Skip to content, sitemap or skip to search.

Personal tools
Join now
You are here: Home Blogs Community Winter holidays are coming: Time for a free software tale

Winter holidays are coming: Time for a free software tale

by Miriam Bastian Contributions Published on Nov 18, 2024 02:08 PM
Winter holidays are coming: Time for a free software tale

Thumbnail from the ShoeTool animation.

The winter holidays are coming. Here's a free software fairy tale for you to watch, enjoy, and share with your loved ones in front of a cozy fireplace while roasting s'mores. For those not acquainted with the tradition of roasting s'mores: it's a very popular thing to do in the US. All it takes are honey graham crackers, a chocolate bar, marshmallows, a stick, and a fire. Try it out, you'll love it. But back to the fairy tale.

image showing the elf Wendell and a text saying ShoeTool a holiday tale featuring an elf whose shoemaking is stymied by proprietary software

The ShoeTool fairy tale is about Wendell the Elf, a shoemaker who thought he bought a machine to help him make shoes, only to find out that the machine proprietor heavily restricts what kind of shoes Wendell may make with the machine he just bought.

The story of Wendell the Elf is the same story millions of software users worldwide have experienced 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 ebook reader only to realize that Amazon makes it impossible for them to read ebooks that aren't purchased on Amazon. These proprietary 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! 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. 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:

<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 as you wish after downloading the source files. Don't forget to like the video on Peertube's FSF channel.

Thumbnail of the ShoeTool animation, featuring a banner that reads 'Shoemaker Free Foundation' and a group of elves on either side standing beside machines.

The FSF is currently having its year-end fundraiser. Donate to help us reach our fundraising goal of USD$ 400,000!

We hope you enjoy watching the video 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 campaigns@fsf.org or share it on social media with the hashtag #FreeSoftwareTales.

Happy holidays,

Your Free Software Foundation staff,

Anouk, Craig, Dawn, Eko, 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.

Document Actions

The FSF is a charity with a worldwide mission to advance software freedom — learn about our history and work.

fsf.org is powered by:

 

Send your feedback on our translations and new translations of pages to campaigns@fsf.org.