FSCI's Ask Me Anything on Reddit

We were contacted via the contact form on our website https://fsci.in/contact for an AMA(Ask Me Anything) on r/India subreddit. Seeing by the chats, I think the community is enthusiastic about the AMA and we have accepted the invite.

FSCI Reddit account has been created and me, @Pirate Praveen and Akshay has access.

• Date of AMA: 12 April 5 PM Indian Time.

Next task

• Write an About FSCI writeup and publish on fsci about page.

Draft of About Us:

Free Software Community of India is a community of people working together (on voluntary basis) for the adoption and propagation of Free Software(software which respects freedom, not to be confused with Open Source). It is not a registered organization, but rather a community of people who share common values and ideals. We are a nonhierarchical community. We do not have a leader or a boss. Every decision is made by voting and consensus.

We believe that we should be the change we want to see in the world, and that's why we not only advocate for software freedom and privacy, but also run privacy-respecting services powered by Free Software. The services currently running are:

• Social media service Diaspora at poddery.com.

• Matrix chatting service at poddery.com.

• XMPP chat service at poddery.com

• A GitLab instance at git.fosscommunity.in

• Discussion forum and decision-making software Loomio at codema.in

• Video meeting service Jitsi at meet.fsci.in

• Video sharing service peertube at videos.fsci.in

These services are funded by voluntary donations by the users. These are open to the public to use and anyone can use them for their daily needs.

We believe that inclusion and diversity are important. That's why we conducted a Diversity Edition of the Software Freedom Camp https://camp.fsci.in in 2021. The camp provides a very good way for the uninitiated to learn about the importance of Free Software, how they can get integrated with our community.

The code of conduct is our statement of inclusion in the community. We believe that the contributors should feel inclusive and be treated with dignity. In the camp mentioned above, we collaborated with APPSC Bombay and Egalitarians, which shows that we are very keen on collaborating with other groups working for issues outside the tech world. We look for active collaboration with anyone who is interested to further our goal of Free Software.

Our values of nonhierarchy and running so many services require more people to step in as a community as we need more volunteers to help in running these services, even in nontechnical fields like asking for donations, making posters, writing blogs. You can see the list of initiatives by FSCI here https://fsci.in/initiatives/.

In 2021, we wrote an open letter to Kerala teachers in response to KITE accepting Google's free-of-cost offer to the educational institutes of Kerala https://fsci.in/blog/letter-to-kerala-teachers/ and talked to Kerala teachers as well. The campaign to switch education to Free Software is still ongoing.

We have also involved in broader politics whenever the opportunity arose. For example, we have challenged the new Intermediary Rules, 2021, in the High Court of Kerala https://fsci.in/blog/fsci-challenges-intermediary-rules-2021/ because these IT rules threatens the privacy, security and freedom of an Indian citizen and gives government too much power.

Whoever you are, no matter what skills you have, you can contribute and be a part of Free Software Community of India. Join us now https://fsci.in/#join-us. If you need any help in joining our chat rooms, drop us an email at contact@fsci.in.

Important links:

1. Why we must insist on free software https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html

2. Proprietary software is often malware https://gnu.org/malware