Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey

["Lefty (石鏡 )" <lefty shugendo org>]

On 1/15/10 11:10 AM, "Owen Taylor" <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
> 
> We certainly all know that RMS believes that. Some other GNOME community
> members may as well, though probably not a large number. It, is however,
> your choice to focus on it, and I don't understand what you are trying
> to achieve by doing that.
> 
>  - Are you trying to argue down RMS? I've certainly never seen that
>    work in 15 years.

No, that would be futile, I suspect. I _am_ trying to discern how well RMS'
views reflect the views of the "free software"/"open source
software"/FLOSS/FOSS community at large, an effort I believe to be
completely legitimate.

>  - Are you trying to create a split between the Free Software Foundation
>    and GNOME? How would that be helpful to GNOME?

No, I don't have the power to do that, nor is it up to me.

>  - Are you trying to get some change made in how the GNOME project
>    does business? What?

No, as I said, I'm trying to see how the community views these issues.
 
> By posting something on foundation-list, I feel that you are pretty
> explicitly saying it is related to GNOME.

I can't help how you feel, Owen. I _can_ assure that its only relation to
GNOME is that members of GNOME are most certainly members of the target
audience I'm seeking.

I would point out, again, that given the construction of the survey, there's
no way to pull out response from Foundation members as opposed to the public
at large. Given that there's no possible cross-tabulation on that factor,
it's flatly impossible to draw conclusions regarding GNOME on the basis of
these particular survey results. That was, as I mentioned, fairly
deliberate.

That said, if some future survey were to demonstrate that the views
expressed by the FSF represented the views of only a minority of the members
of the Foundation or the GNOME community at large, then that would represent
data to which the Foundation and the Board should give serious
consideration, in my view. I am NOT claiming that this is the case, by any
means, see the preceding paragraph.

Now, I've similarly posted announcements of this survey on Twitter,
identi.ca, Facebook, the FOSDEM general mailing list, the FSF-Europe's Legal
& Licensing Network mailing list, and I forwarded the information on the
survey to Simon Bridge, one of the moderators of the FSF Community Response
Team list.

I am, similarly, not trying to create splits between FOSDEM, FSF-Europe, or
the FSF Community Response Team and the FSF, nor am I trying to change how
any of them "do business". I am simply seeking a broad cross-section of
respondents.

I think you may be reading quite a bit more into this than I'd intended. Do
you have an objection to the questions in the survey simply being _asked_,
Owen...?

If anyone wants to put notice of this survey out anywhere where it'll get
uptake from members of the "free software"/"open source software"/FLOSS/FOSS
community, I'd appreciate their doing so.