Article from Issue 199/2017
Author(s): Mike Saunders
Learn the tricks, tips, and techniques for converting friends, family, and colleagues to free and open source software.
When was the last time you saw a TV advertisement for your favorite Linux distribution? Or heard a radio spot about GNU? Chances are you've never come across anything like that – and you probably never will. Awareness of GNU, Linux, and free and open source software (FOSS) is spread largely by word of mouth, using grass roots movements and social media. Many of us got into Linux and FOSS because we knew of friends who were using it or read an article describing someone's experiences in a magazine. We certainly didn't start using Linux back in the late 1990s because of some shiny TV ad (Figure 1).
Figure 1: GNU/Linux hasn't had much in the way of TV advertising, although IBM did create a video spot many years ago.
As a reader of this magazine, you probably don't need anyone to advocate Linux and FOSS to you. Chances are that you made the decision to use this software long ago, for your own reasons. Even if you dual-boot and just tinker with Linux as a hobby, you've still gone far enough that you're not interested in hearing someone else's arguments for using it.
But because you're familiar with Linux and FOSS, and have your own (hopefully positive!) experiences with it, why not start advocating for it yourself? There are many different ways to contribute to the FOSS movement, including code, documentation, graphics, and QA, but spreading the word can be equally as useful. Linux and other free software projects benefit from fresh blood and new ideas, so by advocating for the FOSS community, you can help improve the software that we all use and benefit from.
But there's an art to advocacy. Saying the right things to the right people, and at the right time, is critical. You may have seen efforts to advocate Linux on web forums and online chat channels, but they often boil down to "LOL M$ sucks, stop being a n00b and use Linux." The people posting such messages think they're doing the right thing – after all, they want more people to try the software – but such approaches are usually counterproductive.
In this issue, we'll take a closer look at the best ways to advocate Linux and FOSS among your friends, family, and colleagues. We'll analyze areas you can focus on, ways to get people interested, and how to respond to common criticisms. So, let's get started.
First off, think about who you're trying to tempt into using FOSS and Linux (your target audience). Different people will have wildly different requirements and interests, and you should cater for them. Telling a mate who's struggling with performance problems in Windows 10 on his home PC that Linux scales up to a jillion processors and has 45 different filesystems won't have much effect – in fact, that person will just be put off. Similarly, telling a company IT boss that the (very awesome) Arch User Repository has the latest, bleeding-edge software minutes after it's released upstream won't sway him or her – they are interested in long-term support and stability.
We'll look at specific arguments later in this article, but it's important that you keep your target's needs and desires in mind. Once you have a clear picture of what they want, you can start to formulate your approach. A very important thing to bear in mind is that geek jokes and references to hacker culture can torpedo your efforts – and this happens a lot. If you've been in the FOSS world for many years, you might forget that some things sound completely alien to the wider world.
Richard Stallman, for example, gives many speeches around the world espousing the benefits of free software. By and large, they are excellent: He carefully lays out the importance of FOSS, describes how it benefits society as a whole, and makes listeners aware that with proprietary software they're not truly in control of their computers. His speeches aren't highly technical, nor are they overly emotional, but they get the point across effectively.
But one thing always makes us cringe, though: When Stallman explains the four freedoms that define free software [1], he starts counting from "freedom zero" (Figure 2). We get the reference here – in many programming languages, elements in sequences are counted from zero onwards – but this "in joke" simply baffles the unaware. Instead of focusing on the highly important message in Stallman's speeches, listeners can get distracted by this small point.
Figure 2: Richard Stallman delivers superb speeches on FOSS – we just wish he didn't count the "four freedoms" from zero! (Photo source: NizoBZH, http://tinyurl.com/m4zmsju)
So try to avoid such complications in your own advocacy. You might be extremely passionate about something – such as using the name "GNU/Linux" to refer to the operating system (OS) as a whole – but you might want to hold back on getting into the naming debate before your target is actually interested in (or actively using) the software. Later, you can talk about how the GNU project relates to the OS we use today, its importance, and its areas of focus.