Freedom-Software Community USThis is a featured page

FSC TM
Founded by Justin Breithaupt, Edited by Edwin, and supported by the Ultumix TM project.
(Not a final draft)
Freedom-Software Community
Philosophy
Section 1. Introduction.

The basis of the beliefs and efforts of the Freedom-Software Communitie's philosophy is to bridge the gap between the FOSS / Open Source community and the Free Software Foundation. In order to do this we will promote the use of free-software as in freedom as it has been called by the Free Software Foundation by using it whenever possible. It is only possible to use free-software instead of non-free software when:

1. There is hardware that is supported by free-software and that hardware is able to preform the necessary tasks using only free-software.

2. The needs are met by the free software or if the person or company with the need is able to produce free software as in freedom to meet their needs.

3. When the expenses of using free-software are affordable. Example of when this would not be the case: You want to run the hardware that supports free-software and has all the abilities of similar hardware that only supports non-free software but the hardware that supports the free-software is either obsolete or too expensive for the average consumer.

Persons, groups, or businesses that can afford to use free-software despite the above being false should do so. Also anyone who has the knowledge or resources to make or improve free-software so that it can meet demands only met by non-free software should put forth that effort.

The philosophy of the Freedom-Software Community is not only about free-software but also about community. Any person or project that is a part of the Freedom-Software Community must not get in heated debates over which distribution is the best and say that their distribution should be the only one used. Each person or group must be committed to supporting free-software by using it and contributing to it in some way weather that be money, knowledge, time, or just use. Instead of getting angry at one another or working against each other by working on different kernels with different sets of drivers preloaded into them we should be working on only a few. There are primarily only 4 - 5 main branches of GNU/Linux and even these are not all supported by the FSF because they no longer only support free software. In this case for each one of these kernels there should be a kernel stripped of any non-free software drivers so that users have the option of only using free-software when they can. We should be fighting against "the true enemy". As far as arguing about which distro is better it's ok for you to say that you believe that a distro is better for a specific purpose or because you prefer it but saying that one distro is better than another in every way is wrong.

The end result of the FSC Freedom-Software Community is to end the need for Open Source, non-free software, FOSS, and of course the Freedom-Software Community itself and go back to relying on the Free Software Foundation for computing. The continuing mission of the FSC will be to help industries such as the auto industry only use free-software firmware in their automobiles, tools, and other equipment. The OpenMoko project is a prime example of this.

Section 2. Definitions.


First let me start by saying that we agree with both the OSI / Open Source / FOSS and Free Software Foundation / FSF. We are not upset with them over any of the issues discussed below. We are simply focusing on the communities that make up the Developers, Project Leaders, and Users of various GNU/Linux distributions that we do not believe are following the original intent of free-software or are not able to follow the original intent of free-software at this time and an unwillingness to cowoperate. We are trying to bridge the gap between all communities and sub communities and work towards one common goal.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7707585592627775409

What is Free-Software, the Free Software Foundation, non-free software, Freedomware, and who is Richard Stallman?

Recently I’ve been talking with Richard Stallman for 2 - 3 weeks on the subject of running free-software. ( Richard Stallman is the president and founder of the FSF or Free Software Foundation. ) What I got out of reading Richard Stallman’s writings and e-mails was that free-software as in freedom is software that has it’s source code released to the public and the public is allowed to modify and redistribute that software as well. This does not necessarily mean free as in cost. This includes drivers and firmware as well. If your running hardware that has non-free software / firmware in it you can’t use it because that’s against the FSF and if that hardware requires non-free drivers you can’t use it according to the FSF. I did research to find hardware that supported a modern PCI Express video card with 3D that would work with the free drivers. I also looked for motherboards. What I did find was obsolete and would require me to spend more money to acquire. At the time I was trying to start a business charging kids to play games on my computers. (playing just free-software games would have been ok).

Freedomware is simply a cool term that my friend Thomas uses to describe free-software to stop the confusion of monitary value. You can read more at his site here: http://thenixedreport.wordpress.com/freedomware/ or you can look it up on the Pediaopenness site here. The FSF uses the term Free-Software so in honor of them we will use it here instead of freedomware. As you can easily see by these descriptions and the ratings here http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Freedomware a lot of people don't understand what freedomware actually is.

What is FOSS and Open Source?

Started by Eric Raymond with very good intentions. Open Source / FOSS is the alternative. Businesses and countless others such as Ubuntu have went to Open Source / FOSS which is the idea that non-free software and free-software can coexist. This sounds great doesn’t it? The problem is that these people get lazy and don’t try to make free-software and become dependent on non-free software. Instead they get money from big companies like DELL, IBM, HP, ect. to put non-free drivers in their kernels so that the vendor’s hardware will be supported with Ubuntu’s kernel even though it has non-free software in it and it will work on almost any computer. Sounds great Right? But how does this help make us independent from Corporate America and all the non-free software? It doesn’t. If the money that goes in to paying corporations that make hardware to produce non-free drivers for Ubuntu and other distros was put into producing free software drivers and more open hardware we would not have to compromise.
The other problem is companies like NVIDIA are making it harder to use their proprietary drivers. ATI however has the respect of the FSF for now. NVIDIA drivers for newer cards and chipsets don’t seem to play friendly with GNU/Linux distributions unless you download Ubuntu’s latest kernel. Why? Why are all the rest of us left in the dark? Why must we become dependent on Ubuntu and Corporate America? A perfect example of this is Ubuntu 8.04. It’s kernel is not even up to date enough to support the newest NVIDIA drivers that are out there and in some instances you can’t install it. I based the latest version of Ultumix TM off of Ubuntu. I updated the kernel and guess what it works! But why should you have to update the kernel every month. Any GNU/Linux hardcore hacker will tell you that’s a bad idea and will make your programs and system unstable. The thing is whenever it’s possible to use free software to do your work you should but you should not be limited to just using free-software all together. Likewise the developers should work harder to create free-software, drivers, firmware, ect. We also need hardware made by companies that support the free-software idea that the drivers and firmware should be free-software. The other major problem in FOSS is that the different distros and communities fight with each other to get to the top of distrowatch.com and say they are the best. I’ve heard officials from the Ubuntu community say to me that they believe that their distro is the best one out there and that users should only be presented with Ubuntu. Why I asked? Because of the confusion of choice they answered. Free-software is all about freedom of choice and not a one world takeover. Lets get back to the GPL guys. And worst of all the people who are really in charge of these projects have lost control. Their moderators go wild in the forums and make people angry and ban people for nothing. Now I will tell you that I only show users Ultumix TM GNU/Linux if it will work for their situation. The reason I only present them with my distro is because I have had a much better conversion rate from Windows to GNU/Linux by presenting my distro to them. If their computer can't handle it or they need better video / audio editing abilities I will present another distro to them. You see I'm not jelous of other distros that work better for specific purposes or try to compete with me it's just that since I tried getting customers to use Ultumix I got a 90% conversion rate. So no I don't believe it's right to only show people one distro and put down others. I often encurage people to go on the internet and search distrowatch.com for fun or whatever. Most customers like that Ultumix just works and they don't distro hop but they have the choice to do so.

The True Enemy.

The true enemy is not Microsoft, Macintosh, SUN, Novel, IBM, or even GNU/Linux users that fight among each other. The true enemy is an evil spirit or belief or way of life. That way of life is primarily devoted to self improvement and promotion and hatred towards all competitors or a competitive spirit that is willing to disregard any moral standards in order to get ahead. This spirit is driven by greed, selfishness, self recognition, pride, lust, desire, and any other pleasure that may seduce someone to do something in any way shape or form.

Some such as myself believe this attitude or spirit comes from Satin, others believe that it's just a way of life, others believe that it's simply how all businesses must be ran in order to succeed. Bill Gates was not the origination of this spirit and is not the source of this spirit. At one time Bill Gates was consumed by this spirit and led Microsoft to follow it as well and if he would renounce that way of living and ask to join us we would welcome him. This spirit still exists at Microsoft to this day. It's the spirit that the general number of Businesses and Corporations share in this country and is often found in businesses that are also tied in with Scientology (which has been recognized by Germany as the next Nazi movement and outlawed in their country). As long as you stand against this spirit with us and agree to our methods of computing you can call yourself a member of the Freedom-Software Community. We require you to at no time take any violent actions against anyone unless it's in self defense for fear of the loss of life.

We are not taking any political stances or sides. We are simply stating what we believe is wrong with Corporate America and other persons or groups associated with the way of life specified above.

Section 3. Strategies and Staying Focused.

How To Stop The True Enemy.

I have studied the history of how businesses like Netscape have fought against Microsoft and lost. The biggest problem is they tried to fight against Microsoft. Personally I've found that it's impossible to fight your enemy when it comes to Technology. There are much more suddle ways that will have a much bigger effect in the long run. And one of those ways includes me not discussing any more about it. I'm not going to tell you any more about how to stop "The True Enemy" but I will tell you that while it's ok to expose Microsoft's EULA and other facts it's not ok to talk bad about them. This is because talking bad about your competition hurts your business in ways you can't imagine until you do it for a long time and if you don't learn or pick up on the loss you will fight yourself to death.

People say to me "you must really hate Microsoft" and I say no I don't, I just don't believe that the way they do things is right. I believe that there is an evil spirit (or lack of a moral code) about the company that I don't believe is right.

Why This is Possible.

The reason that it is possible to get all users to stop using Proprietary non-free software is because of you. There are over 32,000,000 GNU/Linux developers and 70,000 employees at Microsoft. The employees at Microsoft aren't allowed the freedoms of open exchange of information the way that we are. So now if we can just get everyone to work together instead of fighting we can stop all the evil in the Computer world. We can also eliminate Porn and other threats. If someone actually starts writing GNU/Linux viruses of any threat the users themselves can come up with the fixes and patches for the systems and track down the culprits and deal with them as the law sees fit.

Staying Focused.

From 1984 - 1991 (only 6 years) a group of hackers managed to produce the GNU/Linux system. After that a lot of different companies and people went in a lot of different directions. If we would have stayed the course in another 6 years we could have declared ourselves fully independent of all non-free software and in another 6 years we could have made the GNU/Linux system capable of running any Windows and Mac software and file formats, and in another 6 years we could have bought out and liberated all software as free-software. This would have been the end of non-free software.
So where did we go wrong? We fought over weather we should call it free-software or Open Source / FOSS software, we fought to produce the best kernels and distros, we fought to protect and help non-free software by using it and beta testing it, and we continued to buy non-free software.

In my personal experiences in the GNU/Linux community I've been persecuted simply because I'm a Christian. Many people told me that Christianity and GNU/Linux don't belong together. To me the selfless sacrifice to others is the same. I'm not saying that all GNU/Linux users must agree with my faith or religion but I am saying we should all be reverent of others religious beliefs even if you don't have one personally. Also don't bring up bad things that happened in the past. It just makes people angry. I currently receive phone calls and e-mails bringing up mistakes I made in the past and they tell me I'm doing them now. This just takes too much time to deal with and irritates people. If you do this enough you will be banned from a community for harassing people. There is just no end to it.

The best response to internet Trolls and people who complain is to have them look at your FAQ page. A FAQ page is set in stone but you can change it. What I mean by set in stone is that people can't argue with it. Richard Stallman advised me on setting up one on my page and it was the smartest thing I ever did.

What's Next?

The next step is to get your input on what you see here. Please post in the thread below called Reviews. Thanks.


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