New York City: All Five Boroughs

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Ideas for getting Free Software across to public in NYC

Worries About This Process and Having Success Out There

  • You need different approaches for different demographics
    • You cannot use tech strategies to change the minds of non-tech people
    • How do we figure the who-when-where to properly address those demographics?
  • We have to define the goals?
    • Is the goal to just advance revenue/membership of FSF?
    • Is the goal to get more people using Free Software?

NYC Subways

  • Deface ads
    • Put a sticker on "Do you have Microsoft Office in your pocket?" ads that say: "Is that DRM in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? www.some-anti-drm-site.org"
    • Put up same ad with slightly different information, but "look alike" (aka "subvertising", RTMark-style culturejams)
  • Fake service advisory posters: PC line out of service in 5 years, due to DRM [1]
  • Do car-by-car subway slogan speaking
  • Challenges
    • It's illegal (or is it?)
    • Cannot be official

Education for Colleges/Universities

  • FSF could start a small college to develop software?
  • Well, ok, that's a huge job, but maybe a course that would help people learn about Free Software development process.
  • But, on the other hand, isn't that too Open-Source-y, not getting the politics out to people.
  • Can we show young people and students the community aspects?
  • Ethics have to be part of teaching development methodology
  • People trying to explore idea of freedom
  • What about a class where two competitive teams try to do a particular job?
  • Challenges:
    • Finding departments/professors that are receptive.
    • Need people who can develop courseware

Get Everyone Giving Talks and Speeches

  • How many people are off giving talks? How do we get more people giving talks?
  • Could prepared speeches be made available?
  • no, we need tools and people to help them to learn how to speak.
  • Challenges:
    • We have to make everyone join toastmasters
    • Public speaking is fearful for some

Automatic Donation Links in Emails

  • Shouldn't we all have automatic links at the end of the email to get donations?
  • .signature line that gets automatically generated
  • Individuals should be able to give directly to sub-projects that interest them
  • Challenges:
    • bkuhn mentions having tried it but it didn't work well (only Orion gave)

Should We be Like Religious Groups or Cults?

  • Should we be like the Mormons/Scientologists/Falun Gung in our methods for spreading the Free Software philosophy?
  • "Would you like to be contacted later from someone who will teach you about software freedom?"
  • But it's so hard to get across the ideas simply; no one knows or cares about software issues. This tact is less effective with such people.
  • Challenges
    • We don't want to be a cult

Disclaimer: We in no way intend to group cults and religious groups together in the same category, nor are we stating that religious groups are like cults. We were discussing recruitment tactics used by cults and also ones by religious groups during the same time period in our discussion, and hence, we grouped the two topics under one heading because it was discussed at the same time.

Elementary Schools

  • Free Software in the elementary schools
  • Challenges:
      • Very very hard to do education stuff at K-12 levels, particularly in NYC

Need a Philosophically Focused GNU/Linux Distribution

  • GNUbuntu
  • Would be given out and relates to the cult idea and giving talks/speeches
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