[Bug 269656] Re: AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP

[Mark Shuttleworth]

pj wrote:
> Firefox also *offers optional* web site information services, such as
> blah blah....
>
> Instead of:
>
> Firefox also *uses* web site information services....
>   
Looks like an improvement to me, I'll pass on the suggestion to Mozilla
folks who may not be watching this thread.

> On grannie, though, I think you  may want to think from a different
> standpoint.  I acknowledge your amazing skill and energy at mobilizing
> and spreading acceptance of GNU/Linux on the desktop. And part of that
> skill is your ability to figure out what makes it accessible to grannie
> too.
>
> So it's natural you think about her and what she needs.  I surely don't
> want to undermine those special abilities you've demonstrated.  I admire
> them.
>
> The only caution I feel is this:  the first goal is to provide a free
> and open source system.  After that comes usability, ease of use,
> convenience, protection of users, etc.
>   
Yes, I agree. It's that feeling of being part of something profoundly
different, and liberating, that makes us tick. And the "make users life
easier" theme is a very slippery slope, that can be used to justify the
whole shebang - Skype, Flash, you name it. Walking the fine line between
selling out and actively furthering the cause of free software through
some pragmatism is possibly the toughest thing we do, and I don't think
we can claim to be supernaturally insightful or good at it, we have to
question both our current and sometimes our past positions, regularly.

The fundamentalist "live free or die" approach sounds much easier,
though the problem there is that it's hard to agree on the precise
definition of "fundamentally free" - look at the disagreements between
the DFSG and the FSF on that front. We have Debian and gNewSense and a
few others, all of whom define themselves as being quite fundamentalist
and all of whom have different definitions! So we could adopt a position
of absolutism on this in an attempt to make our lives easier, and then
still find ourselves in tough debates with other folks that have equally
absolute views, just slightly different ones :-)

Mark

-- 
AN IRRELEVANT LICENSE IS PRESENTED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE ON STARTUP
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/269656
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