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The Family Guide presented in Bismarck, North Dakota!On August 2, 2007, I was invited to participate over the phone to the monthly meeting of the Bismarck - Mandan Linux User Group, to present the Family Guide to Digital Freedom to all the LUG members. For me it has been a great experience which I hope to repeat with as many LUGs and other groups as possible. We spent almost two very interesting hours (I hope!) discussing more or less directly what is the need today for a book like the Guide, why everybody needs Free digital standards and software and what is the best way to promote them. I started the meeting with a short introduction of my general background, some of my volunteer activities in the Free Software world and a description of my strong feeling, which eventually prompted me to write the Guide, that there are serious limitations in some ways to promote Free standards and software today. Specifically, I shared my fear that the Free Software movement has reached a communication plateau, in the sense that its default arguments, language and approach are almost completely ineffective towards citizens who simply have no interest at all in programming. I suggested as a first proof of this situation the fact that, while R. Stallman and E. Moglen say many good things with a direct and strong impact on how education in today's digital world should be, their books, or any mention of their philosophy, are completely absent from the parenting shelves of any library or bookstore (which is just the void I hope to fill with the Family Guide). As further proof, since I had noticed that the Bismarck Public School District lists among its official values things like:
I asked to my hosts "(outside this LUG) how many of your neighbour parents and teachers who endorse those values realize that they also should also be translated in responsible choice and usage of software?" and the answer was, predictably, "None". After this initial overview I started to answer questions from the participants. The first one was if there is something in the Guide about the growing attempts to Internet censorship (specifically in the USA) and what is my point of view about them.
I answered that my main goal, at least as far as the Family Guide and the My reasons for doing so, I explained, are of two types. The first includes good manners, that is not jumping out of the blue to tell citizens of another country what they should do in their own home, and the fact that certain things happen, or want to happen, everywhere sooner or later, so it may be misleading to look at only one Country. The second, much more important reason, is that with the Family Guide I'd like to solve a slightly different problem: every person should decide for him or herself if certain things are good or bad and accept the related responsibilities, but "till they can make you ask the wrong questions, or no question at all, the answers don't matter". With this I mean that the primary purpose of the Family Guide is just to make the general public start to be aware, at last:
It is with this spirit that, for example, in the chapter about Internet censorship, I point out that there are Countries which censor the Internet with software which is not only provided by Western companies, but is also closed source, so its users cannot really control what they will censor... If you really want censorship, well, OK, but you should at least do it right, shouldn't you? I really enjoyed all the questions which followed, also because they did prove that the problem I'm trying to solve with the Family Guide is a real and very, very widespread one. I am not going to list those questions one by one, partly because, much to my shame, I don't remember distinctly each one of them. Luckily this is not a big deal, because as far as I remember they were all variations of the same basic question: "We always have a very hard time trying to convince non-geeks, that is almost everybody, to switch to, or even just try, Free Software. How can we persuade these people?" What follows is a synthesis of all my answers. My main advice when trying to promote Free Software to that overwhelming majority of human beings who wouldn't code if their own life depended on it is... stop promoting Free Software, at least in the sense of "making as many people as possible, as soon as possible, use it". Let's focus not on converting everybody to Free Software but on making as many people as possible to understand why is in their own concrete interest to make Free Software both always and really usable by those who like it: please note that, to make this happen, the essential and easiest thing to aim for is the mandatory usage, in certain contexts, of open file formats like OpenDocument and open computer communication protocols. Let's then try to convince people to start voting for mandatory usage of Free file formats in all official settings and Free Software as the preferred solution, where it really matters, in all Public Schools and Administrations. Regardless of whatever software people like best at home or in their own business. In other words, let's try to have and make clear the difference between software-related choices which only impact the person or organization which makes them ("I will only use Windows because I feel it's the best thing ever for games") from those which cause the real problems ("I'm fine with Microsoft Office, so I won't vote against politicians who allow public usage of its proprietary formats, even if that practically forces every other citizen to use the same software which I like and can afford"). Only the second class of choices and behavior are worth fighting, and this is just where the Family Guide tries to help. Maybe the really Free world, software-wise, is the one where we can all start ignoring which software the others are using, because it doesn't limit our personal freedom anymore. At the practical level, the only obvious choice is to just try to convert people to Free Software running on Windows or Mac, so they will gradually but finally free their own data (and correspondants) from proprietary formats and then be able to switch to Free Software in any moment without troubles. A few final notesThere are a few things that were not explicitly mentioned at the meeting but, when I think again about it, it may be useful to share with the BismanLUG and all the readers of Digifreedom.net. The first thing is that I'd like to make clear that the Family Guide to Digital Freedom is about much more than (Free) Software and computer file formats. Sure, the Family Guide can make many more people love Free Software than today and make them willing to try Gnu/Linux: for the record, this is exactly the reason why it is possible to order copies with a custom back cover which a LUG may compose to advertise its service. The Guide, however, also talks about RFID, e-voting, Net Neutrality, copyright, e-waste online activism and much more! In other words the Guide is, as far as I know, the only book explicitly written for parents which covers and links all the hot digital topics of today, showing in plain language how they are interrelated and why it matters to be correctly informed about them. The second thing is to never forget that, while almost all these things are managed or implemented through software, very often it doesn't really matter or improve things in any meaningful way if they were simply done with Free as in Freedom software (see the chapter on e-voting as an example). Therefore, while the Guide is indeed very useful to spread the awareness of the importance of Free Software, it may be limiting or counterproductive to use it only for this purpose. The last practical suggestion is: don't forget that Free formats and software are such a good idea that there's always an angle to promote them, even (especially?) without using at all the traditional language: even in contexts where you would have never imagined that there would be an angle. As a real world example of what I mean, you are welcome to take a look at these articles of mine (whose title is only partially reported below to not spoil your surprise): No matter of what you think of those institutions, these articles prove the point below, don't they? I hope you'll find them useful. Thanks again to Nate Swenson of the BismanLug for inviting me! I hope to hear from you and all the other LUG members again! Marco Fioretti |