomware related issues once the new Libervis (2008) is released, which is going to be by the end of the next week.

I have made a bunch of stylistic changes, it looks a little less "intellectual" now (although not really finished and somewhat broken)
https://tracker.gnulinuxmatters.org/changeset/653

The new build is available on the GetFreedomware wiki page
https://tracker.gnulinuxmatters.org/wiki/GetFreedomware

Now going to work on the text content...

I have worked most of the day on a better version, but without a result that works so far. I'm trying to take most remarks into account and will hopefully reply adequately tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.

Hm, while we're discussing "slave"-ware vs. "freedom"-ware I have to say I have my doubts about to which extent of absoluteness do these terms really apply. I mean, the reason why I like the term "freedomware" is essentially because it conveys what the likes of Richard Stallman and many others from the Free Software movement always wanted to express about it: free as in freedom.

But that only Freedomware is required or mandatory for an individual to be in freedom isn't quite correct. The point is that they are aware that freedom is important and make a choice accordingly, even if the choice were towards less rights over a copy of software. In addition, the point is that within the context of the society that we have freedomware does offer more freedoms (or more convenience for someone who wants to live free of rules by others).

But if someone chose to use proprietary software even with full awareness of the restrictions involved and with the existence of a freedomware equivalent - I can't really call such a person a slave.

I never really had the need for any third party repositories in Ubuntu.. multiverse seems to have everything needed. Also note that a lot of the "restricted" stuff actually is marked as such merely because of patents - and those aren't legal in all countries (not that I care). I've held for quite a while now that there is no ideological problem with using those.. only stuff which is clearly under a proprietary copyright license, which puts it into quite meager company usually... A package or two or what? For most people this seems to be limited to something like flash.

I gotta be honest though I seem to be pending a process of re-evaluating my stands on Freedomware in terms of these ideological issues, given the context of my becoming a voluntaryist. Perhaps I would say that ideological problem exists if I believe that four freedoms are absolutely essential and that therefore even consciously choosing to use something that doesn't grant you some of those freedoms is putting yourself in a non-ideal situation, but I'm hard pressed to find it really unethical. What might be closer to unethical are actual developers striving to restrict the users, but they can't do that unless the user agrees.

It's just.. hard to see much wrong in a voluntary relationship.

By far the worst thing is when the developer, and in this case it's usually a big corporation, manipulates the (corrupt) system itself to actually bypass the free market and leave people with no other choice but to use non-free software. Examples are public schools mandating use of a particular OS for educational programs.

As far as I am concerned I am involved in a Freedomware movement to an extent to which it is a market action towards establishing what we believe to be a better culture, one in which everyone has more rather than less freedom and personal power. Ideologically, in terms of ethics and morals - I can't really say much more yet.

Without the part about copyleft, the italicized part is out of place.

Why is "freedomware" written in an image?

We find the term "freedomware" to be the most explicit, least ambiguous of all these terms.