Several weeks ago, I wrote The Free Software Foundation is dying, wherein I enumerated a number of problems with the Free Software Foundation. Some of my criticisms focused on the message: fsf.org and gnu.org together suffer from no small degree of incomprehensibility and inaccessibility which makes it difficult for new participants to learn about the movement and apply it in practice to their own projects.
This is something which is relatively easily fixed! I have a background in writing documentation and a thorough understanding of free software philosophy and practice. Enter writefreesoftware.org: a comprehensive introduction to free software philosophy and implementation.
The goals of this resource are:
- Provide an accessible introduction to the most important principles of free software
- Offer practical advice on choosing free software licenses from a free software perspective (compare to the OSS perspective at choosealicense.com).
- Publish articles covering various aspects of free software in practice, such as how it can be applied to video games
More:
- No particular association with any particular free software project or organization
- No policy of non-cooperation with the open source movement
Compare writefreesoftware.org with the similar resources provided by GNU (1, 2) and you should get the general idea.
The website is itself free software, CC-BY-SA 4.0. You can check out the source code here and suggest any improvements or articles for the mailing list. Get involved! This resource is not going to solve all of the FSF’s problems, but it is an easy way to start putting the effort in to move the free software movement forward. I hope you like it!