Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 22:59 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> IMHO talking about Facebook and who should demand them to free info is a
>     bit out of place here. Please let's not diverge the thread into that or
>     into a battle about how much we should promote Free Software or non Free
>     alternatives.
> 
> In my fantasies, the free software movement might be so influential
> that we could make demands and Facebook would have to heed them.  In
> reality, we are not in a position to correct the social problems
> caused by Facebook, and I do not suggest making that our goal.

Why not?

You changed the social aspect of software development in the past by
inspiring software engineers to follow a certain pro social model.

Why not do it again for the current generation, and change the game for
the many social community websites being created in this era?

If the only problem is that the web and its many innovations aren't part
of your generation, then I don't see what the real problem is;

The social aspects are the same. 

Why isn't the FSF talking with these companies and organizations about
standardizing data about social networks? Why not talk with the European
Commission about getting rules on personal privacy? Why not talk with
Neelie Kroes about competition laws for near-monopolies like Facebook?

If the FSF would be really be pro 'freedom' of people, they'd do all
that. In fact, you guys are many people's only hope for improvement
here: There are no other organizations even trying at this moment.

But for that, we need you and the FSF to become more pragmatic.

Instead, we have to listen to nonsense about Mono. Nonsense about ethics
that people know more about themselves, for themselves, than the FSF
does. And all the nonsense is turning many FSF fans into zealots.

Of course people like me, and Lefty, start saying 'no more'.

What did you, or anybody, expect?

Please, change course with the FSF. I'm asking it seriously now.

> But we do have a duty to make sure, if we develop software
> specifically to work with Facebook, that we are not promoting Facebook
> as a consequence.

This isn't the case at this moment. So there is no problem here.

> There are many social problems in life, and nobody would expect us to
> eliminate them all.  Most of them are not our priority to work on.

I can't agree with the "most of them are not our priority". 

Ain't it FSF's goal to promote freedom for people in general?

By neglecting the "freedom problems" as introduced by social networking
websites, you are together with the FSF neglecting a important aspect of
this generation's freedoms:

Privacy. Choice. Access to the data about themselves.

You're basically saying: "yeah yeah, but that ain't the FSF's priority".

Who's priority is it then?

Because that'll be the same FSF of the 2010ties that the FSF was in the
90ties. The one we need.

> But even when eliminating a problem is not our priority, we should
> make an effort to avoid making it worse.

By programming annoying warning message boxes?

So now we are into developing the very same EULA dialog windows that we
hated in the 90ties. And that everybody simply ignores by always
clicking "yes", "ok" or the "whatever" answer?


Great.



Cheers,

Philip

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