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Watch and share “Fight to Repair” about the dangers of proprietary software (fsf.org)
41 points by Dhikshith12 on July 14, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


Oh my, that cartoon is just terrible, and fails completely to send the right message by linking the right to repair to a conspiracy theory that, no matter if true or not, diminishes its strength by an order of magnitude. Why not talk about the incredibly linear and simple relation between closed software/hardware that eases planned obsolescence that in turn increases pollution from discarded devices, for example? You cannot talk about evil corps taking control of the world through closed software/hardware and hope to be taken seriously without starting first with a simpler concept everyone and his cat can easily understand and sympathize with.


Unfortunately, I can only agree. I like the cause the FSF is fighting, but e.g. 'Decepticor' comes from a 7 year old cartoon, and the whole thing had the lack of subtility of WW2 war propaganda.

You can't get sympathy for your cause by treating your audience like children, and messaging to them that they are easily manipulated. And this blatant style is used regularly with FSF propaganda.

I love what the FSF stands for, but I personally would not like to be associated with any organisation behaving like this.


Right to repair for hardware seems to be getting momentum in US legislation. Here's to hoping right to repair for software follows.


Was that cartoon made by free software? Looks like it ha ha!

On a more serious note, very thankful that orgs like FSF exist. I hate using a lot of free and open software but without it there would be no hope.


It doesn't look like it, otherwise they would have released the source files (like .sif for Synfig or .blend for Blender) for the animation, IIRC only pre-encoded video was released as the "source".


Good point!




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