Re: suggestions for leading a free software organization
* quiliro [2021-02-25 18:06]: > Thank you very much for all your suggestions. > > I will certainly uphold the values of freedom before functionality. I > will have also added your ideas of how to use my time and resourses to > my own ideas. I do not want to join another social network. But I can > ask the secretary of the organization to create an account on one of the > Mastodon servers. > > I would like to make the organization self-sustainable and to help > activist have advantages over non-activists. (We have always given help > to all. But that has not been sustainable. So a lot of people and > organization who do not favour freedom have more been benefited. They > have not contributed back.) Implement the voluntary membership so that every member pays some little amount. Find out what amount is required so that you reach sustainability. It would be also fine to post it here, including your expenses as the way how you manage your organization could then be replicated on other parts of the world. Then by knowing what amount you need to cover you can calculate or estimate how much could be the individual membership and how many members you need per month or year to reach sustainable condition. ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: suggestions for leading a free software organization
* quiliro [2021-02-24 20:57]: > Dear Libre Planet: > > I have just been elected president of the Free Software Asociation of > Ecuador. That is great to hear! > I would like to receive suggestions for making a successful advocacy for > freedom during the following 2 years which I will be in office and for > making a sustainable path for the following boards. My work is not > payed. But the organization can receive money through donation or > sales. Money is not the only resource it could have. I just mention > it, in case it is required for the suggestions. > > Any tip is valuable to me. Thank you very much for your time and wisdom. > > Quiliro Ordónez > President - ASLE https://asle.ec > Board member - FSF LA https://fsfla.org From time to time I will donate money. If I am not mistaken this organization takes care of Linux-libre kernel? In my opinion foremost important is to use the free software philosophy articles in Spanish language. Opening of a real physical computer club that promotes GNU Free Software is very helpful. That could be good idea. Teaching youth how to program. We had one similar club, we just did not have free software at that time, but we did make software ourselves and shared it between us. Proprietary software did bring some kind of envious competition so some of members did try to keep their programs "secret" from others and used it as demos to show how they are good in programming, but they did not tell secrets to others, others often did not ask for it. Opening a GNU Free Software club would be thus good idea. I have same idea for Uganda here, and I have got enough computers that I could start. I just need to find the location and some furniture and I can start doing it. Computer club like that would be working on fully free software. It would help people install fully free GNU OS distributions and would promote free software only. This would exclude other distributions with reasons why. People do need to know it. Club could then provide some services for small fees such as OS installations, conversion from Windoze and other proprietary OS infected computers to GNU Free Operating Systems, it could sell DVDs and provide seminars on software such as Gimp or other video editing or other similar and for public useful software. It could teach youth and adults programming. We have successfully taught small children of 10 years including adults of 40 and over 40 years in programming lessons. We have been teaching them usually about the keyboard first and how to properly use keyboard and mouse. This was the major difficulty. Then they started learning programming commands, functions and they started making their own programs. Somewhere there along the line the mind starts thinking itself and starts being creative, that is where people start programming. They just need to learn enough of functions or commands until they realize they can become creative. I remember we had children of 10-12 years who already programmed in machine language on Commodore 64, the highest selling single computer modell of all the time. Programming sprites, games was great fun and use! We had similar computers like TRS-80 clones that were used to teach people programming languages like BASIC and LOGO. In Albania there are successful huge classrooms that teach children how to program robots, if I remember it is with Arduino technology. That kind of courses with free software would bring attention to youth (but not excluding elder or anybody), it would cause newspaper, radio and other media attention, one could then make seminars and interviews and basically do what RMS have been doing for years. One could also speak at universities and promote free software by making a free software speech of not longer than 30 - 45 minutes. On the end of it, one can sell DVDs with GNU Free Software OS. In general, promoting free software requires systematic planning, filling calendar appointments with seminar speeches, informing universities and schools, arranging with them, helping students switch from proprietary to free software, arranging with key decision makers to switch their offices from proprietary to free software and explaining benefits. Promoting GNU Health and similar medical software, educational software does so much good for people and their further literacy progress and development. Proprietary software blocks literacy progress as it does not help people learn about software and create upon it, or at all realize that they could as well be in charge of what their computer is doing for them. Jean ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: suggestions for leading a free software organization
Thank you very much for all your suggestions. I will certainly uphold the values of freedom before functionality. I will have also added your ideas of how to use my time and resourses to my own ideas. I do not want to join another social network. But I can ask the secretary of the organization to create an account on one of the Mastodon servers. I would like to make the organization self-sustainable and to help activist have advantages over non-activists. (We have always given help to all. But that has not been sustainable. So a lot of people and organization who do not favour freedom have more been benefited. They have not contributed back.) It has been great to receive your input. It has made me have more ideas and feel supported. I do not feel this position is of comfort, but of responsability. Thanks :-) ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: suggestions for leading a free software organization
On 19/02/2021 02:16, quiliro wrote: Dear Libre Planet: I have just been elected president of the Free Software Asociation of Ecuador. I would like to receive suggestions for making a successful advocacy for freedom during the following 2 years which I will be in office and for making a sustainable path for the following boards. My work is not payed. But the organization can receive money through donation or sales. Money is not the only resource it could have. I just mention it, in case it is required for the suggestions. Any tip is valuable to me. Thank you very much for your time and wisdom. Quiliro Ordónez President - ASLE https://asle.ec Board member - FSF LA https://fsfla.org ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss Further to the advice given, the Qoto Mastodon instance is STEM focussed, please feel free to grab an account there and share what you are doing, I can help share https://qoto.org/invite/xpayLWv6 My ID is @zl...@qoto.org Paul -- Paul Sutton, Cert Cont Sci (Open) https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/ OpenPGP : 4350 91C4 C8FB 681B 23A6 7944 8EA9 1B51 E27E 3D99 Pronoun : him/his/he OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: suggestions for leading a free software organization
Congratulations Quiliro, I wish you success. My only suggestion would be don't sacrifice the principals of software libre movement to get to a point. We are all here not because we're programmers or GNU+Linux users or are able to use terminal, but because we believe in those principals and the four freedoms. Don't violate the freedoms or do something against the movement even if it's for a greater good. I believe if we break our principals, we will do it again and again until we see ourselves some place where we don't have those anymore. I think the main difference between the software libre movement and the open source guys is that we held on our values and we stick to them no matter what, and that's what makes us unique and amazing. Best of luck to you and all of our fellow activists. On 19/02/2021 05:46, quiliro wrote: Dear Libre Planet: I have just been elected president of the Free Software Asociation of Ecuador. I would like to receive suggestions for making a successful advocacy for freedom during the following 2 years which I will be in office and for making a sustainable path for the following boards. My work is not payed. But the organization can receive money through donation or sales. Money is not the only resource it could have. I just mention it, in case it is required for the suggestions. Any tip is valuable to me. Thank you very much for your time and wisdom. Quiliro Ordónez President - ASLE https://asle.ec Board member - FSF LA https://fsfla.org ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss -- Ali Reza Hayati (https://alirezahayati.com) Libre culture activist and privacy advocate OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss