Re: Draining the Swamp: A Technical User's Experience

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

>    `We are not here to give users what
>     they want'  -- RMS, at GUADEC 2001
> 
> I am glad my words have not been forgotten.
> We are not here to give users what they want.
> We are here to spread freedom.

Richard, you might be here to spread software freedom as many of us here
are.  

But Gnome is not an exclusive project where only those that care about
spreading software freedom are welcomed.  We welcome anyone who is
willing to release their code under a free software/open source license,
for whatever motives they might have.

Some people are contributing to Gnome, because they care about freedom;
some others are related because they liked the Gimp and liked to do
pretty graphics;  Some others wanted to contribute because Gnome was a
fertile ground for experimentation;  Some others wanted to contribute
because they loved Unix and hated the world of MS-DOS and Windows, but
could be using Solaris or any other proprietary Unix just as well as
they are using GNU/Linux;  Some others are interested in exploring
usability issues;  Some others want Gnome to power their proprietary
systems, and that is fine with us.

You might be here to spread freedom, but Gnome, the Gnome Foundation,
and its members might have goals which are not aligned with yours.  

You are free to participate in the discussion, but you are mistaken if
you believe that you are speaking for Gnome or for all of us.  I know
you are not speaking for me and for none of the code I have written. 

I have been working to give users what they want, and a lot of us wnat
to see free software succeed, and to achieve that goal, and to convince
more people to use our software, and hence to grow our developer base,
we will listen to them, and we will make adjustments to our code, to our
documentation, to our licenses and in the ways we interact with people.

Miguel.