SLF: Help Us

The Software Liberation Front needs your help.

If you find that you agree with the principles presented here, and that you want to help make the world a better, safer, more free place for software users and developers, we have some ideas how you can help out. There are two lists below: one is a list of things we do need right now, and the other is a list of things we don't need right now but that you might at first assume we want. While you may be right about what we want, these things will not help particularly in our efforts at advocacy and education at this stage. That may change in the future, however. In any case, if you have a choice between the things on the first list and the things on the second list, we recommend you choose from the first — though if you insist on providing something from the second list, perhaps as a thank you for our efforts, we may be able to work out some kind of arrangement. Use the submission form on our Contact Page to contact us about any help you can offer, as outlined in the lists below.

First List: Things the Software Liberation Front Needs

Advocacy
The most important thing you can do to help the Software Liberation Front's mission is to present, support, and defend its ideals, and to personally help them propagate in Free/Libre/Open Source Software communities. Such movements spread through word-of-mouth and the infectious properties of a meme. Every convert goes on to create more converts in successful movements of this sort, producing an exponential rate of growth so long as opposition remains constant and the limits of the meme pool remains outside the range of its growth. You can best help by spreading the word.
Association
Please consider officially associating yourself with the Software Liberation Front if you agree with the principles and ideals set forth on this website. Official association is in effect a publicly announced free membership in the Software Liberation Front. All that is required to be officially associated is to send us your legal name, your email address, the name by which you wish yourself or your organization to be identified in our public membership list, and a specific statement that you wish to be an official associate of the Software Liberation Front. We will contact you via your provided email address to confirm your association, and you will be added to the public list — with a link to the website of your choice, at our discretion. You may also submit a personal statement for publication at the SLF website as an associate member. At this time, this is the only way to become a Member of the Software Liberation Front.
FreeBSD Hosting
The Software Liberation Front needs FreeBSD hosting. Such hosting must be reliable, secure, reasonably full-featured, and solely under the control of the Software Liberation Front. One of the most important requirements of this hosting is that it must not lead to increased charges to the Software Liberation Front's founders if incoming traffic exceeds the bandwidth allotted to the hosting account, in case of sudden influxes of traffic due to the Slashdot Effect or intentional DDOS attacks, either of which is a possibility for which we wish to be prepared. If such hosting is provided free of charge by an interested party, such as a hosting provider with an interest in supporting the ideals of the Software Liberation Front, that would of course be the best likely resolution of these requirements.
Graphics
Neither of the founders of the SLF is a graphic design guy. Sure, we can operate the GIMP, and painstakingly eke out some nice-looking graphics for our web development work when needed, but we don't like it, and it's slow, dull work. Anyone out there with real skills in this area are encouraged to help with generation of images for the site. In particular, we're looking for a logo and banner for the Software Liberation Front, possibly logos and banners for Fettered Software Foundation and Free Slavery Foundation, and maybe matching stamp-looking graphics at a rakish angle that say, in each case, either "BETA" or "DELTA".
Ideas
We're not perfect — a fact of which we're sure you're aware. More importantly, we know we're not perfect. It's easy to overlook something important, a useful way to improve the effectiveness of our efforts, or get lazy about making the website as accessible and usable as possible. Please let us know if you have any ideas you think can help.
Legal Counsel
We don't expect to need actual legal defense in court any time soon, but the occasional bit of help from an actual lawyer in sorting out the ramifications of various ideas, projects, and bits of news would be helpful. It would also be nice to have legal defense if, for some crazy reason, we do end up needing it after all.
Links
Linking prominently to the Software Liberation Front wherever it is appropriate to do so increases our exposure. Search engine ranking, rate of exposure to new readers, and public visibility in general help to spread the word about the ideals of the Software Liberation Front and its arguments. Do not, however, under any circumstances spam anyone with links to the Software Liberation Front. We do not condone such behavior, and in fact would do what we can to help those spammed identify offenders, within the limits imposed by an ethical respect for privacy, so that they may be barred from continuing to spread spam. For these purposes, spamming consists of advertising by injecting links or other references to the Software Liberation Front and its associates into venues inappropriate for such references, unrelated to the subject matter of these venues, and generally wherever such a reference would be both out of place and unwanted. We are inclined to err on the side of protecting the individual in case of misunderstanding, but where no mistake is reasonably inferred, we will not defend a spammer.

Second List: Things the Software Liberation Front Doesn't Need

Computer Donations
Due to the ongoing requirements of their professional lives, both Ren and Ogre are always on the lookout for opportunity to extend their private networks with additional servers and increase their mobile computing capabilities with laptops. In the spirit of the Software Liberation Front's goals, such systems should of course be fully FreeBSD or OpenBSD compatible. Depending on the circumstances of such an offer, Ren and/or Ogre may be inclined to accept donated computers across a wide range of capabilities, limited mainly by software support requirements as already noted. Such donations may indirectly contribute to the continuing maintenance of the Software Liberation Front effort by improving work conditions and freeing up time otherwise dedicated to making the money to pay for such hardware themselves. This is, however, a very low-priority want, because lack of such donations of hardware would at this time in no way serve as an impediment to the continued maintenance of the Software Liberation Front website.
Financial Donations
Money is always nice, but certain legal or ethical concerns may come into play depending on the form and source of financial donations. The need for money to support the Software Liberation Front is also not particularly pressing, as between the two of them Ren and Ogre are able to make all necessary payments to ensure the continued existence of the project. As such, financial donations are not quite discouraged, but they are in no way encouraged either, at this time. This may change as the form of the Software Liberation Front evolves.

The Software Liberation Front

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Fettered Software Foundation

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Helping the Software Liberation Front:

First List: Things the Software Liberation Front Needs

Second List: Things the Software Liberation Front Doesn't Need