Re: Readability publisher sign-up for *.gnome.org

[Will Thompson <will willthompson co uk>]

On 27/08/11 03:07, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     I've been experimenting with Readability <https://www.readability.com>
>     for a couple of months. It's a web service that reformats web pages for
>     easier reading,
> 
> That sounds like SaaS.  SaaS is bad on basic principles
> because users lose control of their computing.
> 
> If there is a better format for the GNOME Foundation blogs, why not
> change the style on the GNOME Foundation's blog server?

I think I was unclear in my original mail. I was not suggesting for a
moment that Gnome encourage users to use the Readability service. I was
also not saying that (blogs.)gnome.org is currently unreadable!

I was hypothesising that some people might have bookmarked gnome.org
pages using this service for later reading, and thus there might be
donations sitting around which could be collected. (Not entirely
dissimilar to participation in the Amazon affiliate scheme.)

In another branch of the thread, Germán Póo-Caamaño wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-08-26 at 14:22 -0500, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> > The Foundation cannot grant a license to anyone else because it has none.
>
> IIUC, the proposal did not say anything about granting any license,
> neither the terms of conditions of Readibility.

Indeed.

I see that accepting affiliate-style donations could be construed as
implicitly granting a license that the Foundation cannot grant to a
service not aligned with the Foundation's goals. So, on balance: best
not. Consider the suggestion retracted. As I said, just a thought. :)

Richard continued:
> If users want to see different formats, can't they do that
> by customizing their browsers?  If free browsers don't support that,
> and users want it, shouldn't it be implemented there?

In a previous incarnation, “Readability” was simply a JavaScript
bookmarklet which allowed the user to reformat the page they are viewing
into a more readable presentation: no non-Free code or SaaS involved.
The code, released under the Apache License 2.0, is still available:
<https://code.google.com/p/arc90labs-readability/>. Adding (something
akin to) this to Free browsers might be interesting, but is orthogonal
to what I was suggesting.

Regards,
-- 
Will