Is it acceptable to use proprietary software (platforms) to promote software freedom?

[Daniel Pocock]

On 23/07/17 09:03, Evaggelos Balaskas wrote:
> Social media are now part of our life (I am not debating if they
> should or not), but diminish them to cat videos is a strong opinion.
> 90% of email is SPAM, should we stop using email? Lots of people have
> their email to a proprietary platform. Should we stop talk to them?
> Should we only talk to people who have similar ideas with us?
>

Actually, I have been thinking very seriously about blocking all email
from gmail.com

I could put a line in the postfix server config /etc/postfix/access


gmail.com    REJECT    Google's privacy policy is abusive and
unacceptable to the recipient.  See https://some.site


and then anybody trying to contact me from gmail would see that message
and hopefully use another email account to contact me.


> I believe that we should be reaching out to people that have different
> ideas from us and making arguments, discussions, talks on how free
> software and the culture that comes with is the only way for our
> society to be a better place for everyone.
>
> To make a point -plz bare with me for a moment- when everyone inside a
> group is telling each other that free software is awesome and we have
> to be a role model, my argument is to whom? To each other? How can we
> reach people from outside this utopian group?
>

Last weekend I went to the Digital-born Media Carnival[1] organized by
the SHARE Foundation[2] where I participated in some workshops, gave a
talk and led a practical session on privacy with TAILS[3].  The vast
majority of people there were not from this group, they were a mix of
journalists, lawyers, policy makers and researchers.  Many of those I
spoke to were previously unaware of the free software concept and even
unaware that they have choices about technology, many younger people
have simply grown up doing what they see everybody else doing, without
thinking about it.  That is why I feel it is so important that
organizations like FSFE shows leadership.

Whenever I told somebody I'm not on Facebook or LinkedIn, this
immediately provided an opportunity for discussion.

Regards,

Daniel

1. http://www.shareconference.net/carnival/
2. http://sharedefense.org/
3. https://tails.boum.org/