Incidentally the freedombone.net site is created with org-mode then exported as html. You can specify a css file and such. Doing it that way makes site maintenance trivial.
@spaceman 2) I heard about free software through the local free software community. I got to know some of them online and they helped me getting started. At that point I was not fully aware of the significance of software freedom. I was primarily concerned about getting a secure and virus-free system. So I could stop worrying too much about losing my work, reinstalling the system, formatting and going through the same #Windows nightmares again and again. Around 2006 I accidentally deleted my Windows partition when installing GNU/Linux (Fedora 6 I think). I decided not to install Windows again because by that time I knew I could manage all of my work with free software.
@spaceman 1) I am not a programmer. When Laconica was launched I was already a free software user. I heard about Laconica during those epic Twitter downtimes in 2008. Lot of people were looking for alternatives. If I remember correctly, Laconica was first mentioned on Linux Outlaws podcast. They discussed the importance of having distributed and federated social network; and about avoiding single points of failures. Soon I became one of the early users of #Laconica ( #identica ) Laconica was later renamed as StatusNet. It then became GNUSocial as a result of the merging of StatusNet and Free Social projects.
@clacke I tried GPlus when it first opened. It was a Diaspora clone without federation. Then came the nymwars and I left. Soon Google began trying to force users of any Google product to have GPlus accounts and I closed my Google accounts.
@spaceman Personally, I was really excited about #Twitter, so I tried several similar projects like Plurk, Jaiku, Identica. Over time, I came to understand #federation and this network became my primary online focus.
@spaceman One of my favorite things about GNU Social is how I can have as many bots as I want and there's no rate limiting being enforced by folks in a faraway office.