Group: Giving Guide Suggestions
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Note: This page is not the guide; The guide is at fsf.org/givingguide. This page is for giving recommendations of products we should consider for the guide. The items listed here should not be taken as FSF recommendations.
Each year the FSF publishes a giving guide with recommendations of products that respect your freedom. This group is a place for you to provide your ideas for the buying guide.
Thanks for helping your fellow FSF members make ethical choices this holiday season. Happy holidays!
Contents
Guidelines
- Make a new category if necessary, but please check existing ones first
- Provide links to detailed descriptions of the products when possible.
- If it's not obvious, provide an explanation of why you chose the product(s) for the section you put it/them into.
- For "greater than" pairs, the items should be relatively interchangeable as far as functionality is concerned.
- The FSF may curate this list by removing suggestions that have been incorporate into the guide, and any that are not in keeping with the spirit of the guide.
Ideas
Hardware
- A bootable flash drive with free software as an inexpensive gift
- Devices with free OSs preinstalled from
http://swappa.com/<= Find a different site please. That one is jailed in CloudFlare's walled-garden and thus inappropriate for any freedom-respecting projects. - If you can't find a device with a free OS preinstalled, get one and install the OS yourself, then give it to your friend. This makes an even better present than something you paid for but didn't work on.
- a dreamplug for beeing used as a freedombox?
- Acoustic guitar from your local music shop > Squier by Fender USB Stratocaster Guitar for iBad from Apple Store
- TV-Recorder: MythTV > TiVO - Does someone sell ready-to-use no-tinkering-required MythTV boxes?
- BookLiberator Beta BookLiberator is a device for scanning and digitizing books, using all free software. The Beta version is on sale now at the QuestionCopyright.com store.
| device | freedom-hostile/unethical | relatively civil-liberties-respecting alternative | notes/references |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPUs | Intel, AMD | Marvell | Intel is worse than AMD, but avoid both. |
| DiY embedded systems | Raspberry Pi | OLinuXino, Arduino?, Beagleboard? | |
| e-book readers (w/e-paper) | Sony eReader | OLPC tablet or OLPC laptop (dual-mode displays; free-OS preinstalled) | |
| gaming (full console) | wii | ? | |
| gaming (portable) | PlayStation Portable (PSP) | Pandora (console)? | |
| mobile phones | Apple, HP, Sony, Samsung | Fairphone, Blackphone | All mobile phones are tracking devices and thus a bad idea to have at all. They're all unethical to different extents. This row exists only to indicate the lesser of evils. |
| PCs/laptops | Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Samsung, Sony | OLPC, Asus (AMD-based). | Clevo & Librem are almost ethical, but they feed intel |
| printers | all others | Oki | For detailed ethical rationale, see which printer and scanner brands are ethical. |
| scanners | all others | Umax, Mustek, Doxie, Avision | For detailed ethical rationale, see which printer and scanner brands are ethical. |
| tablet PCs | iPad | OLPC tablet |
note: OLPCs are hard to buy, but if you can get one they are far more ethical than the alternatives.
Other
- homebrew vorbis players based on arduino and mp3-shield inside fritzing black box (link to store?)
- Donations to the FSF or free software development projects in friend's names
- Gifts from the shop.fsf.org
- Give your friend a homemade coupon promising to set up their computer with a free GNU/Linux distribution, help them learn to use it and help them maintain it.
- Clothes from this http://www.freewear.org/ . You'd have to mention that freewear donates some money to the FSF. <= okay, but everything is 100% cotton, thus bad for the environment.
- DRM-free ebooks, including books about free software
- Real, paper books - for instance normal books, or books on free software, preferably under a free (software) license (depending on the kind of works such as documentation, views of an author etc.)
- Recommending a hosting service that respects people's freedom to be in control of their machine
- A trip to free software conferences such as FOSDEM?
- Buy a product from or donate to fritzing.org, download the free software
Software
(Note: giving someone software might be more inconvenient for that person than if they just got it themself in their preferred way.)
- Electronic Design Tools: download gEDA ( http://www.geda-project.org ) or Kicad ( http://www.kicad-pcb.org ) > Eagle ( http://www.cadsoftusa.com )
- 3-D CAD/CAM: download FreeCAD ( http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page ) > CorelCAD ( http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4120067&cid=catalog20038&segid=752 )
- Animation: download Blender ( http://www.blender.org ) > Adobe ( http://www.adobe.com/products/flash.html )
- Music: LMMS ( http://lmms.sourceforge.net/ ) > Ableton Live ( https://www.ableton.com/en/live/ )
- Games: GOG ( http://www.gog.com/games ) > Steam ( http://store.steampowered.com/ )
- Movies: GOG ( http://www.gog.com/movies ) > Netflix ( https://www.netflix.com/ )
Similar guides and other resources for inspiration
- http://blog.makezine.com/2008/02/29/the-open-source-gift-guid/
- http://www.defectivebydesign.org/holiday
- http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Printer_buying_guide
"issue" is not in the list (interest, location, project, school) of allowed values for the "Organized around" property.
