Re: Sharing your free software / quarantine success story

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

Em 17/04/2020 12:33, ? escreveu:
> My experience with this so far is that technology alone does not appear
> to be the answer; there are human elements and network effects that are
> hard to break. Of course, if anybody has any suggestions to this effect,
> then I'll be happy to listen.

While I may not have a big success or failure story, I also agree with
you on the issue of network effect. In [1] there are references which
can also interest other people in regards to this, although the page
text is more tailored in favor of XMPP, not explicitly related to
free/libre software.

> 1. Individuals would understandably prefer to use the "company-approved"
> tool. Even I prefer this given the circumstances because if I end up
> getting hacked, the fact that I used the company-approved tool is like a
> free ticket to zero responsibility. Or at least, it's less worse than
> getting hacked using your own personal communication channels.

If they gave you such an answer, then one other question is needed:

With which department your attempts were directed to?

If it was the one responsible for all decisions in the organization,
then I do agree that they are either misinformed or afraid of something.

However, if you instead attempted to convince people from departments
bellow the decision-making one, then the observations you made are
likely to repeat, specially in cases related to work hours. This is
because when people commit to the role of employees, they tend to
express submission to someone else, the employer. So, during work hours
the entity they represent is no longer their own, but the employer's. Of
course they can diverge from the orders of their superior but in some
countries this is a possible reason for justified dismissal.

Cleaning a stair from bottom to top tends to be difficult, the best
course of action would be participating in the meetings related to the
decision-making department and find a way to both have a time to speak
there and present the ideas of free/libre software movement the best way
you can.

During the presentation, if you don't have/can't find an answer to "what
software to use as replacement for X?" or "does feature Y exist?", look
no further, emphasize the importance of the freedoms of the software for
the organization, be it hiring other people to host/develop/improve a
replacement or making the organization doing so).

What can be drawn from the paragraph above is that free/libre software
doesn't necessarily mean "do/host it yourself". With a good contract you
have a chance to both foster free/libre software and the local economy.
The details of *where* things will be hosted is outside the scope of
this message. In terms of what wording and how to evaluate if a contract
is being respected, only in regards to the freedom of the software, I
think Software Freedom Conservancy, Software Freedom Law Center and
perhaps FSF and it's sister organizations might be able to help. The
initiative to contact them must of course come from the organization.

Departing from the employment scenario, there is a third possible cause
for the observations you made, that is when a company hires a person
either as autonomous worker or as a freelancer. In this case the worker
seems to have lost an opportunity to demand better work conditions
*before* signing the contract. This is because for countries which
accept these work regimes, the worker is not an employee and can set
demands independently from the organization's policies.


# References


[1]: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/XMPP .


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