Re: Question for candidates

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    > The one area where we have an inherent advantage is in treating the
    > users ethically.  Neither Apple nor Microsoft will ever match us in
    > this.  Shall we not make plans to utilize this advantage and increase
    > it?

    Yes, agree, it's a factor we should highlight.

Highlighting this will help GNOME with the users who appreciate the
issue.  As Stormy said, some users currently appreciate this, and the
others don't.

What I'm talking about is a related long-term opportunity.  Over time,
the users who appreciate freedom are not a fixed group; they increase
due to the efforts some of us make to explain the issue to other
people, many of whom have never seen it before.

GNOME has many opportunities to explain this issue to the public.  By
using them, GNOME can help increase that group of users faster, which
over time will increase the benefit that GNOME gets by highlighting
this factor.

This is independent, in practice, of the technical work of improving
GNOME, so there is no obstacle to doing both.  However, doing this
does require thought and planning.  So I'm asking candidates to think
about this avenue.  What would you have GNOME to do grow the subset of
users who will, in five years, choose GNOME because they want the
freedom that proprietary rivals will never give them?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
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