Advogato are the advocate site for free software developers. They state their mission as being the provision of a resource to free software developers, “free” as in “freedom”, around the world. In addition, they aim to provide a research test bed for group trust metrics and other social networking technologies. Advogato sums up its ethos as being devoted to the public good through its support of free software.
You will find many forums and semi-formal articles posted here. There are also links to download resources. Readers can reply or comment on many of the posts in considerably more detail and at much greater length than is the case with most social networking sites. Check it out there may be something that catches your fancy.
The LPF state their mission as being that anyone interested in the freedoms of free software and the benefits that it promotes should seriously consider joining and helping the LPF stop software patents and look and feel copyrights, before they stop you.
The Free Software Foundation is all about distributing free software where the free means “free” as in “freedom” and not “free” as in “free beer”. They are also active in the promotion of their “Free Software” ideals.
Although I have already discussed the FSF earlier in this article I feel that they also merit a special mention here in the activists section since it was they (or at least their founder Mr. Richard M. Stallman) who really opened up this “can of worms” in the first place when he formed the FSF in 1985.
In short, the FSF claim their mission to be one of advocating and educating on behalf of computer users around the world.
Chi3 was born in 2005 to “fight for freedom in the digital age”. Although I am listing, Chi3 here again under the activist section since this site makes their intentions and motives very clear as can be seen in their introduction when you first go there. You will also find a lot of free software as well from the links I have listed. Feel free to check it out, who knows you may just find what you are looking for here.
Here is a snippet from the activist section “Big Media describe DRM as Digital Rights Management. However, since its purpose is to restrict you the user, it is more accurate to describe DRM as Digital Restrictions Management.”
The BadVista campaign is an advocate for the freedom of computer users; opposing adoption of Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free (as in freedom) software alternatives is among other campaigns promoted by the site. See the site itself for more details.
Much free downloadable software including games (on separate pages). The main compilation is a free to redistribute collection of a diverse range of software for many different platforms including Windows and MAC as well as the expectable GNU/Linux varieties. See the software downloads section for more details or just visit the site.
The BadVista campaign is an advocate for the freedom of computer users; opposing adoption of Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free (as in freedom) software alternatives. No prizes for guessing that these folk are not Microsoft's favorite group of people and since their slogan and ethos as stated above says what they are about I will leave it at that.
I will however add that this campaign and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and many of its members are part of the same as the full web site address of http://badvista.fsf.org indicates. This is yet another reason as to why I have included them in the software directory section as well as here in the activists section.
General Directories
Although SourceForge.net is the world's largest, Open Source software development web site you will still find many Free Software, as in “freedom” projects available here. I will be producing a more detailed listing of Open Source software sites shortly so for now here is a brief synopsis of SourceForge.net.
SourceForge.net provides free hosting to Open Source software development projects with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code. Here are the latest figures for SourceForge.net's projects and registered user base.
Registered Projects: 178,435 and Registered Users: 1,859,843 and over 250,000,000 OpenIDs. You must admit that over 250 million OpenIDs is one heck of a large number and goes a long way to backing their claims of being the world's largest Open Source software development web site.
Note that there are quite a few dormant projects and single-user projects included in the above figures.
You do not have to be a registered user in order to download any of the software for which they are acting as a repository. There are also numerous “mirror” sites located in different geographical regions around the planet. For most people it is probably wisest to download the version of the software you are after from your local mirror.
This is because in cases where software has regional variations due to local idiosyncrasies the compatibility is generally better. To illustrate I have tried downloads from different regional mirrors and have found that for Australia the language version that is usually available from the local Australian mirror tends to use the Australian version of the English language, if available and not the American one.
Well that is it for now. I will be presenting a roundup of open source and freeware sites shortly. Until text time, enjoy!
