The DoudouLinux Manifesto

Today, we live in a world invaded by technology. Due to miniaturization, technology is nearly everywhere, even in our pockets, and soon even in our fridges. While technology can provide human beings with comfort and better life conditions, it can also cause them to lose control over their possible choices and thus loss of freedom because they are not able to master the technology they rely on.

Our goal, then, is to enable children to get control of technology by understanding how it works, what they can do with it, what it can bring them in real life, and in the end, to use technology not just to be in fashion to do as others do; but only, because they have understood what they can get from it that brings them so much that could not be achieved differently and with as much efficiency, nothing more. We want them to think of technology as a powerful tool but not as an end in itself.

While modern information technology tends to invert the initial paradigm of robotics – people do more and more what their smartphone and ads banners are proposing them to do, and that’s just the beginning –-we want technology to be entirely the robots of human beings, not the reverse! Also the project goals are centered around:

• ease of use, of course
• sharing and openness
• discovery and creativity
• thinking and doing by oneself
• self-confidence and sense of reality
• respect of children’s sensitivity
• putting technology in its place, ie., just a tool
• freedom, to do, read, watch, listen to, create, reuse, modify, etc.
• independence from companies, unlike the technology that gets into our pockets and our living rooms

While we want children be as autonomous as possible with computers, help, direction and advice from their parents are likely needed to reach these goals. Our project can only provide the best tools it can in the hope children will be as much interested as possible, but this may not be sufficient! Here are the main activities and directions of our project – you can find more details on our page Where goes DoudouLinux?:

• Provide tools to help
  • create and build artistic or technical works
  • learn skills and knowledge
  • learn foreign languages
  • transpose into real life what they make or see on their computer
  • extend their play in real life with technology (kind of robotics, home automation)
• Provide access to free culture and free information, free of charge but also and mainly free as in free speech
  • to discover and appreciate culture and cultures from other countries
  • to extend their knowledge and think further
  • to stimulate inspiration from other’s works and understand that sharing makes us go faster and further
  • all of that restricted to contents that is fit for their age (web content filtering)
• Keep children away from various self-interested influences (commercial, ideological, etc.) and preserve their freedom by
  • providing computer and web experiences free of advertisements and user tracking tools [1]
  • using free software only, free as in free speech, developed by communities with no commercial or ideological goals but users freedom
  • promoting initiatives that embrace the spirit of free software like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, the Open Clipart Library or the movement of open devices and fablabs
  • putting control of filtering tools in the parents hands only
  • doing our best to prevent addictions [2]

As you can see our objectives are quite ambitious, this is why anyone can help the project with his/her own skills. We are a community of voluntary contributors, any goodwill is welcome. There is a lot to do and we want cultures from everywhere in the world to be represented, which means that lots of contributors are required! And if you really cannot give time to our project, why not purchasing DoudouLinux products or making a donation to support our project?