[ubuntu-us-ma] [Fwd: [FSF] Launching the Windows7sins Campaign - Join us Wednesday in Boston]

[Martin Owens]

Mike,

The Free Software principles are _the_ rationale for implementing open
source methodologies for the vast proportion of people. They understand
that it is about control, not about how good the tools are. If you can't
control your software it really doesn't matter how good it is.

Now, it may be that as well as accepting people's choice to use non-free
software, we should also accept other people's rationales for promoting
Free Software alternatives.

I know having political and social rationales aren't comfortable to
practicalists. But we have to accept them as valid and try not to
rubbish ideas about legal, political and social interactions that happen
outside of the purely technical scope.

Of course I don't think event is very good, it's still fairly negative
instead of focusing on the positives of the message they want to
communicate. But then again when was the FSF ever good at positive
social events, we can't even get them to tell us when the Software
Freedom Day will be in Boston.

Martin,

On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 12:33 -0400, leftyfb wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> "as we conduct a ceremonial trashing of proprietary software."
> 
> Do we really need to be part of such things? I generally try to stay
> away from trashing other OS's and any other technologies as a means to
> promote my personal preference. I look at the ubuntu community as being
> above such below the belt tactics to promote the OS and OSS in general.
> Focus on the positives of what you're promoting instead of the negatives
> of your competitor and you'll be more respected by the general public.