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Excellent topic;
thank you for bringing it up. Avoiding negative language will help us become BETTER ambassadors of FOSS. Negative language creates negative feelings about us! We can simply take lessons from other industries facing the same problem. For example, let's see the language of small "natural cosmetics" when they try to fight against "synthetic" dominant competitors. They keep on pointing out what they do better, to the Customers benefit: "no parabens, no additives, no chemicals, only natural ingredients" etc. They do not name or imply their competitor. They just repeat what is "better for you" and "does not harm you". So, to come back to software: we could use strong laconic statements, such as: "Debian sends no telemetry reports". It is true, everybody understands it and it is not aggressive. Persistence and patience are necessary, too. People need time to contemplate and then change; they cannot change overnight. Is it possible to make a "collection" of nice, positive statements about FOSS and then distribute them to all members? I thing that some of us, including me, would need some help, in "expressing in a positive way"! KR Ioli On 26/7/2017 1:14 μμ, Daniel Pocock
wrote:
This was raised by Jonas in the thread about proprietary software, but it is a completely different topic, so I'm starting this thread about it: "we also don't do negative campaigning overall. We tell people they should use Free Software; we don't tell them what software they should not be using."The reality is, many sites and software vendors deceive users with a promise of security. E.g. when a user accesses Gmail, they see the padlock icon in their browser, so doesn't that mean Gmail is secure? If Gmail is secure and free software is secure, the user may ask why make the effort to change to free software? Is it negative to say, for example, "Debian doesn't send 10,000 telemetry reports per day" and hope the user realizes we are comparing to Microsoft Windows 10? If I was in somebody's house and I saw their kitchen had caught fire, should I avoid talking about it because it is a negative topic and they might feel bad? Or should I warn somebody? What about a hidden risk that most people can't see, for example, if you were an official who knew about the contamination[1] in the water in Flint, Michigan, should you keep your mouth shut? Or would people thank you for sharing negative information? It would be really interesting to hear perspectives people have about how to introduce threats without appearing to be negative. For example, what narrative do we need to use to give proprietary software the same urgency as a burning kitchen or contaminated water? Regards, Daniel 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion --
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