Re: Questionnaire on motivation analysis of open source and open content

[Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks bryen com>]

On Fri, 2012-02-24 at 16:39 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Thus, the replacements we recommend for services which are SaaS
> ought to be programs for people to run on their own servers.
> 
>     > Google Docs Survey -- LimeSurvey
>     > Google Docs Document -- ietherpad-lite
> 
> I don't know what LimeSurvey and ietherpad-lite are.
> Are they services, or programs? 

I guess both.  But in the context of the original issue which you
pointed out that some folks don't like using Google Apps because it is
nonfree.  Many people prefer to use an online "pad" to collaborate
documents on.  etherpad-lite is a free program which you can download
and install yourself and it is a service that several sites have
implemented.  For example, piratepad.  

I get the point of what you have described in this thread about the
difference between service and program.  And appreciate the
clarifications you made.  But the question here was what service do we
point people to when they come to us using something we don't
necessarily wish to use.  I did look at osalt, and it was a bit of a
confusing site and not very straightforward.  

In this case, we didn't want to respond to a survey on Google Apps.  So,
we said, go use LimeSurvey.  (I've not heard of LimeSurvey myself, but
I'm assuming it is in some way compatible to free-and-open purists
concerns.)

etherpad-lite I have used with great love, although it has stability
issues for users.

I know this is not exactly a GNOME topic, but creating a wiki page that
tells people "If you want to talk to us or work with us, use this..."
would be helpful so we don't make those who came to us legitimately feel
alienated just because they didn't know the ramifications of the tool
they used.  That's all.  :-)

Bryen M Yunashko