Re: COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010 Call For Papers

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    Your original statement implied that being an open source software project
    was a bad thing.

I don't think my words implied that, but perhaps they were not as
clear as they could have been.  I meant to imply it would be a bad
outcome if people mentally classify GNOME as an "open source project",
because then they would think GNOME's philosophy and values are the ones
they know of under that heading.

    Many of our audience will know what open source software is. While we are
    educating them on free software, we need to be sure not to alienate them by
    implying that they or their beliefs are bad.

I agree, and as you can see from my sample rewording of the call for
papers, that is not what I propose to say.

What open source says is not evil, it just omits the crucial point
which happens to be the point of the free software movement.
(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
explains this, for those of you who don't know.)  The goal here
is to make people aware of GNOME as a "free software" project
and build support for this point.