suggestions/request for fsfe

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Veronica,

Am Freitag 10 Januar 2020 15:50:47 schrieb V F:
> Of course, ideally, a company should do so that it lasts
> longer - but then profit motives come along and ruin any
> honesty/transparency.

any organisation has to be run economically in the sense
that the incoming money must be enough to cover the costs.
It's the same principal situation for profits and for non-profits.

A company can be kept honest in many ways, one is governmental
checking by laws, directivies and public servants.
Another possibility is scrutiny by the public or journalists.

As most people are not willing to let the state run everything
and they also do not want to rely on volunteer work, we need more
company- or non-profit-backed offerings with Free Software.

> Sure you can teach or bring awareness. 

Being able to decide which offering is better or worse, -
for example towards personal privacy of data or public effect -
is a necessary precondition. 

One of FSFE's main efforts therefore goes into increasingly enable others to 
evaluate if a software solution is Free Software or not and how it will 
affect them or their group. In best tradition of  "Enlightenment is man's 
emergence from his self-incurred immaturity (Unmündigkeit)." [1]

> Having 'actionable' solutions is paramount if one needs to provide it
> for 'end-user'. 

There are already offerings that are better than others, and if you know how 
to decide between them, there is much which can be done right away.

An example https://posteo.de has won the German Test.de's test for privacy 
aware mail, contact and calender providers (together with mailbox.org).
Their offering is 12 €/year and can replace less privacy-including offerings.
(Both Posteo and Mailbox.org use a lot of Free Software, but their offering is 
of course not perfect.)

Using LineageOS on your Android Phone or (LineageOS-MicroG) is a way to get 
longer lasting security updates without a need to have a user-account with a 
big player. You can use DavX5 from the fdroid.org store and have a lot of 
Free Software and more independence this way.

> Honestly, the pages of 'print' material that every 
> time I find our chapter distributes and later I find 'most' of them
> going to 'bin' in the corner of the street 

If you see this happen, please report back on the specific
circumstances and what can be improved. Maybe it is not the right flyer
for the occasion or a different approach towards people is useful.
Many of our local groups are successful by using the FSFE internal channels
to exchange experiences.

Chosing the fitting one from our our campaigns is helpful  
  https://fsfe.org/campaigns/campaigns.en.html
Currently a lot of people are interested in our public money, public code
information.

Our PDFReaders campaign and the Free your Android flyers were also popular
a few years before and more possibilities did arise as a result.

> Instead, build a virtual server may be more eco-friendly.

If this would be clear cut case. We could do so with FSFE.
And we've run services from FSFE a couple of times before.
Often we were in the way of something better. So the idea is to increase the 
chances that something better comes up, make sure people recognise it so they 
will finance it sufficiently to enjoy a Free Software and privacy aware 
service for a long time.

Regards,
Bernhard

[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answering_the_Question%3A_What_Is_Enlightenment%3F

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