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There are a few small "easter eggs," both intentional and
unintentional, in the "User Liberation" video we just
released.
One that drew some comments is the desktop screenshot flashing by near
the video's end.
Is that...a Skype icon? Is that...Flash? Is that...nVidia? IN AN FSF
VIDEO?
After this was brought to my attention, I first thought
it was fine to include the icons, because of the overall framing. The
narrator in that section of the video says, "We've still got work to
do." None of the context promotes or recommends use of those programs,
and since the icons flashed by in a second, I didn't think we were
increasing their recognizability or notoriety. Everything about the
video problematizes proprietary software and advocates user freedom.
The only application the character is directly using is free software.
The other icons seemed merely part of a realistic scenery, and as we
all know, the scenery of our digital lives contains much ugliness.
I can imagine many other circumstances in which we would show
proprietary software in a video. For example, we might have a video
tutorial showing how to install and use GNU Emacs on Windows, or how
to encrypt your email on OS X.
It'd be hard to have such videos without showing those proprietary
operating systems, and they would in fact be much more prominent than
what we are talking about here.
We would show them because doing so would help us help others to
regain some of their freedom as computer users. We would make sure to
emphasize that such steps wouldn't get them all the way -- for that,
they'd need to install a fully free GNU/Linux
system -- but they would be steps in the
right direction, and steps that wouldn't require any counterproductive
compromise.
We do, as "User Liberation" says, have a lot more work to do, to
enable everyone to install fully free operating systems and do
everything they want to do with any computer they own using only free
software, without compromise. Free software replacements for exactly
the three displayed icons: Skype, Flash, and 3D-accelerated graphics
drivers, are on our High Priority Projects
List, which is currently looking for
your
feedback.
All that being said, the advantage of digital media (and
Blender, the free software used to make the
video) is that we could go back and change things like this pretty
easily. Should we?
Our goal here was to make a video that can be shown to people who had
never heard of free software before, to spark their interest and
hopefully inspire further involvement. After listening to some
feedback and thinking on it, we decided that leaving the icons could
potentially cause some confusion with people who don't yet know, for
example, that Skype is only "free as in beer" and not "free as in
freedom." I don't think the risk here was very high -- you couldn't
even see the individual icons during normal watching of the video --
but that also meant they didn't have any affirmative reason to be
there.
So we've now chucked this particular easter egg, and written this post
to document the decision. Doing this reminded me of the relative
impermanence of all digital media. DRM-pushing companies like Amazon
and Apple who distribute videos and ebooks have the same capability,
to go back and edit works after they are published. In many cases,
they can even do it remotely, replacing works that you think of as
living on a device in your home. Will they tell you about it when they
do?
Thank you to Urchin for making the
edits and for their amazing work on the project! It really
demonstrates the power of free software and free formats, and debunks
the myth that professional designers and animators must use
proprietary software to be top notch.
I'm excited about the partnership with them, and about the potential
to make more such educational and advocacy materials in the future. I
hope you can make a donation, or even
better, join as a member, to both cast a
vote for us doing more of this work and to provide the resources we
need to do it.
The old video can still be found (for now) at http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/FSF30-video/old/.