On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 06:35:59PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote: > On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 4:36 PM, Steve Litt <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > the distinction he strongly made was that Open Source didn't prioritize > > freedom, but instead prioritized convenience and value to business, and he > > felt that was a bad thing. > > > > You didn't dream this, it's what he says. > > The problem with the *a priori* approach that people must be won over to > valuing their freedom first is that it doesn't win everyone. And Richard > doesn't have a viable approach for the people it doesn't win. The problem > with the Open Source approach is that some folks may indeed never get any > farther than appreciating the convenience and value to business. But I > figure that if we win some of them over to understanding Free Software, > it's a win.
Dear Bruce, That's a god point, indeed. If we all share the same motivation (i.e., to convey the importance of guaranteeing a fair set of digital freedoms to digital citizens), then the differences between the two narratives reduce in fact to the way we approach new users and adopters. For some of them the "freedom first" narrative is the most appropriate, while for others the "efficiency first" narrative is the winning one. Fair enough, if the final objective is to let them appreciate the importance of digital freedoms. But we must ackowledge that, more often than not, even Open Source evangelists focus almost exclusively on the convenience and efficiency of the free software model, and never make the next step. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is what has effectively led to the identification of the "tiny virtual fracture" between FS and OS, which reflects the fact that different people can stay in the same community for different reasons, and with slightly different motivations. In the specific case of systemd, the "this is technically superior" narrative has been perused to superseed more basic (and more important) aspects, which are human, social, and ethical before than technical. Ironically, systemd is under LGPL-2.1+, so it's not a matter of licenses (and never has been), rather a matter of attitude, motivations, and objectives. HND KatolaZ -- [ ~.,_ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - GLUGCT -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ "+. katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it ] [ @) http://kalos.mine.nu --- Devuan GNU + Linux User ] [ @@) http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia -- GPG: 0B5F062F ] [ (@@@) Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ ]
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