No? How about if we move the decimal point over a couple of places? Do you have $20.00?
If you’ve been to my site over the past month, you may have noticed I’ve been flying a banner at the top of the page in support of the Free Software Foundation’s annual fundraising drive. The goal is $500,000 by January 30th, and we still have a ways to go with only a couple of days remaining.
I’m sure that several of you subscribing to my feed appreciate the value of free software and recognize the importance of the FSF‘s contributions in support of our freedom. Please consider becoming a member or at least kicking in for a one-time donation. My associate membership is current, but in my desire to help move that bar to the right, I chipped in another $20 today.
Please contribute something… anything!
Consider Benjamin Mako Hill’s appeal, “Technological power should be held by all users of a technology,” which reads in part:
As computers play an increasingly important role in the way we communicate, the people who control the software that runs on computers play an increasingly important role in determining what we can say, how we can say it, who we can say it to, and when we can say it:
- Control over technology is power.
- Free software is an attempt to say that this power should be wielded democratically.
- Technological power should be held by all users of a technology.
- Software freedom and user freedom are intimately connected.
[...]
For those of us that understand that user control over technology can be important, it falls on us to help fight for all users’ freedom. Work in the next decade will determine if we live in a world that is full of DRM, locked down mobile phones, and opaque and manipulative network services or, alternatively, in a world in which users can choose to live in freedom with control over their software and over their own lives.
The Free Software Foundation continues to play a central and critical role in this struggle. Support of the FSF is an important way that you can take action today. More than any other organization, the FSF creates, supports, and protects the licenses, laws, communities, and software that is necessary to ensure the existence of technology under its users’ control. The FSF is nearly alone in its direct outreach to to raise awareness of DRM, software patents, and issues of software freedom and technology control. It has a strong record as a steward of software freedom and an advocate for the ideals of technological control by users.
You can be sure that the RIAA and MPAA and other “content” groups would love to take away your freedom to use your computer as you wish, and are actively lobbying for laws to do this. I think it’s hugely important to fund organizations like the Free Software Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation that can effectively fight for us.
