FSF Giving Guide: Put freedom first in your giving this year
It's that time again. All the holiday decorations are out on full display. Ads are thrown across every screen, each one trying to convince you how much you need that new device. They're ready to give it to you at a cut rate, too, since they want to let you know how much your friends and loved ones need the same tech gadget in their pocket, lap, or monitoring their living room. But is the gift that you're about to give (or splurge on for yourself) respectful of a person's right to freedom? For the last thirteen years, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published our Ethical Tech Giving Guide as a way to guide concerned individuals towards gifts that do not deprive them of their freedom. The right to determine what a device you've purchased does or doesn't do is something too valuable to lose. It's the difference between having control over your digital life or having someone else control you.
Freedom is the best gift you can give, and the one that keeps on giving. Taking your first steps to freedom often doesn't just help you win back your digital autonomy: it provides an opportunity for you to deepen your relationship with the ones you care about through a shared experience, and inaugurates you into a worldwide community of users. If you're already technical and committed to furthering free software, we've also included a short list of devices that need developer attention to clear the last hurdles to freedom that stand between the chips they employ and full acceptability.
This year's Guide is replete with recommendations on DRM-free media for you and your loved ones to enjoy. In the time you have to yourself this holiday season, or your beach vacation to recover from it, consider going through a small (if invisible) stack of DRM-free ebooks. If you're the type to read with a soundtrack -- or who needs one to get through the season -- our DRM-free music recommendations are there for you as well. As publishers and storefronts putting out these works are increasingly fewer and further between, we encourage you to support them.