I believe in the values of this freedom myself, but never use it as an argument when I want to switch someone to GNU/Linux.
Explaining to these people about freedom is important even if it doesn't bring immediate results in the sense of convincing them to switch. The most important thing that the proprietary software world teaches people is a way of looking at the question of choosing software. Consider convenience, reliability, efficiency, price...but don't consider freedom and social solidarity. It is natural, therefore, that the easiest way to persuade someone to switch to GNU/Linux is to cite convenience, reliability, etc. Teaching people to judge the question differently is harder, and takes time. So please don't conclude this is a failure just because it doesn't "work" quite so fast. Maybe a person will need five discussions to conclude that freedom and social solidarity are important. If you raise this issue along with the practical benefits, that would be the first of five. You may not see results immediately, but it is still important work. I'm all for making GNOME work with free software movements to advance the freedom of its target audience, particularly in the DRM and software patent issues. I'm just not convinced that we have to expose it in the face of the user in every single place. They simply don't care. Some do care, and the rest don't care -yet-. We need to look for ways to show them that there is something here to care about. It is especially important to use the opportunoties to show them very efficiently, such as on a web site or an "About" box. Even if it only sparks an interest in 0.1% of the people that see it, that could easily amount to hundreds of people, even thousands over a few years. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list