Creating FSCI Manifesto
Pirate Praveen
Public
Seen by 40
Original context https://codema.in/d/6Oe38XUT/proposing-fsciconf-as-a-more-free-software-aligned-national-conference/3
Current status: Draft: Inviting contributions, please comment and propose amendments.
"When Free Software movement began in 1984 by Richard Stallman as a response to proprietary software gaining momentum as opposed to software being shared as a norm, the challenges were limited to the development and use of the software itself.
We have now progressed greatly on that aspect when it comes to general purpose software. We have the GNU/Linux operating system, the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the LibreOffice/Only Office suites, the VLC media player, and many others. But we now face challenges of a different nature, such as -
Practical difficulties with respect to modifying software (e.g. poor documentation, large code-base, inaccessible code architecture, etc) — this is applicable to all software. Web browsers and Android /smartphone operating systems in particular are large and complex, and depend on companies like Google for maintenance.
Network effects that prevent running modified versions of software (e.g. Signal, and other centralized social-network based software). For this reason, privacy and decentralization have become as important as the software license. We have been providing communications and collaboration platforms for many years, but it has not been really sustainable without heroic efforts from a small number of people. Thus, we recommend and promote better models like the Prāv cooperative, where more people take responsibility and commitment, the financial burden is more evenly shared, peoples' time and efforts are financially compensated, and decisions are taken democratically as a cooperative.
Reliance on data or other prerequisites that are impossible to procure (e.g. LLMs) — this is why an "open-source AI" would still not be considered freedom-respecting. (TODO: Evaluate how https://publicai.co/about fits into this situation.)
Being more welcoming to diverse set of contributors with different set of life experiences and social barriers in everyday life. We need to provide a safe and respectful space for collaboration without allowing any kind of discrimination when participating in our communities.
Therefore,
The Free Software Community of India wants to be at the forefront of addressing challenges as they come up, and to take the community forward to achieve user freedom not merely on their personal devices, but also to platforms and public infrastructure as well.
At the same time, we acknowledge the newer challenges are harder and require more patience and understanding from all of us.
We will use Free Software-powered platforms for our own organizing and promotion, and will be careful about our presence on proprietary platforms. If we are present or bridged to such platforms, the primary goal should be to promote Free Software and decentralized replacements.
Pirate Praveen Mon 29 Sep 2025 5:34PM
We will keep it open for week for comments, if no unresolved issues / comments are there, we will go for voting.
Badri Sunderarajan Tue 30 Sep 2025 9:13AM
Can we add a section on including people beyond the core/development circle in decisions? To avoid the problem of developers only working on features they're interested in. This is hinted at in the Prāv point but good to state it explicitly.
I wonder if we should also mention design (like interface design) more prominently. Good design played a big role in making computing accessible through a lot of people through smartphones for example, but Free Software tends to be lacking in that (though getting better of late). As developers, we tend to be blind to things being simple to use, and are often okay with it being possible to do things no matter how ugly or unintuitive it is. This is getting better but still needs focus. Also, I know that it doesn't set us apart from "open source" and is a relatively easy-to-grasp point compared to the others, but that doesn't mean it is not important 🙂
Another point worth covering is reducing resource usage and encouraging longevity (think permacomputing, or even if you don't want to go that far at least some ideas from there). For-profit companies are happy to make apps and websites heavier to force users onto new devices, but we want to make hardware last as long as possible without artificial constraints. Related to this is wider compatibility: rather than just a GNOME app, we'd prefer an app running on any Linux DE or better still across DEs, OSes, and form factors. Shared standards help to make this possible, so it ties back to that to in a different way from federation.
Pirate Praveen Tue 30 Sep 2025 10:33AM
@Badri Sunderarajan we can add such a section about involving users to prioritize features - it can refer to prav and dephcom as two concrete experiments. How about this,
"Traditionally many Free Software development is driven by developers and many times features that excites developers gets priority over what users need. This creates a disconnect between users and developers. Some Free Software is developed by businesses and are driven by profit motives. Sometimes users demand specific features from volunteers, which adds to the disconnect. If we want users to be able to prioritize features, we need to collectively raise funds and hire developers. If we are paying, developers can dedicate time which they otherwise have to give for work that sustains their living as opposed to only dedicating free time. Prav and DEPHCOM are two such experiments from our community members to bring users to drive development direction of Free Software projects. We encourage more such experiments in different areas of Free Software." For design, I suggest you write it.
Pirate Praveen Tue 30 Sep 2025 10:39AM
I'm ok with adding long life for hardware. Cross platform apps, I'm not sure. I think there is value in coherent/well integrated apps / DEs like GNOME / KDE that follows a common philosophy. I think it is better to leave that part, which is very subjective.
Badri Sunderarajan Tue 30 Sep 2025 11:34AM
@Pirate Praveen I was just giving cross-platform apps as an example; we can leave that out. It was mainly about long life and compatibility (for web that could mean graceful degradation, which is incidentally good for accessibility too; not sure what the equivalent is in desktop apps but basically).
Tomorrow is a no-tech day (!) but will attempt to draft this and the design one on Thursday.
Badri Sunderarajan Tue 30 Sep 2025 11:36AM
@Pirate Praveen looks good. I will edit later and get back; sorry I'm a bit loaded with client tasks today.
fugata Tue 30 Sep 2025 9:47PM
I'm a little confused - I'm able to edit this post? Is that supposed to be possible? 🤔
Anyway, @Pirate Praveen there were some parts where I wasn't sure what you meant, I hope I've deduced your intent correctly.
Akshay · Mon 29 Sep 2025 4:25PM
This looks amazing already. Thanks!