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

[Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net>]

On Fri, 2013-04-12 at 19:40 +0300, אנטולי קרסנר wrote:
> 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?

Primarily, markets are based on interest & attention, not money.

> 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.

You imply that because of being closed-source, other projects are more
successful, but it's more likely that they are successful for a number
of other reasons while being closed-source. So that's a false cause.

But we might differ on defining "success" here, I'm thinking in terms of
userbase and marketshare, you might not.

> 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)?

To me both is important. Plus not sure why you mention salaries.

> 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.

So "caring about software freedom" does not feed your ego by making you
feel more morale compared to closed-source? Good, then.

>  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."

"People will say" misses a citation, but I can come up with that too:
"People will say that the open source/free software thing is bullshit,
they don't even offer basic integration with the most common services on
the interwebs. Freedom is nice, but I need to get my work done."

Anyway, I prefer to make GNOME good, easy, beautiful for everybody, not
just for people who already know and care about software freedom.

andre
-- 
Andre Klapper  |  ak-47 gmx net
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/