step-by-step road to freedom program

It's not a question of difficulty, it's a question of commitment. Outlining plans for people isn't going to convince anyone to actually agree with the libre software movement. If you agree with the libre software movement, you will take steps to increase your liberty. Otherwise, you will not. If you take steps to increase your liberty, regardless of what exactly those steps are, you will eventually liberate yourself from all possible proprietary software.

"Outlining plans for people isn't going to convince anyone to actually agree with the libre software movement."
I agree.

"If you take steps to increase your liberty, regardless of what exactly those steps are, you will eventually liberate yourself from all possible proprietary software."
I agree again.

"If you agree with the libre software movement, you will take steps to increase your liberty"

There are people who:
a.) don't know what all the steps are
b.) don't know which steps are more important to do first.
c.) are unwilling to make all the steps at once.
d.) may feel if they can't do it all at once it is not worth doing. That they should wait until they are willing to go 100%. That it is all or nothing.

For instance, let's say there is some documentary that draws the attention of millions of viewers (from the general public, not just tech people) and that many of those viewers decide they want to make changes and they are pointed to gnu.org or fsf.org or trisquel.info Some of those people will be willing to immediately make Trisquel their sole OS. More people will want to do a dual boot first. More people still will want to run Trisquel off removable media before installing it in a dual boot. If people don't know about all of those options (we are talking about the general masses not just tech type people which represent a tiny percentage of the overall population) they may think it is all Trisquel right away or nothing at all and choose nothing at all and we lose someone who would ultimately have joined the cause. We lose them because they are discouraged by the perceived difficulty of an immediate transition to Trisquel. I know people like this.

True the Trisquel install image presents a welcome screen that gives the default option of trying out the OS first. A person has to first download, burn, and boot that image to see that welcome screen and see their choices.

Let me ask you onpon4, why do you believe the adoption of Trisquel has not been greater? Why do you think there is such a high percentage of converts to Trisquel from other GNU/Linux distros and a much smaller precentage of people coming directly from Windows or MacOS? What percentage of the people you know have converted to exclusive use of Trisquel? What percentage of all the people that all the current members know have converted to exclusive use of Trisquel? What percentage of current members of Trisquel have converted to exclusive use of Trisquel?

I'm sure you, Magic, and others, have better approaches and I would love to hear them and love to participate in them. I've said many times that I am new and therefore seek out the views of others on these issues. In the meantime we are in a war and we are losing. It is not enough to make progress. We need to make enough progress per unit time. Our options for making a critical mass for a grass roots movement are perishable. The enemy is steadily making rapid progress and we need to do so as well or else. Just waiting is not an option for me. That is why I am making these posts.

Thank you for taking the time to read them and thank you for indulging me with your comments.

Good point, pragmatist-- it seems that most Trisquel users come from using another GNU/Linux or Unix-like system, rather than directly from OSX or Windows.
Making the leap to another OS seems to be the hardest part for people.
However, a step-by-step guide would only really help those impartial to Free Software. But even then, it wouldn't help very much-- the people that are impartial are the ones that'll throw their hands up when the guide asks them to un-install Steam.

I was just talking with somebody I know who is a statistician. True to form he stated that, in his opinion, collecting data is more important than making a documentary. While I think we can do both, I think he is right about the data collection. That can only help in making a documentary. Does anybody know about which universities, companies, and governments have already adopted GNU/Linux? Which ones are in the process of switching? Which are considering switching? Has it stuck for all of them, i.e. have any switched back?

Of course I'm going to do some research, but anything interesting anyone can bring to bear now would also be helpful.

Thanks.

Pragmatist gives the 1st step as running GNU/Linux from a removable media. Puppy would fill these boots quite naturally. There's a libre version, too (Librepup).

So far I completely agree with this "step-by-step road to freedom".

But we must be careful not to recommend, teach or install non-free functional data (or non-free system distribution) to the participants of the "program". The reason being that, since there is no way to be sure that the participant will complete the program, then if, supposedly, we recommend, teach, install things that go against our movement, then we might actually do bad digital inclusion[1].

Besides, there is a chance that the now-retired-participant of the program passes on the message of how "great" the non-free functional data that "the free software people recommended" is, and then... How will we be able to deal with that?

REFERENCES

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-digital-society.html

You are right. The value of this plan is totally contingent on empirical data. For example:

1.) How many people have tried Trisquel?
(a) How many are Windows users, how many MacOS? how many GNU/Linux?

2.) What percent of those people left Trisquel
(a) How many of these went back to the last OS they used?
(b) How many went to a non-free GNU/Linux distro?

3.) Of the actual remaining users of Trisquel, how many use it as their exclusive OS?

4.) Of the people who left after trying Trisquel
(a) How many days/weeks/months/years did they use it for?
(b) Why did they leave? (hardware, software, etc...)

5.) Of the people who left Trisquel, did any change their views on the Free Software Movement?

And so on and so on. I'm sure others can ask even better questions.

If and when we have answers to these types of questions, then we can perhaps design an effective intermediary program.

My personal feeling is that the biggest problem is probably hardware incompatibility. An OS the same as Trisquel but including the binary blobs might be useful, but it might not. The main purpose of this program would be to ensure people ultimately move to free software. To know its effectiveness would really require some kind of trial. In other words, more data.

The veterans here did not like this idea, and they are more experienced than I am with the Free Software Movement and with Trisquel. So, in the meantime, I feel the idea may or may not be a good and will wait for more data before doing anything.

"That's after you actually convince someone..."
Excellent point. If they have been thoroughly convinced, then this hardware problem is just an obstacle. Even if the obstacle prevents the person from effectively changing today, that doesn't mean the person won't ultimately find their way to freedom some day. When they do, they are also more likely to stay. Good point!

Hello Everyone :) How I came to Trisquel is by first testing it on a virtual machine on my Mac, with guidance from someone I met at Diaspora. I liked it enough to convert my old HP, with his help, though this machine doesn't have a lot of memory. My road to freedom has been gradual, only because I'm still learning and making sure I can convert my Mac. I wanted to jump right in cold turkey because I'd rather have freedom over convenience.

I read about the FSF a few years ago but forgot about it till I got on Diaspora, RMS is on one of the pods I was on, too. Many people posted about GNU/Linux and the FSF, so I looked up the info and knew I wanted to be part of it.