assessing my role in software freedom advocacy

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over the last year i’ve become increasingly conscious of how my life and work intersects with free and proprietary software. notably:

  • i spent the better part of a year enabling midsize companies’ ability to “make money” using an open source ecommerce framework.
  • i went from working a contract at a small consultancy – who invested a substantial amount of money into that ecommerce framework – to joining the consultancy and being acquired by… a very large company using the framework.
  • i became increasingly wary of people who make money via the internet.
  • i started thinking about other potential career tracks?
  • i switched from using arch linux full-time at work to using macos.
  • i saw some silly news stories about dicey open source software licenses.
  • i joined tilde.town and witnessed many people learning about and experimenting with free software – and it’s worth noting that there is a wider (still expanding) tilde subculture.
  • i’ve relied on amazon to provide me with many of my basic needs and convenience purchases, and i haven’t felt incredibly bad about it even though i think their existence is a net-negative for the world and the open web.
  • i reduced my reliance on google services – specifically g suite for email, calendar, and file storage, but i also started using duckduckgo as the default search engine in all of my browsers.
  • i started managing my own private git remote/server. it’s not impressive, but i’m always learning something.

this list is rambly, and it’s not clear what i (let alone you) should be taking from these experiences. today, this list is telling me my role in software freedom advocacy is too small. i say this as someone who isn’t interested in being a professional advocate of any kind, but as someone who loves computers, software, and the potential of the internet (which becomes undermined a bit more each day).

i can make my role larger by contributing to free software projects more and more often; by choosing to use free and open source alternatives to proprietary software (ahem, lucidchart); and by advocating for diy solutions to problems that big companies solve if you’re willing to throw money at them. most importantly, i can socialize the idea of software freedom when i speak to people inside and outside of the tech industry: i can write about it more, i can write about why i feel it’s important, and so on.

recently, i was introduced to the oggcast/podcast free as in freedom – which relaunched at the end of 2018 after a two-year hiatus. it’s hosted by bradley m. kuhn and karen sandler who are professional free sofware advocates. if you found my rambly thoughts on this topic semi-interesting, i’d recommend listening to the following (recent) episodes: