Re: GNOME and the free software movement



On Sat, 2006-11-25 at 01:58 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> I would like to ask the candidates for the board to state their views
> on how GNOME can work with the broader free software movement
> for the advance of computer users' freedom.

Thinking out loud...

Even considering all our problems and imperfections, GNOME is one of the
big, strong and consolidated projects in the free software community. A
leading player with a wide and diverse representation of interests and
stakeholders that go from social liberation to fair business, from
individual volunteers to transnational corporations. In this position,
GNOME should keep helping free software becoming mainstream.

We need to work on quality, standards, documentation and good
integration with other projects/products needed by GNOME that need GNOME
themselves in order to offer a rock solid and competitive free desktop
covering efficiently all the basic functionality users demand. 

We need to be wise cooperating with our competition in the free software
community (other desktop environments, other applications) keeping in
mind that we are still in the catacombs and that no free project alone
can probably beat the non-free competition nowadays. 

We need to become a essential player offering the best alternative to
individuals and social organizations (we are almost there), to the
public sector (doing great advances as well) and also the business
world, starting by the companies that have software development
integrated in their production and services (we have a good collection
of precedents and we are starting to be seen as a serious-serious
option).

This trend should increase exponentially the quantity of free software
users, probably not-100% aware of the freedom component and surely not
using 100%-free software (codecs, drivers etc). Strategically I prefer
this approach. I think that more quantity of users will bring easier a
wider awareness of the beauty and advantages of Freedom and will make
easier the liberation of code or the development of 100% alternatives to
non-free code. 

I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but this is what you
message made me write.  :)

-- 
Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org

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