Freedom is for the people

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem

michael.dehaan (his spelling, not mine!) posted something that you can take or leave (I don’t want to start a flame war on my own blog):

michaeldehaan.net | Popularity Contests Are So Junior High School.

But what is intriguing are the ideas that develop in the comments.   Please take some time and read those first, and then come back here.  😉

What I wanted you to read were the ideas floated in the comments regarding raising awareness of the Freedom of Free Software for the common people, and the analogies made to such programs as NOVA & Cosmos on PBS.  This touched me personally because of how important such programs were to me and to nurturing my love & interest for Science & Nature.

These programs, it seems, were designed to take what may have been seemingly esoteric topics that were originally avoided by regular people and make them accessible.  People like Carl Sagan devoted their lives towards making deep topics such as the universe accessible and understandable by common people.  In no small part, I think they were successful.

So, if success can be had in such an area as Science, then why not also for Freedom?  Why not devote time to “marketing” the advantages that Free software and software freedom bring, both practical and social?  But the noveleity I found was in pointing towards the successful (if not “American Idol” successful) models of Public broadcasting, which did succeed in reaching  intended audiences and affecting them positive ways that brought about positive changes, in my humble opinion.

What’s the next step, then?  Let’s at least foster the idea that we should be working on producing media that fun, easy to understand and follow, and serves to promote what we, the users of Free software, feel is important about it.  I’m going to think some more about this and get back to you all, in shaaʾ Allaah.

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