On 3/19/06, M. Fioretti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 13:17:29 PM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot > ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > > Another part is lack of involvment of disabled persons. > [...] > > > If disabled people are unhappy with FOSS, they need to get involved. > > But they will never get involved until the FOSS community looks at the > problem in these terms. Or, more exactly, makes the effort to truly > understand the way everybody else (not just disabled ones) considers > software.
Well - that's cutting at the very heart and soul of the open source movement. Do it yourself - convince someone to do it for you (with money, bardering, or excellent convincing skills) - or shut up. Making a good case for why something should be added, removed, or changed has nothing to do with making software actually come into existance. Look at the recent completely fruitless debate about easter eggs. Lots of people had a lot to say about the stupid easter eggs - but nothing changed. Unless you code it yourself or pay/convince someone else to - it's not going to change. Heck the only reason as many IZ bugs get fixed as they do is because Sun pays people to fix them. A vast majority of the coding for the successful open source projects (OOo, Firefox, even Linux) is done by paid programmers. Disabled people are not unhappy with FOSS. Ditto for most non disabled > computer users. They are simply unhappy with anything different than > what they already know how to use. If Massachusetts has said "we will > switch to FrameMaker or WordPerfect" they would have thrown the very > same tantrum. Period. I agree at least particially here. If Mass has said "All state officies must use MSOffice on MS Windows" - people would have gotten upset - even though well over half are doing so already. Any time a body says "you must use ___" - people complain. Part of it is about change. Part of it is about control. I don't think the tantrum would have been the same (the accessibility angle wouldn't have mattered when going from one priopriatary software with excellent accessiblity to another). But there would have been a tantrum. Other people, disabled or not, simply don't give a rat's ass about the > software license, and very often don't give a rat's ass about its > price. Read again what Pietrosanti and the others said. We spend hours > in these forums convincing each other that we have more freedom with > GPL stuff, and they just confirm that *all* their freedom, or lack > thereof, has NOTHING to do with software licenses. Absolutely. Very few people care about the licenses. On this list - the majority do - but this list is not representative of the world's population as a whole - or even computer users as a whole. We are a specialized group that choose to be associated with an open source project - that fact in itself makes our view different than the vast majority of the world. > I'm not saying all this is right, all the contrary. I have criticized > explicitly this attitude in the article. But until one denies that the > real problem is this, nothing serious will change. I'm confused by your last statement here. Could you explain or reword this paragraph? I'm just having problems understanding what you meant. -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ Because everyone loves free software! http://www.chadwsmith.com/ Because, admit it, you've got nothing better to do right now...
