Re: Thanks, and a Brief Survey

[Stormy Peters <stormy peters gmail com>]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 8:01 AM, Richard Stallman <rms gnu org> wrote:

In response to the first draft, I pointed out that it rejected the
ideas of the free software movement, and the only form of support it
gave was use of the term "free software" itself.  Your new draft
cancels out that little support, by pairing the term with "open source".

Sorry, I did not mean to ignore your suggestion.

Your first suggestion was:

We want GNOME to be used, even in proprietary applications.  Thus, if
a proprietary program uses GNOME, we are glad GNOME was chosen.

However, the word "delighted" is so strongly positive that the overall
effect is to praise and welcome said proprietary software.  It implies
we are glad that a proprietary program was developed, presuming it
uses GNOME -- and we shouldn't be.

Personally, I think we are delighted that they decided to use GNOME. We aren't praising the proprietary software but expressing happiness that they have decided to use free software that we have developed.

My impression is that the community is delighted when the Nuvo Garmin or Supersonic Imagine use GNOME technologies.

I think we gain more by being excited and asking them to join our community, meet us, learn more about free software, etc than if we temper it down. When you praise someone that's learning something, you don't say "that's ok but it'd be better if ...", you say "that's great! nice job!" And then the next time you say "how about if you try xyz this time?"

Your second suggestion was:

The statement could express mild support for the ethical idea of free
software by replacing the first sentence cited with this

   GNOME was developed for the sake of computer users' freedom.
   The GNOME Foundation supports users' freedom and promotes free software.

and replacing the second with

   Even if a program is proprietary, we invite its developers to use
   GNOME as its interface platform.

I'm ok with that. I think it's a bit more negative but I agree that the second sentence in the original doesn't really add anything if you don't think it's promoting free software values.

Stormy