Re: [OT] Re: [Fwd: Re: Two 3.10 feature ideas]

[אנטולי קרס נר <tombackton gmail com>]

What does "competing on the market" mean? Do you get a salary for
working on Gnome projects, which depends on how many people use your
software?

Like I said, I don't offer to block them. I offer to have them as a low
priority. What is the GOAL of the Gnome project? Dominating the desktop
market? Becoming a monopoly?

Since when is "increasing the user base" a primary goal? If that's we're
after, let's start writing closed-source software. Microsoft, Google,
Facebook and many others succeed more than Gnome, maybe we should just
follow them and abandon the Free Software idea.

Now seriously, which goal is more important: spreading software freedom
and free-as-in-freedom computing, or just getting more people to use
Gnome (which doesn't increase anyone's salary anyway)?

I guess we do agree on the goals. The question is, what's the order of
priorities.

The internet is already free enough for free software to use. But
clearly Facebook and Google aren't, so you can't compare. Eventually we
can add Diaspora plugins and so on, and let the users choose freedom if
they wish, but that's not the point.

In my opinion, the point is that the developers themselves should care
about software freedom, and make that a high-priority goal, rather than
feeding their ego by having users migrate to Gnome. You can't spread
freedom if you're not consistent with your own ideas. People will say,
"all that open source/free software thing is bullshit, look at them.
They supply a direct connection to Facebook and GMail and Twitter from
the desktop, before them even bother to give us a free alternative. It's
all bullshit, let's go back to Windows."

First choose goals, priorities and values, then make a plan according to
them. Writing free software doesn't make us angels and doesn't give us
any excuse to give free software a bad name by showing more support to
Facebook, Youtube and Google than we show to Diaspora, MediaGoblin and
MyKolab (or whatever can replace GMail and google calendar using free
software).

So do as you wish, just keep a clear list of priorities. The winners are
the ones who remain last in the field. The ones who persist. The ones
who swim against the current when they need to. The sheep which don't
blindly follow the herd. The ones who aren't afraid of cold water.
Assuming you consider software freedom as victory... I do.

- Anatoly Krasner

On ו', 2013-04-12 at 18:04 +0200, Andre Klapper wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-04-12 at 01:46 +0300, אנטולי קרסנר wrote:
> > Fact: many of them know it's bad. Fact: it
> > doesn't make them stop using it. Fact: if Gnome is good enough without
> > Facebook, it can help them stop using it. Fact: it supplies integration
> > and GOA accounts, thus the users remain addicted.
>
> Fact: many people are addicted to the internet. If GNOME did not provide
> a browser or even internet connectivity, GNOME could help them stop
> using the internet.
>
> So I've seen the "This Free and Open Source Project should educate its
> users about non-free services!" opinion across several FOSS projects I
> am/was involved in. "Make it harder for users to use non-free but
> convenient services" is a great way to decrease your userbase, but
> providing *better* services than the non-free ones and competing on the
> market might be more sustainable. I won't stop you from doing that.
>
> andre