Action items

This is a list of simple action items that free software supporters can take. Please share them with as many people as possible, and find or create more to add to the "Proposed" section.

Current

Ongoing

Nominate a TED Speaker

Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences are very influential and reach thousands of influential people.

Nomination page: http://www.ted.com/nominate/speaker

People to nominate:

• Eben Moglen
• Richard Stallman
• Benjamin Mako Hill

Original idea and example nomination: http://www.reddit.com/r/freeculture/comments/cdznf/free_softwareculture_nominees_for_a_ted_talk/

Proposed

Upcoming

Suggest LinuxJourney.com to call GNU+Linux accordingly

Albertoefg, at #fsf, sent an email to contact[here goes an "at" symbol]linuxjourney.com asking them to correct some pages there.

We initially wanted to do mass-mailling right from the start, but parabool advised us not to do so.

We must wait for a reply until: 2016-07-03

Here's the template:

Hello 

I had been using your website and I thinks is really good and helpful. And I want to congratulate you for your great work on the site. And it's useful design. 

I would like to suggest to add recognition to the GNU Project and many components that form part of it on any GNU/Linux distribution. 

It is even important to note that without GNU there probably wouldn't be such thing like Linux or any distribution mentioned on your site. 

As  you know, on your site are many tutorials related more to GNU that actually Linux, like the GNU Bash and GNU Coreutils.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little recognition to that project, it even seems in https://linuxjourney.com/lesson/linux-history like the GNU Project were dead. 

When is actually the main developer of many important parts of any GNU/Linux computer. Like the bootloader GRUB which you also mention on your site.

And there won't be any hurt on recognize those who had worked and cooperated to make GNU/Linux as good as it is today 

I am not asking to change your whole site just to add a little bit about GNU being really important and not being dead on: https://linuxjourney.com/lesson/choosing-a-linux-distribution

And to add in https://linuxjourney.com/lesson/choosing-a-linux-distribution  that GNU software is an essential part of the base system and it is as important as Linux for any GNU/Linux distribution. 

One must understand that the "GNU" preffix is not used only for "systems or software that include GNU software", it can actually be used also to indicate that the base of the system distribution that one is using was *made* with GNU software.

Also, the terminal emulators on Android/Linux systems behave differently than most people would expect from a GNU+Linux system, this is because they use Busybox or similar tools which don't provide the same functionalities as GNU packages do, and this is one of the various reasons as to why the distinction is important.

The GNU Project was sstarted in 1983 to create a free operating system that could be a fully functional replacement for proprietary Unix operating systems. There are many Unix operating systems, the GNU system is one of them. At this point in time, specific distriutions of those operating systems use the Linux kernel and so we usually refer that class of operating systems as "GNU/Linux", so as to give credit to Linux, but, they are all instances of the GNU system. GNU provides a lot of the basic protocols and design structures that other programs make use of. There are loads of conventions and ideas in a typical GNU/Linux system that are fundamentally different than those that are used in say an Android/Linux system. those differences are sometimes more obvious to develoeprs than users.

The idea behind the GNU project is create a complete system for people. That system should be able to run on lots of hardware architectures, it should have all the tools for peopel to develop software with, it should have useful programs to do whatever job people need doing, programs and systems to permit communication, games, and everything else. So the GNU project set out to create lots of projects. Eventually others started creating lots of projects too. not all of them are maintained and run by the GNU project itself, but, most are designed to run on the GNU system and GNU/Linux in particular but, GNU/Linux as an operating system doesn't just include packages maintained by the GNU project. There are packages that are part of the GNU project. There large packages that have their own large subprojects and foundations to help maintain and support them (like GNOME or the R programming language).

GNU has a specific goal, to create a completely free operating system. An operating system has many parts. Linux was never intended to be more than a kernel. X.org was never intended to be more than a Windowing system. but GNU was always intended to be an operating system.

Just to give you all an idea... GNU packages/projects are more present than the Linux kernel on the system distributions.

Most of the commands one uses in the terminal are provided by GNU packages. Like cd (from Bash), ls, info, make, yes, find, csplit, popd (from Bash), pushd (from Bash), rm, mv, cp, ln, cat, less, nano, screen, and so on. Besides, there is also GNU GRUB and GNU Libreboot.

1. Replace the "Linux Kernel" part with "Base system".

2. Insert GNU first as a subitem if the "Base system", then put everything that is inside this email message.

3. Insert "Linux kernel" as the second subitem.

4. Insert GNU as a subitem of the "User-space".

Also, it would be good if you would focus more on teaching people how to use GNU packages and also mention some important things about the philosophy. You can start with the friendlier ones, like GnuCash and GNOME.

To finish it up: The name of the distributions must have "GNU/Linux" so as to identify their *base system*. The name is either "GNU/Linux", "GNU with Linux" or "GNU+Linux", whichever you use to emphasize that they are separated project but also complement each other. It's not "GNU Linux", "GNU" nor "Linux".

It will also be nice if you add a little section about Free Software and add a link to fsf.org where you can find a list of free distros. But this is up to you.

Nominate 2012 CREDO donations recipients

CREDO Mobile / Working Assets donates 1% of their income every year (Over $2.5M USD in 2009) to a number of nonprofits, based on vote.

http://www.workingassets.com/Recipients.aspx#funding

Nominate the FSF, EFF, Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, etc.