For many centuries around the world, winter has been a time for
telling cautionary tales of the world's cruelty and the consequences
of bad behavior. While the existence of such dangerous figures as the
Yule Cat and wendigo can be left by the fireplace, the
horrors of proprietary software remain in the real world long after
you and your loved ones have put out the Yule Log. In the
ShoeTool story, an elf named Wendell buys a machine to help him
make shoes, only to quickly discover that the machine's proprietor
heavily restricts what kind of shoes Wendell can make with the machine
he just bought.
The story of Wendell the Elf is the same story millions of software
users worldwide experience in their daily lives. Maybe they don't want
to make shoes, but they do want to buy an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch
and find out that Apple controls what apps can be installed on their
device or they buy an Amazon Kindle e-book reader only to find
out that Amazon makes it impossible for them to read e-books that
aren't purchased through Amazon. These restrictions limit
real-world user freedom, creativity, and opportunity, just like
Wendell the Elf experienced with his shoe-making machine.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) believes that everyone deserves
full control over their devices, and that no one should be able to
tell you how to do your computing, how to play games, watch videos,
listen to music, or be creative on your machines! No matter what
software you're using or for what purpose, it should respect your
freedom. We hope this video helps you explain the importance of free
software to your friends and family this holiday season.
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.
We have subtitles of the video in Arabic, Basque, Dutch, Esperanto,
French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian,
Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, and Ukrainian so you can share the video with
friends and family members who don't speak English as well. You can
also embed the video on your website or blog with this code:
We hope you enjoy hearing this scary winter story and share it with others! Got inspired by the video and came up with your own free software fairy tale? Email it to us at [email protected] or share it on social media with the hashtag #FreeSoftwareTales.
