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Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/share-this-holiday-fairy-tale-with-your-loved-ones

Dear Free Software Supporter,

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A company offers you a tool to make your life easier, but, when you use it, you find out that the tool forces you to use it only in the way the tool's manufacturer approves. Does this story ring a bell? It's what millions of software users worldwide experience again and again, day after day. It's also the story of Wendell the Elf and the ShoeTool.

Watch the fairy tale of Wendell the Elf and the ShoeTool to remind yourself why you shouldn't let your tools tell you how to use them. Or, you can share the holiday fairy tale with your loved ones so that they can learn not to let their tools control them. If we use free software, we don't need anyone's permission to, for example, modify our tools ourselves or install modifications shared by others. We don't need permission to ask someone else to tailor our tools to serve our wishes, exercise our creativity. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) believes that everyone deserves full control over their computers and phones, and we hope this video helps you explain the importance of free software to your friends and family.

You can use the short URL https://u.fsf.org/shoetool to share the ShoeTool video on social media and combine it with the #shoetool hashtag and some of these ShoeTool images. Want to share the video with a friend or family member who doesn't speak English? We have subtitles of the video in Arabic, Basque, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, and Ukrainian! You can also embed the video on your website or blog with this code:

<video style="width: 100%; max-width: 640px;" controls="controls" poster="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/thumbnails/ShoeTool-Cover-1.jpg" crossorigin="anonymous"><source src="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/fsf-shoetool-720p.webm" type="video/webm" /><source src="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/fsf-shoetool-720p.ogv" type="video/ogg"/><source src="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/fsf-shoetool-720p.mp4" type="video/mp4" /><track kind="subtitles" label="English" srclang="en" src="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/captions/shoetoolfsf_en.vtt" default="default" /></video>

And, of course, you can adapt the video to your liking after downloading the source files. Don't forget to like the video on Peertube's FSF channel.

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Did you already see that we have a three days matching challenge running starting today? Generous FSF supporters offered to triple every donation up to $15,500 made between Tuesday, December 12 and Thursday, December 14, 23:59 EST (04:59 UTC on December 15). Can you help us meet the matching challenge by ensuring a contribution? By supporting us today, you help us develop further educational resources like the ShoeTool video and thereby educate the public what free software is all about.

We hope you enjoy watching and sharing the video!

Happy holidays,

Your Free Software Foundation staff,

Anouk, Craig, Dawn, Devin, Greg, Ian, Jeanne,
Krzysztof, Michael, Miriam, and Zoë

ShoeTool by the Free Software Foundation Copyright © 2019 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.