ShoeTool is an animated fairy tale about an elf shoemaker who thinks he buys a machine to help him make shoes... only to find out that there are there are strings attached to his "purchase." Please show your support for free software and this video by promoting it on your social media using the #shoetool hashtag.

Here's a short URL you can use: https://u.fsf.org/shoetool

Software restrictions, analogous to the kinds of restrictions our main character Wendell runs into as a user of the promising ShoeTool, are detrimental to our freedom, creativity, and jobs. We hope watching Wendell's frustrations will shake things up in many homes and help more people understand.

People have been looking to the FSF for almost thirty-five years for leadership, positive innovation, and being the uncompromising defender of free software. We want to keep producing high quality visuals that are informative and engaging, but they cost money. This is the biggest fundraising time of the year, and we still have a long way to go if we are to meet our goal of 600 new associate members. Make a donation or become a member today.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday and a liberated 2020!

Sincerely,

The Free Software Foundation
Zoë, Andrew, Craig, Dana, Dawn, Donald, Greg, Ian, Jeanne, John H., John S., Matt, Michael, and Ruben

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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 wiki. Once you have finalized a translation, email campaigns@fsf.org and we will make it available on the Web site.

Subtitle files: English

Embed ShoeTool on your site or blog with this code:

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Video credits:

ShoeTool by the Free Software Foundation
LENGTH: 02:05
PRODUCER & DIRECTOR: Brad Burkhart
STORY: Douglas J. Eboch

ShoeTool by the Free Software Foundation Copyright © 2019 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Many if not most people have come to the conclusion that the song "Every Breath You Take" is creepy and inappropriate: Every step you take / Every move you make / Every bond you break / Every step you take / I'll be watching you isn't very reassuring, much less romantic. Yet for many years, we've been completely fine with kids learning that Santa Claus sees you when you're sleeping / He knows when you're awake / He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

As noted by writer Matt Beard in The Guardian, the latest iteration of teaching kids to accept constant surveillance via holiday tradition is the Elf on the Shelf, a cheerful little snitch whom parents hide in different spots every day in the house. The idea is, the Elf watches what kids are up to, and if they call their little sister a name or steal a cookie from the cookie jar, the friendly household spy will tattle to Santa, who will add them to the "naughty" list. Beware! We agree with Beard that this cutesy, innocent-seeming "tradition" (which actually only dates back to 2005!) communicates to children that someone is always watching them, and that moreover, this is a perfectly normal thing. This should give us pause, and cause us to think carefully about what kind of messages we are sending in our behavior at home and with friends.

This resonates with us not just because surveillance and privacy are obviously important free software issues, but because kids are little sponges who soak up our values from day one, and thus it's important to communicate clearly. This is why, although it's extraordinarily difficult to live in complete software freedom, we want to think about every concession to the proprietary world we make, and make sure that kids know that being forced to make those concessions is unfair. When we reject services that try to make us submit to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to watch our favorite movies, then we should explain why it's bad; we can also endeavor to use the services in the Guide to DRM-Free Living instead, and explain why they're better. At the center of the free software philosophy is a fundamental respect for human dignity and individual rights, as well as our responsibility to our community, and no matter how much we might want to use a shortcut to get kids to behave well, ultimately it sends the message that stomping on their right to privacy is okay today -- and will be okay tomorrow when they're grown up, too.

Likewise, we want to communicate our values clearly to the other people in our lives. Because during the holidays many of us spend a lot of time with family, this is an important opportunity to talk about why we don't want the grownup equivalent of the Elf on the Shelf in our homes: "smart" devices like the Amazon Ring, the Google Home, and other items that grant us some useful capabilities while stealing away our right to privacy. It's quite possible that you're the kind of free software activist who is carefully stacking up small refusals to trade freedom for convenience (having trouble using WiFi on your phone or laptop because of proprietary software, or planning your travel carefully to avoid using proprietary ridesharing apps), and it's also quite likely that you're going to wind up spending some time this holiday in the home of someone whose "smart" devices will be spying on your conversations without your permission, and likely without your knowledge!

So this holiday, it's good to think about why free software matters, and communicate that to someone you care about -- whether it's your own child, or your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, or circle of best friends. You can tell them about why you don't want an Amazon Echo or a Nintendo Switch, or any other user-hostile device, and explain why, and also explain why having that Echo in their own home is not only disrespecting their own rights, but yours as well. You can also use our Ethical Tech Giving Guide to select gifts that fit your family's needs. Even better, you could show your support of user freedom by giving as associate membership to the FSF in place of a physical gift to a friend or family member. Even if they have yet to hear about us, make sure your gift is one that respects their freedom, and by extension, the freedom of us all.

We recently posted a lengthy write-up of the licensing team’s activities in 2019. Although we have been really busy, we didn’t want to miss the chance to share some specifics about our activities in October. That month, members of our licensing and campaigns teams headed down to North Carolina to spread the message of software freedom. First, on the 14th & 15th, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) staffed a booth at the ATO conference where we reminded hundreds of people that freedom is better than just being open. Next, on October 16th, our licensing and compliance team held another Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar.

We had a great time representing software freedom at the ATO conference. ATO was a huge conference with almost 5,000 people from all over the world in attendance. We were fortunate to have prime real estate for our booth location, which was at a bottleneck right outside the keynote auditoriums, and it provided us with a constant stream of visitors. We gave away 200 Bash stickers, and we happily said goodbye to four adorable baby gnu plushies, along with many T-shirts and books. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring our new DRM dust jackets, and we only discovered this because someone asked for one. It was a very busy and full day of introducing people to the FSF and meeting our fervent supporters. As usual, we also hosted a meetup after the conference. Well over twenty people joined us, and we feasted on fried Brussels sprouts and boiled peanuts, among other tasty appetizers. Meetups are always a great time to socialize with free software supporters, and this was no exception, as we had staff from the GNOME Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, and the Software Freedom Conservancy in attendance. While chatting among peers, one of the attendees informed us about a barcade right around the corner requiring a picture of your face to enter the establishment, and that those images are allegedly shared with the police. Yikes! The idea of giving up your whereabouts so wantonly seems like a horrible activity to normalize.

Following the two days of the ATO conference, we hosted our CLE seminar. Attendees of the full day seminar got a comprehensive overview of copyleft and other practical concepts in the GNU family of licenses. They also learned about ethical considerations important to lawyers working with clients involved in free software, and other current topics in free software licensing.

After the morning pleasantries and an introduction by FSF program manager Zoë Kooyman, FSF executive director John Sullivan gave an introduction to the GNU General Public License (GPL). Next up Marc Jones, JD, in-house counsel and compliance engineer at Civic Actions, took the stage and discussed how the courts view the GPL based on a variety of precedent-setting court cases.

What followed was a quiz-show styled learning activity, "Malpractice! The Free Software Ethics Quiz Show!" hosted by Justin C. Colannino, JD, attorney at Microsoft, and Donald R. Robertson, III, JD, licensing and compliance manager of the FSF. You might find this an odd pairing, but the FSF has been working with Justin for several years, since before he went to Microsoft. Presented in the style of Jeopardy, this was a fun time for all, and it presented a platform for tangent discussions and interesting view points.

Pamela Chestek, JD, principal of Chestek Legal, next discussed the topic of trademarks and free software, delving into the governance of free software projects, the “forking” of projects, and some history of a discussion between the Mozilla Foundation and the Debian Project involving trademark. The day’s final talk was given by Donald, about the dangers of the current spate of license proliferation.

After the CLE, we hosted another meetup for seminar attendees. Given that so many of the attendees were lawyers in the free software space, the discussions and debates about the legal landscape surrounding software freedom continued on late into the evening.

Between the hundreds of conversations at the ATO conference, the chats among peers at the meetups, and the informative CLE, it was a fantastic couple of days for free software education. All fun and socializing aside, the CLE seminars are an essential component of the licensing and compliance team’s outreach and education efforts, and is the only CLE offered by a free software organization. We look forward to another CLE in 2020, and we hope to see you there!

To support work like our legal seminar series, here’s what you can do to get involved and help make the world a better place:

• Become an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.
• Support the Free Software Foundation with a donation.
• Find a place to help out by becoming a volunteer.

The Free Software Foundation's (FSF) campaigns team works tirelessly to spread the message to the world that all software must be free. Campaigning for free software takes creativity, hard work, and a dedicated community. We amplify free software organizations and projects, mobilize activists, and provide resources. We're only three people, but we are the point of connection for hundreds of thousands of supporters annually. You hold the power to exponentially increase this number. It is our goal to make the free software conversation a kitchen table issue, and we need your help!

Since many families and friends get together at the end of the year, we worked with our recent FSF intern, Valessio Brito, on translating some of the reasons why our fight is so important into illustrations, to facilitate conversations during these gatherings.

The images we developed, which we are using in our annual fundraiser, seek to raise the issue of free software by focusing on common issues with proprietary software, like privacy violations, exemplified by a simple flashlight app and its permissions in your device. We visualize issues like data mining, back doors into your devices, and the vulnerability of cameras and microphones in so-called "smart devices." We also comment on Digital Restrictions Management's (DRM) power over you and your devices. We put a lot of thought into designing these images to be conversation starters, and now we're asking you, as the free software community and our main channel of communication, to share them. You can find the images, their embed codes, and their .SVG source files on the FSF Web site. Please use them to start conversations with the people you care about, using the hashtag #ISupportFreeSoftware.

And if you're able to, can you take the next step and become an associate member today to help us reach our goal of welcoming 600 new associate members before December 31st? As a special bonus, all new and renewing annual associate members ($120+) can choose to receive one of our exclusive year-end gifts.

If you can't become a member yourself, you can make a donation instead. Every dollar you contribute helps the campaigns team bring awareness to the cause.

Why free software needs you

It is not always easy to quantify the work we do here in the campaigns team. Developing campaigns, writing articles, creating online educational resources and other tools, updating pages on a range of Web sites, organizing events, organizing protests and creative attention-getting actions both online and offline, working together with other organizations, and staying up to date with the most recent developments in both proprietary, as well as free, software is a full time job for the three of us, and we wish we had more time.

Internally, the principle of using free software is first and foremost. In our digital culture of today, using only ethical tools is a challenging effort if you want to convey an important message. And so we are always looking for ways to reach people without compromising our own values or setting a bad example. We choose not to weaponize analytics, or networks like Facebook or Google that exploit users in order to increase the reach of our campaigns, nor do we want to use a data mining company like Eventbrite to promote our events and handle our registrations. Instead, we choose to remain true to our mission and reject these companies in favor of your right to freedom-respecting online communications.

Making ethical decisions, however, also means that spreading our message is much more challenging. We therefore depend heavily on the engagement of free software enthusiasts like you to spread the word with us about our events, campaigns, and collaborations, and to let us know about what event or project we should be boosting or supporting. With two of the three team members starting only this year, we have worked hard on educating ourselves, updating our resources, and strengthening our connection to the community. And with your help, we can do so much more in the year to come.

Visual advocacy

We are well aware that advocating a social movement has become increasingly visual, so we work closely with designers to illustrate our message and calls to action in both static and moving images. We need to break through the noise with appealing imagery, help explain the issues we face in an engaging way, and make it easily shareable. This year, we visually improved the quality of the biannual Free Software Bulletin, the LibrePlanet wiki, and the LibrePlanet conference Web site, and we've created shareable images, and updated our donation pages. Next on the list will be a review of our printed advocacy materials.

Making connections

In-person experiences are valuable and important for the FSF to network and to learn from other free software enthusiasts, as well as to help us spread the message and bring new people into the fold.

This year, we organized four member meetups in different locations in the US, and we hosted free software introductions to students of local public schools. We also organized the LibrePlanet conference with live instances on IRC (#libreplanet on Freenode) and mumble, and livestreamed all 40 sessions on social justice and technology. We held our annual associate member meeting, a "hackathon," an FSF office open house, and two social events during this time as well. We were also one of two EmacsConf satellite instances, and took to the streets in protest of DRM twice this year, once (in conjunction with fourteen online partners) to stand up for students against Pearson Education for the International Day Against DRM (IDAD), and once against Disney+ at the opening night of Frozen II, here in Boston.

To organize quality events such as LibrePlanet, IDAD, Continuing Legal education (CLE) seminars, and others, we need to invite speakers and collaborators from all over the world, and we also need to make sure the events are accessible remotely. With your support, we can add an additional "workshop room" to the annual LibrePlanet conference, host smaller educational gatherings and talks throughout the year, do more student outreach, and grant more speakers and attendees access to events by growing our scholarship fund. We will work together with other organizers to set up and promote local instances of events, like an upcoming LibrePlanet 2020 satellite in Ontario, Canada, and we are developing a program to help financially support free software local activist groups.

Public speaking is another way of increasing our footprint in the community. Campaigns manager Greg Farough spoke at a local maker space, and executive director John Sullivan traveled to both South America and Europe to talk about free software issues this year. We also host informational booths all over the world, with the help of volunteers and our operations team. These are very effective way of reaching a large audience, and so we want to do more of it.

The campaigns team is at the center of all communications and events here at the FSF, working closely with all other teams. Along with the tech team, we are always thinking about how we can improve the user experience of our campaigns and our Web sites. Together, we are working on developing a petition site to allow us to turn around signature actions quickly, and on a major update to the fsf.org Web site, which will enhance user experience on mobile phones. With the licensing team, we work to release the latest Respects Your Freedom (RYF) announcements, and we organize the CLE seminars to educate law professionals on licensing issues.

Free software needs you

The physical moments, like the seminars, meetups, speaking engagements, and conferences, are in-depth, valuable meetings with people where we learn and educate at the same time. Online, we hope to inspire people, show newcomers an entry into the world of free software, and give others a voice. On announcement days, we turn our local Boston office into a bustling news room while we edit all communications, talk about targeting and staying on message, brainstorm visuals, and line up the timing of all the separate elements.

We do this work with passion, in a community that time and time again shows us how much you care, and we therefore ask you to help us recruit. We need to overcome the false sense of safety and freedom created by proprietary software company marketing machines executed on mainstream media. Making ethical decisions means not taking the easy way out, and it takes all of us. Just imagine, if each person reading this message recruited just 5 others into the community, the free software movement would immediately be in the millions.

Images by Valessio Brito, Copyright © 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc., licensed under CC0, no rights reserved.

Since 2010, the LibrePlanet wiki has provided a space for connection between free software activists, with the following mission statement: "To empower a global network of both local and project-based teams, all working together to advance free software as a social movement for user freedom."

This idea of participation and space for connection between free software activists is what motivates both the wiki and the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) yearly conference by the same name. Our LibrePlanet wiki uses the same software as what powers Wikipedia, which makes it the perfect tool for global collaborative work. We use the wiki as a tool to help organize free software supporters all over the world, so everyone can collaborate around their projects and ideas, as well as communicate with each other using our mailing lists for discussion and development, and our #LibrePlanet IRC channel on Freenode.

LibrePlanet is about spreading the free software ideals, organizing activists and supporters of the free software philosophy, as well as about organizing GNU/Linux, or other technology-specific user groups. The site can be used for a broad range of uses, by expert software developers and budding community activists alike. A few random examples will illustrate the diverse landscape and possibilities:

• You can find other free software enthusiasts in your area so that you can discuss free software subjects, and stay updated on the latest events and developments within the free software community. Many groups are already active here, and they welcome you to join. You can also start your own group!

• On the page Hardware/research/e-readers, you can find a discussion of which existing ebook readers could become RYF certified without too much work.

• You can follow the FSF tech team's work to deploy a Web-based collaborative software platform ("forge") for fully free software projects.

• If you are a GNU contributor or maintainer interested in meeting up with people in your area to sign GPG keys and strengthen the Web of Trust, please add your info to the GNU/Keysigning/Offers page.

• You can learn more about free software and how to make money as a libre software programmer, or add your own knowledge and experience as a page to the wiki as a resource for beginners.

• And there is always the Random button in the main menu, which can take you places you had never imagined.

With the help of our recent campaigns intern Valessio Brito, we have now updated the theme of libreplanet.org in order to facilitate ease of use. We are asking for your help to maintain these pages, and to make it as accessible and up to date as possible. Things that anyone can help us with:

• Editing: Edits are an important part of keeping the LibrePlanet site up to date. Any contributions or changes are welcome! All you need to do is to log in with your existing FSF account, or create one at cas.fsf.org.You don't need additional permissions for this: go ahead and start.

• Translations: We want to reach free software enthusiasts all over the globe, so all of our pages would benefit immensely from translation. For more information, see the translation page.

• Restructuring: Along with the new theme, we are proposing a new structure to go with it. This means that some pages will need to be archived, updated, or moved. By working on structure, you can help to increase the user-friendliness of the site. Our wiki makes use of the Semantic MediaWiki extension, which helps in building a comprehensive knowledge base for free software topics.

We are inviting you to help us create an even better resource for free software activists all over this (Libre!)Planet. You can get started now, or connect to us through any of our discussion channels. If you would like to discuss your ideas before you start, you can ask your questions using the discussion mailing list, or for technical questions, contact the developers mailing list. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for being part of our network!