[FC-discuss] Free Software and Free Culture

[Fred Benenson]

I don't really understand why this is happening on the blog? Why not
relegate this discussion to the talk pages of the wiki? Or even this list?
Or even comments on the blog post itself?

My feeling is that the blog should function as a tool to post news items
that are relevant to FC...

F


On 5/29/07, Nelson Pavlosky <nelson at freeculture.org> wrote:
>
> I took the liberty of appending my response to the end of Matt's blog
> post, and I am also posting it here for your convenience:
>
> UPDATE:  Nelson Pavlosky says:  I think free culture is about many
> things beyond free art and free software.  The bottom line as we've said
> a number of times in the past is cultural participation: how can we help
> people play a more active role in the world around them?  Clearly free
> software / open source is one important way to do that, by giving people
> power over their own computers and the ability to participate in any
> software project that interests them (among other things), and I think
> the consensus has been that we support free software.  Indeed, <a
> href="
> http://freeculture.org/blog/2007/04/25/free-chapter-web-hosting-part-1/
> ">our
> national website runs entirely on free software</a>, as confirmed by the
> "virtual Richard Stallman" program.  Our tagline in the early days of
> the organization was "free speech, free software, free culture",
> although that was more intended to clarify the meaning of "free culture"
> rather than to claim that free software accounted for 1/3 of our
> activities.
>
> That said, there has been no consensus on to what extent we should
> promote free software to the exclusion of all else... must all students
> involved with FreeCulture.org run free software all the time?  Our goal
> as an organization has been to be a "big tent" that all students
> interested in free culture can get involved with.  Some of our students
> may be less interested in the free software side of things, and being
> dogmatic about free software would no doubt drive some people away.  As
> the notes from the national conference workshop on free software imply,
> there is some debate over how important popularity is to the free
> software movement... is it more important to have lots of people using
> (some) free software (some of the time), or a smaller number of
> passionate free software activists?  (Josh Sullivan of the FSF says, "It
> doesn't matter, I would rather have 100k people that support the ideals
> vs. 500k people who use GNU/Linux because it is technically better --
> the 100k will support you in legislation, advocate to others, etc.")
>
> I don't think FreeCulture.org should take a side in that debate, but
> there is one thing that is clear: free culture is about many things
> aside from free software, and we have taken the position that it is
> better for our organization to have lots of students involved in lots of
> free culture issues than for us to have only a few students who are
> especially interested in any single issue, such as free software.  Our
> purpose is not to push specific agendas, but to serve as a meeting place
> and organizing structure for students who are involved with our issues,
> without mandating that they be involved with all of our issues at once.
>
> Peace,
> ~Nelson Pavlosky~
> Co-founder, FreeCulture.org
>
> Free Culture blog wrote:
> > Something I've been thinking about lately - what role should Free
> > Software play in Free Culture? Is Free Culture the combination of Free
> > Art and Free Software? FreeCulture.org and the students of the United
> > States have a golden opportunity to set an example here, by switching to
> > using only Free Software.
> >
> > [Some notes][1] came out of the National Conference about Free Software
> > and it was great to see the [Free Software Foundation][2] and [Defective
> > By Design][3] represented.
> >
> >    [1]: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Workshop/Free_Software
> >
> >    [2]: http://www.fsf.org/
> >
> >    [3]: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/
> >
> > URL:
> http://freeculture.org/blog/2007/05/29/free-software-and-free-culture/
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at freeculture.org
> > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >
> >
>
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>
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