FSF prepares a new "Libre Planet" campaign

"One Beasty Boy's assertion eloquently summarizes my feelings about free software activism: "You gotta fight for your right to party". Public Enemy's call to arms in the title of the last song on their 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is just as pithy and even catchier: "Party For Your Right To Fight". In either case we know that two things are necessary: fighting for our rights and having fun! (Venn diagram left as an exercise to the reader.) To help the community to continue to do both, we are creating a new campaign entitled Libre Planet.
Because Libre Planet will be a campaign to help community, we hope to get as much input from the community as we can as we go about creating it. My first suggestion for Libre Planet will be to have a map with a meet-up system so that people can meet physically. To help get the ball rolling with other ideas I've been reaching out to active groups and individuals in the community to begin the brainstorming process.

Mitch Wiedemann of the Ithaca Free Software Association gave me several great ideas of what Libre Planet should be like. In particular, he suggested that it would be great to have a how-to from doing free software advocacy, and he was kind enough to share with me some suggestions for what should be in this how-to, they are:

• 1. You don’t need a big group to do free software advocacy on a local scale. Sometimes numbers help, but most of the time 1-3 people are plenty to staff a booth, give a presentation or correspond with local people and organizations.
• 2. You have to know your stuff, and everyone you're working with has to have a thorough background in what free software is, and what open source is (and isn't). Luckily all of this information is available on the gnu.org site. But anyone I plan on taking with me to an event must have their facts straight.
• 3. Have a one-page flyer explaining who you are, what free software is and why it's important, and how people can contact your group to get more information. Additionally, invite everyone you talk with to join your group. Hand this flyer out with every disc you give out.
• 4. You're running a free software group, not a "Linux" group. Therefore, everyone with an interest in free software is welcome, including Vista users, and MacOS users. Not everyone can simply switch to GNU/Linux but most can use free software.
• Most conferences are really looking for "Linux", "open source", and "free software" representatives because it provides some real variety to their boring "vendor" line-ups. Most local conferences I've attended have provided the booth and the presentation slots to the IFSA at no cost.

Chris Fernandez of Binary Freedom believes that Libre Planet could be helpful because it would allow them to "coordinate with other groups we are not coordinating with at the moment and to have bigger campaigns".

We hope that we can be helpful. But, to build a succesful web site and campaign for Libre Planet we need more ideas from the community. If you have any ideas or would like to participate in the creation of this campaign, please email us at campaigns[at]fsf.org, or join the discussion thread in the membership forum. The month of July, Libre Planet will be in Beta mode, and with your help we will hopefully be able to launch it by August 1st!"