Re: Stormy's update: Week of July 13th

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

On Tue, 2009-07-21 at 11:22 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:

Hey Luis!

> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Philip Van Hoof<pvanhoof gnome org> wrote:

> > An organizations like GNOME is free to decide for themselves which of
> > the online services they will use.
> 
> And as Richard is a member of GNOME (honorary if not in fact) he's
> certainly welcome to politely share his opinion of the move with other
> members, as he has done. You certainly have not shied away from
> sharing your opinions without getting elected to the board; Richard
> should be no different.

No worries, I obviously agree. The two possibilities that I gave Richard
clarify that position.

> [Mind you, I think Richard has crossed many lines in the past, and I
> don't condone that (I will have more to say about that in August), but
> when he is behaving he's entitled to his opinion.]

ok

> > We're not the Internet police.
> 
> No, but we're an organization with moral goals as well as practical
> ones, and we should continually question our motivations and
> strategies to make sure we're doing the best possible job of balancing
> those ends. Richard and I have loudly disagreed about how to strike
> that balance in the past, we disagree on this issue, and I assume we
> will again in the future. But the day we don't at least take into
> account moral considerations is the day I write a very large check at
> the Apple store.

Problem is that Amazon's Kindle story has little relevance to GNOME's
Amazon plans.

I wont say an issue with little relevance is never a reason to stay away
from a company. But when it is, the 'problem' should in my opinion be a
large one (like a human rights violation or something).

Else we make it a black & white thing. This is something GNOME should
never do: nothing in life is b & w (except some people's ideas).

Another problem with trying to find an issue here is that, depending on
the point of view, Amazon acted within their own Terms (point iii under
"Subscriptions"). This makes the 'problem' even smaller and the article,
that Richard referred to, less relevant.

That's why in my opinion it's not GNOME's responsibility.

I think this is a sufficient amount of morality checking.


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
http://pvanhoof.be/blog
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