Aloha, my name is Lex White and I'm your friendly neighborhood Director of
Development here at Kaua'i Community Radio (KKCR). I wear a lot of hats at
the station, including underwriting, community outreach, hardware and
software development, website design, graphic design, and all kinds of ways
of developing our station to be better able to continue serving you, our
community, and to serve the goals of our mission such as preserving and
perpetuating the Hawaiian culture, and providing a platform of free speech
for underrepresented voices. In pursuit of these goals, I have made some
sweeping changes in the way that the station handles our technology and
especially the kinds of hardware and software we choose to use and deploy.
I would like to take a few moments to share with you some of my background
and history with computing, non-profits, and the Free Open Source Software
(FOSS) community.
In our modern age of complex digitization, where computers are more and
more an inseperable part of our lives, where we carry around in our pockets
computers so powerful that they can even outperform the supercomputers of
yesteryear. At this crucial place in human development, it is vital that
we take some time to consider the repercussions and consequences of our
unprecedented access to information and ability to compute and process
information at speeds never before dreamed of by our species. We must
choose between the shackles of digital slavery, imposed on us by large
corporate tech interests whose profit motive has been admittedly the
driving force behind much of our modern technological revolution, and a
future of true digital freedom and transparency, with equality for all
users and administrators of technological systems.
A powerful part of that movement in computing freedom has come out of the
Free Software movement. Free Software is often said to mean "free as in
freedom, not as in beer." That is to say that the software itself is not
required to have no pricetag, but it is required to have a certain
transparency and accessibility so that we as end-users can always know
precisely what code we are running on our machines, and what our
electricity and data is truly being used for. There have been some
powerful personalities and players that have come out of this field, and I
won't list all of them right now, but for now I would like to direct your
attention to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the GNU is Not Unix (GNU)
Foundation, and the Canonical group that puts out the Ubuntu distribution
of the GNU/Linux operating system.
Here at KKCR we have a lot of legacy hardware and software that we are
trying to improve, and we can improve it best by adopting an ethical and
far-sighted view of the impact of technology. We want our future
generations to have a world worth inheriting from us and not be sentenced
to a lifetime of digital slavery to unscrupulous corporations and
out-of-control Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. To accomplish that
goal, I have instituted a policy of gradually migrating the station away
from proprietary, walled garden software and hardware that manufactured for
profit by large corporations that you are very familiar with, like Apple,
Microsoft, and Google, to move toward solutions that respect the freedoms
of their users to have digital privacy and freedom in their ability to use
their hardware and software how they choose.
To this end, we now run all of our office computers on the station on a
GNU/Linux distribution called Ubuntu Studio, which is predominantly aimed
at creating a FOSS computing platform for creative individuals and
organizations like ours to flourish with all the tools that we need.
Ubuntu Studio is not necessarily perfect in every possible way, and it does
allow for the use of proprietary software that does not have to respect the
freedoms of its users, but it is a significant step in the right direction
for us here at KKCR, and it is a practical and pragmatic solution to our
computing needs and the challenges that face our station. I want to thank
the Ubuntu Studio community for all that they have done to make a platform
for digital creators to have the creative space to bring their artistic
vision to the world. I also have designed and set up some remote
broadcasting devices based on the Raspberry Pi 5, a single board computer,
running the Linux distribution Raspbian, and using the broadcasting
software called, hilariously, BUTT (Broadcast Using This Tool). So believe
me when I say that our radio sometimes has to be pulled straight out of our
BUTT. Haha. Anyway.
My point in bringing this all to your attention as our community of
loving and caring individuals is to enlighten you to the idea that our
hardware and software does not have to limit us to the walled gardens of
corporate masters who would limit our freedom and control our access to
information and data. We have already seen how large social media companies
can restrict our ability to exercise free speech, and we have also seen
recently in the news how large, proprietary software developers like
Microsoft develop unsafe computing platforms that put all of their users at
risk because they choose to use a design philosophy of Security through
Obscurity.
We here at KKCR do not support the ideology of Security through
Obscurity, whether it be used by the intelligence agencies in the name of
national security, or whether it be used by software developers to protect
their supposed "intellectual copyrights" at the cost of making our software
act as a kind of black box that could be running any arbitrary, malicious
code without our knowledge. Instead, we support free speech, and the
ideology of Security through Transparency, a value that I know all of us
here at the station hold near and dear to our hearts, and which I hope you,
our listeners, volunteers, and community will take as an example of an
organization that truly has ethical values and that takes its freedom and
integrity seriously.
I assure you that I will continue to do everything that I can to support
these values in our workplace, and to promote them across the world through
the means available to us as a free, non-profit media platform. We support
the FOSS community and we appreciate all the work the many thousands of
developers have done to create a better digital world for all of us to
enjoy and prosper from. Please join me in appreciating these developers by
checking out the foundations I have mentioned above, and considering ways
in which you can transition in your own life from a pattern of digital
slavery to a world of digital freedom. I know to many of you this will be
shocking news, you may not even realize the ways in which your freedoms
have been insidiously eroded by a corrupt and exploitative class of
corporate executives and bankers, but I know that some of you out there
will hear this message and hear its truth. Let the voice of freedom ring
from every hill and every valley, from every mountaintop that we broadcast
our signal to the majestic and wonderful Hawaiian Islands and the people of
this magical and unique 'Aina. Let your voice be heard as well by joining
us in a chorus of voices that sing and cry for freedom, not just for
ourselves, but for all beings everywhere. Aloha and hallelujah. Mahalo for
your time and attention, and for your continuing support of KKCR and our
goals.
-Lex White
--
ubuntu-studio-devel mailing list
ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
