this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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Free Software

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What is free software?

Free software is software that respects the 4 software freedoms. The 4 freedoms are

Please note: Free software does not relate to monetary price. Free software can be sold or gratis (no cost)

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Thoughts on a Community Wiki (self.freesoftware)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by possiblylinux127 to c/freesoftware
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So I am thinking about creating a free software wiki that's is a central source for information relating to free software. It would also cover things like Linux, self hosting and free software in different industries and use cases.

I'm still thinking about how this could work but I've came to the conclusion that the wiki would need the following:

  • It would need to easy to contribute to without too much knowledge
  • It should cover individual software programs as well as more general topics
  • There should be templates for the different types of pages
  • A sources and further reading list needs to be at the bottom of each page. Information in the wiki should have at least one outside source to keep the information factual
  • when a person creates a page they should have real world experience with that software or topic
  • There should be a heading called concerns or something similar where potential moral or technical downsides can be listed
  • It shouldn't be persuasive or written to change opinions
  • It should be in English at least to start
  • It should have content about other non-free operating systems and how to make them a little more free

Things that need to be figured out:

  • The software or service
  • the domain
  • content organization (by operating system?)

What's your thoughts on this? I would be interested to know

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That sounds like a lot of information. Not just about the free software movement, but also tutorials? And if I understand correctly, you want some kind of list of libre apps and programs?

I think there should be a website that answers the most common questions and explains common misconceptions. So that we could always send somebody a link to a specific answer when they appear to be confused about the movement. But I'm not sure about the other stuff, since it seems like a big project.

It should have content about other non-free operating systems and how to make them a little more free

It could just list free software replacements for common proprietary software. For example: use Firefox instead of Chrome or use Signal instead of Whatsapp. This could be sorted by level of difficulty. Replacing Windows/MacOS with GNU/Linux could be one of the last things on that list, because it's probably one of the hardest. But that's probably not the type of content that's right for a wiki.

I would like there to be some website about GNU/Linux phones, since it's hard to find information about them on the internet. But there aren't many people with experience in this area, so keeping that stuff up to date would be difficult.

The software or service

Libre Planet's wiki seems to be running on MediaWiki.

the domain

Maybe:

  • freesoftware.wiki
  • libresoftware.wiki
[–] possiblylinux127 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Firefox and signal do not really respect your freedom. Its true that they are mostly free software but Firefox ships DRM, sends data back to Mozilla and runs "studies" by default. Signal depends on a bunch of proprietary software that is not only non-free but also spyware. Part of the wiki would be to give end users the information they need to decide there level of risk. Using Firefox is better than using chrome but some users may opt for even better alternatives.

As far as content goes, I hope to get members of the community to do research on topics they are interested in and then write a page about what they researched. At the bottom of the page they can dump all of there research for others to use.

Thanks for the suggestion on software and domains. That is really helpful. Since this post hasn't received a ton a of activity I'm going to go ahead and put creating a wiki on the back burner.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I didn't know about that. That's really good to know! A lot of libre software has issues with freedom and they need to be documented. I think Libre Planet wiki has some page about that (can't find a link to their wiki, though) and there is a small section in Pure OS's bugtracker.

Thanks for the suggestion on software and domains. That is really helpful. Since this post hasn’t received a ton a of activity I’m going to go ahead and put creating a wiki on the back burner.

Not many people hang out here in general (yet). But there is also a free software subreddit (if you are fine with using Reddit or maybe there is some libre frontend? there used to be Teddit) and some channels on Matrix. If you post about it in multiple places, it might be doable. But also I guess it will be easier to get people involved once the website is actually running.

[–] possiblylinux127 1 points 8 months ago

Its funny you mention Reddit as I came from there a while back. You probably can find some of my old posts.