[SFD-discuss] Quick question....

[Pia Waugh]

Hi Arron,

<quote who="Arron M Finnon">

> One of our members has offered to burn a number of Linux Mint CD's and
> DVD'd to give out at the event, coupled with a howto guide to show how
> to install it.

Mint is lovely, a really pretty distro.

> One of our other members thinks we can't do that because Linux Mint
> comes with Proprietary media codecs. 

It is for this reason that SFI couldn't distribute such a distro for the
teams, however what teams decide to distribute is their own choice (so long
as it fits in with the spirit of software freedom). I've personally always
believed that the path to freedom is a series of steps, and that introducing
people in a practical and positive way to FOSS is a great way to turn them
into users and advocates. If you start with _NO_ you can't do that then
you've immediately started with a negative. For me personally I was using
FOSS for a couple of years before the broader socio-economic impacts and the
importance of software freedom really hit me, so it'd be unfair to expect
newcomers to get all of it in a few minutes :)

> I have the nasty thought that we have all of these potential new users,
> who the minute they go to play their music or videos sit there and say
> "well free software is good but you can't play stuff i'll just boot back
> in to windows"  

Yeah, this is a really important point. We need to help users really commit
to software freedom, but if we don't arm them with tools (and knowhow) then
we are setting them up to be turned off FOSS and software freedom. If they
are able to play MP3's but are given the understanding about open options
like OGG, then they can start the process of transcoding while still having
access to their existing music collection.

> You guys have any ideas or am i just making more out of it than i should

It is a good conversation, and thank you for bringing it up!

Cheers,
Pia

-- 
OLPC Australia                                           http://olpc.org.au/
Linux Australia                                         http://linux.org.au/
Open Source Industry Australia                           http://osia.net.au/
Software Freedom Day                          http://softwarefreedomday.org/
 

     "Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains." - Jean Jacques
                                  Rosseau