In the year 2020, every shred of good news is something to be grateful for, and the outpouring of support we've experienced during our spring fundraiser is very good news indeed. Over the course of the last month, not only did we exceed our goal of 200 new associate members, but we've gained more memberships this July than in any other July in the history of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) associate membership program. We are thrilled that in a time of many pressing concerns about freedom and safety, our supporters have grasped the central importance of the FSF's role in defending our right to control the software in our lives. We cannot possibly thank you enough for helping to ensure that we can continue leading this battle.

While the fight to free all software will always need financial support, it also requires advocacy to bring in more supporters at all levels of technological knowledge. We hope you'll use, enjoy, and share some of the newer tools and advocacy materials we've produced over the last few months:

• The University of Costumed Heroes video: An urgent software freedom issue right now, during the novel coronavirus pandemic, is the required use of proprietary remote education software (as well as in courtrooms and other environments where people would normally congregate in person). We've commissioned a fun animated video that illustrates why this trend is dangerous, and we encourage you to share it and use it to start the conversation.

• Petition for freedom in the classroom: Please join others in declaring in that we won't stand for the serious harm that proprietary software poses to students! Not only does signing communicate that you care, but you also have the option to specify if you're a student, teacher, parent, or administrator at a school that is forcing you to use proprietary software to learn or teach. If you choose to provide this information, we will contact your school administration on your behalf. Free software activists are already converting schools to free videoconferencing programs today, and we want to help make your school another success story if we can. Please read, sign, and share the petition today!

• The FSF Jitsi Meet instance: Finally, one of the easiest ways to introduce people to free software is to use it for something they were going to do already, like video chat! If you're an associate member of the FSF, and you're planning a video chat with a friend or family, member, it's as easy as opening a Jitsi Meet chat room and sharing the URL. I've personally used the FSF Jitsi Meet instance to convert my friends' team trivia game to free software videoconferencing, and it's another great way to start a conversation about why the people you care about should embrace the cause of free software.

Once again, we're so grateful and humbled by your support at a time when many nonprofit organizations are struggling to stay afloat. It's your conviction and commitment that make our work possible, and we hope that with your help, we'll keep the good news coming.

Screenshot from The University of Costumed Heroes by the Free Software Foundation Copyright © 2020 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

On July 29th, the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon were called before the US Senate Judiciary Committee to give testimony to lawmakers considering substantial revisions to antitrust laws. Yet despite a five-hour hearing, conducted using some of the very same software which is at the root of these issues, little headway was made.

It's easy to focus, like these hearings, on the specific objectionable purposes for which the software these companies are involved with has been used. Specific actions have caused specific harms, and we understand the importance of talking about that and potentially taking or requiring remedial actions. However, it is imperative that we not stop there. We must go deeper, and expose the fact that it is the very way our predominant proprietary software culture and legal regimes operate -- giving software companies immense power over users -- which will inevitably lead to recurring specific problems until addressed.

Attempting to address the problem of monolithic corporations like the ones in question, and their control over the digital sphere, will fail without addressing the issue at the core of their exploitation of users: proprietary software, or software that does not respect its users' freedom. The terms of use and distribution for the software are by no means the only issue, but they are central to many of the issues causing public concern. We've been waiting for follow-up coverage to acknowledge the conspicuous absence of discussion about our rights as users to control the software we use, but it has not happened. This is evidence that the Free Software Foundation, the free software movement, and anyone else concerned with ending the dystopian control tech companies have achieved over our lives, have our work cut out for us.

Proprietary software is one of the chief ways in which these corporations are able to continually abuse their users. If the software were instead free to study, share, and modify, others would be able to detect and remove (or substantially mitigate) unwanted "features" like the user tracking frequently discussed throughout the hearing. Even users without technical know-how could then use the altered software to protect themselves, and would benefit tremendously from a robust community of software professionals and hobbyists able to verify that their computer or cell phone isn't violating their rights. Giving the community of users insight into and control over the tools that they use is crucial to retaining their freedom.

Besides enabling abusive features, nonfree software also helps these companies achieve and maintain their monopolistic dominance on the market. The Apple App Store uses Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to ensure that only programs that Apple approves are able to run on Apple devices. This gives them tremendous control over the applications people get to download, and naturally tends toward a monopoly. As long as Apple uses DRM to ensure that their phones are only able to run software with their permission, Apple retains unilateral control over its users, and over an entire industry of developers, creatives, and tinkerers who develop applications for mobile phones. To make matters worse, the US and other governments actually subsidize this control via laws that make breaking it or sharing information about how to break it a criminal offense. The solution here isn't to tell Apple that it can't use its control in some specific ways, like banning apps that compete with Apple products, which is something it regularly does. The solution is to take this unjust control away from them and other companies that push DRM.

During the course of the hearing, subcommittee chairman David Cicilline continually referred to Google and the other firms up for discussion as "walled gardens." Proprietary software is the core reason for this term, yet in the hearing itself, there was no indication of the understanding that nonfree software establishes the conditions to trap users in the first place.

Likewise, nowhere in the hearing did we hear a reference to any free and easily deployable software that could challenge the monopolizing powers while giving users similar functionalities. Through network federation and decentralization, communities could deploy smaller servers that mesh together to form one larger network, avoiding the further "siloization" of the Internet. Decentralized social networks like Mastodon have already attracted millions to their platform. Even Google's dominance on Web queries could be challenged by deploying federated search software, such as YaCy. Twitter has publicly said that they are exploring such possibilities -- there is no reason all of the platform companies in this hearing shouldn't be doing the same.

The Free Software Foundation has been campaigning for complete software freedom for nearly thirty-five years, and is the organizational home of GNU, the first operating system written for the sole purpose of giving users their freedom. If we want to heed chairman Cicilline's warning and not "bow before the emperors of the online economy," we should start by letting our friends, families, and lawmakers know that as long as software is nonfree, we enable corporations like these to continue their assault on human dignity and user freedom.

A consistent bit of feedback we hear from both current and potential free software supporters is: do better at using video to communicate the importance of free software philosophy. If we aim to make free software a "kitchen table" issue, it is imperative we reach new audiences and make our points clearly, in formats that successfully engage people with limited time, across a diverse set of learning styles. From a technical perspective, this means reaching them where they are -- or more specifically -- on whatever device they are using at the moment.

Many unfortunately commonly used devices such as the iPhone do not support the video and audio formats we prefer to use in the world of free software. Apple's iron grip on the device prevents all but technically advanced users from installing the software necessary to play these formats: among them Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and WebM. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and other free software activists advocate for these formats due to the danger posed by software patents, a pernicious legal invention that casts a dark cloud over all software development. Software patents make it possible for patent owners who can state their case well enough to make claims against any piece of free software. This alone puts developers at risk. One doesn't even need to have a valid patent to threaten action: if the developer lacks the funds to defend themselves, an absurd patent claim could be equally dangerous.

In contrast to this, some authors of common formats choose to freely license any potential patent claims along with all other aspects of their project. Groups like these are intentionally helping to create the world we want to live in, and they are worthy of our support.

While we must continue campaigning against Apple and other companies for their support of software patents and insistence on trying to control users, we can't do that nearly as effectively if users of those platforms can't hear us. Without supporting video codecs other than those above, such as Advanced Video Coding (commonly called H.264), we run the risk of reaching only those who already know about free software.

To make it possible for users new to free software to watch the videos we make about free software, we've set up a "fallback" system for our embedded video player. Formats like WebM and Ogg Theora are preferred, but if these are not supported by the device, a file encoded in H.264 is played instead. Thus, without signing any agreement "buying" or attaining any supposed patent license, we can make sure that these users can access our materials. Ideally, these videos will motivate them to move to a device or operating system that respects their freedom. This brings one more person into the "free world," moving us closer to eliminating software patents and proprietary software altogether.

Although formats preferred by the free software community are now much more widespread than they were when we launched the PlayOgg campaign, most media sharing sites require you to use nonfree software (often in the form of JavaScript) or agree to ethically unacceptable terms of service (often claiming to prohibit you from writing your own software similar to that running the service). True to our principles, the FSF self-hosts all of its media, supports decentralization and federation, and never requires nonfree JavaScript. The FSF will continue campaigning against software patents, and will always ensure that our materials can be viewed by systems that exclusively run free software.

This video is the second in a series of animated videos created by the Free Software Foundation's (FSF), and this one is themed around our campaign against the use of proprietary remote education software.

We must reverse the trend of forsaking young people's freedom, which has been accelerating as corporations try to capitalize on the need to establish new remote education practices. Free software not only protects the freedoms of your child or grandchild by allowing people to study the source code for any malicious functionalities, it also communicates important values like autonomy, sharing, social responsibility, and collaboration.

Support our work

To further help us bring attention to, and start a conversation with, institutions that are endangering students' futures and jeopardizing their education by relying on proprietary software , please show your support for free software in education and this video by promoting it.

• Share a pre-populated message on your favorite microblog.
• Here's a short URL you can use: https://u.fsf.org/fsfheroes
• Use these images and the #UserFreedom hashtag

If you enjoy this video, consider becoming an FSF associate member or donating to the FSF to help us create more videos like this to help spread free software awareness.

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Download the video:

• webm: 720p | 360p
  
• Ogg Theora: 720p | 360p
  
• mp4: 720p | 360p
  
• Source files: Source files

More information about the different formats the FSF chooses to use.

Subtitles and translations

Help us translate to many different languages so we can share this video across the globe! Translation drafts and the how-to explanation can be found on our the LibrePlanet wiki. Once you have finalized a translation, email campaigns@fsf.org and we will publish it.

Subtitle files: English

Embed

Embed The University of Costumed Heroes on your site or blog with this code:

<iframe src="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-heroes/" id="fsf-heroes-video" scrolling="no" style="overflow: hidden; margin: 0; border: 0 none; display: block; width: 100%; height: 67vw; max-height: 550px;"></iframe>

Video credits:

The University of Costumed Heroes by the Free Software Foundation
LENGTH: 02:33
PRODUCER & DIRECTOR: Brad Burkhart
STORY: Douglas J. Eboch
ANIMATOR: Zygis Luksas

The University of Costumed Heroes by the Free Software Foundation Copyright © 2020 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The FSF Board chose me at this moment as a servant leader to help the community focus on our shared dedication to protect and grow software that respects our freedoms. It is also important to protect and grow the diverse membership of the community. It is through our diversity of backgrounds and opinions that we have creativity, perspective, intellectual strength, and rigor.

It is the community that has selflessly built the impressive collection of free software the world now enjoys. The community must be given credit for this achievement. The free software movement may have started with Richard Stallman's passion and lifelong commitment, and we all are grateful to that spark of imagination that gave us high purpose. At the same time, we are all aware that this community has grown large over the years. That's a very good thing.

It requires renewed focus to achieve our goals. We must remember what unites us and why we came to free software in the first place. What inspired us in the past? What will keep us inspired, and what will inspire new generations of free software developers? We must be kind to each other and respect each other when our good faith arguments differ, in order to produce the best solutions together. I pledge to support honest dialog and emerging leaders in the quest to secure the future for free software for generations to come, and not to alter the tenets of the free software vision.

I have been an active supporter and contributor from the moment the GNU Manifesto appeared, and by accident of time and space, I was lucky to witness the birth of a movement truly great and wonderful. To be honest, at the time my first thought was, "What a noble idea, but one person cannot do all this." Then I saw how over time, many good people from literally every corner of the planet gave of themselves to make free software a reality. It is you who are important, it is you who joined the effort to help the world see the virtues of free software, the dedication of its thousands of contributors and volunteers, the high quality of free software used every day around the world, and its sheer endurance and ability to find itself in widespread use even by those who were once fierce opponents to free software. Take that to heart, let's keep it going. Tell it to your children, and let's make sure your children have the freedoms you have achieved, and more.