anti-establishment movements and the information age

[Daniel Pocock]

On 09/02/16 09:18, Matthias Kirschner wrote:
> * Daniel Pocock <daniel at pocock.pro> [2016-02-08 11:28:01 +0100]:
> 
>>> We constantly reach out to political parties, attend their meetings, give
>>> workshops, talk with staffers, etc. 
>>
>> How does this group appear in relation to others?
> 
> Sorry, I don't understand that question.
> 

I was just wondering whether anybody may have had any insight into how
organized they are, e.g. some have an office and generous flows of
donations, others are just a Facebook group.


>> The main thing that caught my eye is that they are unified by an
>> emphasis on democracy, despite the fact that many of the people involved
>> have significant differences in other policy areas.  Democracy is also
>> something that is now heavily connected with digital freedom.  In
>> Richard Stallman's talk the other day, he was emphasizing software
>> freedom should be considered as fundamental as the right to public
>> assembly or the right to vote.
> 
> Yes, I am glad Richard included that in his speeches now. See also:
> - Democracy requires Free Software
>   <https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/society/democracy.en.html> (16
>   languages) 
> - FSFE's mission statement <https://fsfe.org/about/mission> "These
>   rights help support other fundamental rights like freedom of speech,
>   freedom of press and privacy."
> 
>> Has there been any effort to survey or catalog free software use in such
>> groups, parties, lobbying organizations and see how it evolves over
>> time?  Some are notoriously bad at it, having something to compare them
>> against could be helpful.
> 
> We started once to document it for public administrations:
> http://wiki.fsfe.org/Free_Software_usage_in_public_administration but
> not for parties, lobbying organisations, etc.
> 


I wonder if there may be any researchers who would be tempted to look at
that more closely.

If they are genuinely understanding the reasons for using free software
in public administration, then they would presumably not use anything
proprietary in their own party or campaign offices.

Regards,

Daniel