Hi there; and first off, thanks a bunch for your thoughts...
Am 19.04.2010 16:54, schrieb Graziano: > Users acquired in this way are not good users if you don't explain them > the four freedoms and the importance of free software, the importance for > you to have FULL control of your computer. But they will never have full control of their computer anyhow, no matter whether or not using software libre, the same way I have no "full control" over my car, my DVD player, my t.v. , ... - I know how to operate these, but I have next to no knowledge about their internals. Especially, if given the choice between a computer "fully working" and a computer "fully under their control", what would they choose? > Why should we point at the worst? Why are you comparing with the iBad? > You should avoid compromises and fight for free software. > I know lots of people who use ubuntu.. with skype... picasa.. and > so on. Maybe. I know many of these who run "proprietary" (free-beer) software on GNU/Linux, but I also know a lot of folks (including server administrators) who try getting "the most freedom" on top of Microsoft Windows. The world's grey, not black-and-white, and I guess we are making a huge mistake by not supporting people striving for "as much freedom as possible" rather than "all-free-or-nothing-free". That's what I fight for - spreading "free software" to as many people as possible to the widest possible extent allowed by their everyday working requirements. > What's the difference between using "some" non free sofware and "all" non > free software in the areas where it is available? As much freedom as possible, given most people out there don't use the computer just to "have a computer" but rather to get some kind of work done. Personally, I dived into GNU/Linux in 1996 after reading the GNU manifesto for the first time, and I figured out that this is the idea I wanted to support. These days, in a cold winter night, I discarded all of my Windows95 installation to make room for a distribution which doesn't even exist anymore these days. Rendered my sound card unusable, but I didn't care until some weeks later I figured out how to patch the kernel and get it to work again. But the point is: (a) At this time being, most of my critical components (display, graphics card, drive controllers, dial-up modem...) were supported and working with GNU/Linux so, asides sound, I had no real loss in functionality. And, more important, (b), I was a computer science minor these days, and most of my daily "work" involved writing lecture notes (LaTeX) or learning data structures and algorithms (Pascal, C) - both fields where GNU/Linux excels at then and now. Things would have been thoroughly different if I, say, was a design student these days, determined to use the (proprietary) tools required in these fields of study to get homework done. This would have made a migration procedure line mine pretty much impossible. Period. :) > Where do you draw the line? I think this generally is a rather personal question each and every user has to answer on his/her own. From my point of view, I prefer freedom, but I still have to pay attention to the fact that, ultimately, I am part of a company and in some sort of responsibility for things to work there. So, it's about compromises here as well. All life is about compromises, each and every day, and software freedom makes no exception in my opinion. Two examples: (1) We run a bunch of IBM servers and we run them using a RHEL derivative and some (non-free) IBM software agent. Why? Because we need a pretty high SLA for these machines, and service delivery in case of trouble, here, depends upon filing certain log information generated by this very agent. The agent is available for RHEL, SLES and Windows. Given the "all-or-nothing" approach of "there's no difference between 'a little' and 'all proprietary' software", I see three options to choose from: - Option a: Agree with the "all-or-nothing" philosophy, completely give up on software libre and run Windows on these boxes. - Option b: Agree with the "all-or-nothing" philosophy, run a stripped down Debian distribution, lose the support, be left out in the cold if anything goes wrong and, in the end, fail to provide our customers with the service level _we_ have to stand up for (we have been close to this in the past, that's why we're talking vendor support and IBM hardware here). - Option c: Go a "middle path", choose some RHEL derivative which is "accepted" to work along the lines of the support contract TOS, and have as much freedom as possible on these systems knowing that 100% freedom is not possible, even though nagging IBM as good as we can by stating that we would _prefer_ to run something else on these boxes. To avoid any comments on that: Yes, we've been searching both local and global vendors to find someone providing mission-critical SLAs support entirely on top of a software libre platform. Tried a local "bare-metal" vendor and suffered. Anyone who knows someone who can do that in Germany, feel free to step forth. (2) As we do document management as a hosted/managed service for construction sites, most of the files we have to deal with are HPGL/2, DWF and some more or less arcane CAD formats (AutoCAD, Microstation, ...). On our workstations we use a (proprietary) multi-format viewer supporting 1000+ file types (not counting these supported by tools like imagemagick), and "online" we do have an embedded JavaBean viewer, proprietary, supporting something next to 500 of these file types (again, imagemagick & friends not supported). Though I have been searching for that literally for the last 7 years, so far I just came across a couple of semi-dead projects doing something resembling HPGL/2 tooling (and providing a _pretty_ rudimentary viewer, definitely not suitable for our internal or even our external users), not even talking about CAD. Again, in niche fields like this, the question pretty often is not "proprietary tool vs. libre tool" but rather "proprietary tool vs. no tool at all". > We must fight non free software, not accept compromises just to get some > "non free" users. Yes. But the consequence of this "all-or-nothing" approach, in the end, leaves a lot of users out "in the cold" with a proprietary-only environment instead of aiming at providing _as many_ users as possible with _as much freedom_ as possible given their personal environment, requirements, use cases, hardware, ... . > Try instead of using a fully free distribution, contribute to it, make it > better. > More people using a fully free distro means that distro will have a big > weight, a big user base and so hardware vendors could choose it instead of > ubuntu. You are right, and yet it doesn't work out. Everyone out here around me who is more deep into GNU/Linux and software libre, by now, has/is spending money on mobile players that support OGG files. Did it make a change so far? No. The majority of people is even worse and goes for things like the iPod which are way more non-free than any mp3 player. Why? Are they stupid not to see the kind of strong platform dependency they are running into? Are they too ignorant not to care? I don't think either of the both is true - they simply make buying decisions based upon different assumptions. We have to show them that freedom is valuable and important _and_ possible in their case. One thing I often experience while at GNU/Linux install parties are communications like this: Me: "Look, this is software libre, now your notebook runs completely without any proprietary software." Them: "But I can't connect to my WLAN anymore, my touchpad gestures seem broken, and I can't load and process clips off my DV cam anymore." Me: "Yes, this is because your WLAN requires proprietary firmware to run, because your touchpad is supported on Windows only and your DV cam uses a proprietary protocol to communicate with a very special piece of software only." Them: "...?" <lengthy discussion about "proprietary" vs. "open"> Them: "So concluding, I see I have to choose whether running a 'software libre' system or doing the work I need/want to do with my machine." Me: "Solution would be, of course, to nag your vendors or buy hardware which supports 'software libre'." Them: "So while by then I am 'free' in terms of software, I am forced to by new hardware for that? Strange perception of 'freedom'..." -> ... and this is where we're talking "all-or-nothing" again. This guy will be lost for "software libre" for quite a long time, left with the nimbus / opinion that it doesn't work. Giving him/her a "mostly free" software which at least has all the hardware supported really might have changed things here. Don't get me wrong: I am not promoting the massive inclusion of binaries like flash player, acrobat reader (why?) or mono/c# in a "software libre" default installation. However, the very moment a user finds half of the hardware in his/her device unsupported lacking firmware in example, I think communicating the idea of "software libre" to end users gets way more difficult because the hurdle to be taken to reach those is rather high. Let them have a good experience. Let's make it smooth and shiny and as great, appealing, "visually stunning" as many people consider MacOS to be. Let them find out that software libre is way more than "just" a lack of binary drivers, the absence of picasa or the fact that the flash player is not Adobe Flash Player. At the moment, I think the fact that every second or so user is about to run some sort of Windows installation inside a VirtualBox or whatever is way more worrying than the fact of having a few binary firmware fragments included in some drivers... Just my €0.02 of course... K. -- Kristian Rink * http://pictorial.zimmer428.net # [email protected] "What was once thought can never be unthought." (Duerrenmatt - 'Die Physiker') _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
