Malsasa

I love Free Software. You will love Free Software too as soon as you discover it. No matter whether you are developer or user, you love complete control over your software. Go learn about Free Software at https://www.gnu.org —the pioneer of our community.

There are many problems. Internal and external. Within our community. I believe teaching is the way to solve all those problems. If not completely, then mostly, with grade better than any other solution.

If you wish people to switch from Windows to GNU/Linux, teach it. If you wish people to switch from Microsoft to LibreOffice, teach it. If you wish people to switch from Photoshop to GIMP, teach it. If you wish people to switch from Proprietary to Free Software, teach it. If you wish people to value their freedom, teach it. Not just giving them clues but guide them not. Teach starting from the most basics from user's point of view. If you cannot do that at school, create your own.

Teaching involves choosing. Of course a real teacher is brave to choose one among many choices for the sake of his students. He will chose between Signal, Telegram, Riot.im, Session, and Movim and be patient using it consistently with students. Same example goes for other categories such as Trisquel, KDE, Firefox, Amarok, Kate, until Qt. This creates school by time. Nothing different to judo school, karate school, boxing school, every teacher chooses and every student follows and as consequence a school established. That's good. And I believe that's what lacking today and we should do that. Why so hesitate about choosing?

Teaching involves respects. Let people come to you mostly. Not you coming to them. But sometimes, good thing to visit people to give speeches. This makes people value knowledges and person with knowledge. This creates communication as people will know who is the right person to ask. This is important as asking wrong person is bad education resulting in disaster (think about hard disk partitioning done to your drive by dummies).

That's why since 2016 I focused my effort to teach Free Software online via Telegram in Indonesian language for my Indonesia people. I require my students to use free software to communicate (Telegram) and use free software to read my books (LibreOffice) and use free software to submit their assignments to me (LibreOffice too). The media I use to reach them is free software (WordPress). I give courses about software freedom basics, Free Software Definition, intro to GNU/Linux and LibreOffice, how to migrate from Windows to GNU/Linux, selling Free Software is okay, and eighty more other topics. I hold courses every month. I can confirm today I got more than 1000 students since then. I have so many talks with a lot of students either in public or private from Aceh to Papua. Do you know the result? I find my students learned to value software freedom and some of them now using Trisquel (a point Indonesia community never reach before, I witness), many of them motivated to stick with free software exclusively and tried to reach that point, all of them now using LibreOffice for sure, and they know in Teknoplasma they are forbidden to promote proprietary software as they value it as a problem not a solution. I do this teaching alone. I do these all without money. My limitations are bad internet access and bad (broken) computer. To my understanding, of course I believe this is a success in educating free software to people and I am proud of it. I can, with all my limitations and poorness, so I believe you can and can do it better than me.

My teaching is not without flaws, of course, unfortunately. I wish those flaws gone forever soon. That is, among few others, I still announce my courses on facebook, a proprietary software social network everybody knows its badness, because most Indonesians I am looking are there. That is my difficulty. I made account there long before I know software freedom (www.gnu.org) and up to today I am using what I have and I use that well. I myself dislike it I use it with disgust but I bear it for my people. I wish someday I can delete my facebook after people delete theirs so I can focus to my Telegram when all people are there. Up to today, I am satisfied with Telegram crowd of Indonesians and you may believe they are so supportive and curious I love them.

“Do not use Telegram, use Signal instead!” some people will challenge my choice with their choice within the scope of free software. That's legitimate. Same goes for other choices of mine such as KDE and Trisquel. To such a people, with respect and best regards, I say, please teach it first. I ask you to proof your choice socially with your students (your society) and bear with it for a long time together. If you can keep teaching Free Software with your choice together with students, that's good, I respect that. If you cannot, that's also good as long as it's still free software, but that will confuse your students and your society, and they will hesitate to come to you again. I remind you, teaching is choosing and be patient with it consistently together.

About me and Telegram, I use it since 2014. I made few first Indonesian GNU/Linux communities on Telegram, let's say, BGLI, BLOI, BGRI, and initial member of now big communities such as GimpScape and Ubuntu Indonesia. Honestly, the first of them, BGLI, was created because of me, I didn't have smartphone at that time so us the founders decided to use my recommendation, Telegram, and not WhatsApp which initially chosen, so I can join the group using my laptop instead of my Nokia phone. I recommended Telegram because it is Free Software and ultimately could run on GNU/Linux (at that time WhatsApp could not). And even BGLI was not BGLI at first, but Pemula Ubuntu Surabaya (PUS), and recreated once because of an ill-mannered person, until finally recreated as BGLI. I involved in all those as indeed I want Indonesia to switch from WhatsApp to Telegram. I believe Telegram is good in place of all proprietary media such as WhatsApp. This spirit I don't know emanate from anybody other than me. And as a result, now in Indonesia, everybody uses Telegram. Since 2017, I made my school at Telegram. I think this is enough to describe my connection to Telegram.