Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

[Diego Escalante Urrelo <diegoe gnome org>]

Hey Richard,

El vie, 26-02-2010 a las 21:32 -0500, Richard Stallman escribió:
> If people are going to use Facebook, they should access it with free software.
> And it is useful for GNOME to do a good job of that.
> 
> At the same time, using Facebook is a harmful practice.  It gives a
> misleading impression of privacy, it has close ties with the CIA and
> probably lets the CIA look at everything people upload.  (See
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook.)  It uses
> Flash format for video, which is harmful to free software.  Some of
> its services are SaaS, which takes away control of your computing
> just as proprietary software does.
> 

Sure I agree with you, that's why I personally try to use Facebook as
tangentially as possible. But I would lie if I said I don't use it at
all or refrain from sharing comments or setting a profile picture there.

> (Can anyone tell me what what an "empathy account" does and what an
> f-spot export configuration does?)
> 

Empathy is an instant messaging client, Facebook now allows access to
its chat network via XMPP. I meant that on filling your info Empathy
would configure an account for you so you can chat with your friends in
Facebook using a free software client, Empathy, instead of the web based
chat they have.
F-spot manages photos and allows you to upload photos to Flickr,
Facebook, Gallery2 installations, etc.

The practical implication or goal with my example was that after filling
your Facebook id in this wizard or assistant you would have your
Facebook chat account in Empathy and the capability of uploading a photo
to Facebook via f-spot.

The "generalised" goal of this example would be that you fill logins
once and only once, we in the background do smart stuff an reuse the
filled info correctly to make your experience more "woah, that's smart!"
instead of "damn! filling my login again? I already did in $other_app!".

> It is also important to give equally good support to other systems
> people can use for telling each other about events; for instance,
> social networking sites of the free software community, and
> peer-to-peer methods.  This way, GNOME won't favor Facebook over those
> other methods.
> 

I'm sure most of us agree to that. Don't worry ;).