On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 21:18 +0100, Joachim Noreiko wrote: > I used the expression light-heartedly, and I meant our > own recruitment drives in that document too. > > I would suggest adding to 'A.4. Joining the > GNOME Project' a new paragraph after the first two, > briefly explaining the benefits of free software to > the average user. I'm sure I've read articles and > blogs about this, but basically freedom to alter code > yourself -- not very useful to end-user -- freedom > from format lock-in and forced upgrades -- more > interesting. that sort of thing :)
This is important. Those of us who are programmers can get very hung up on the very specific freedom of being able to modify the software yourself. But free software is so much more. It also means you can use the software how you want, and share it with others. And that's just the core freedoms. From those freedoms we get a lot of other (specific) freedoms. And these are the freedoms that start really meaning something to most people. For example, free software, by its nature, is not going to lock you into proprietary file formats or data-exchange protocols. You just can't keep a file format a secret when you show everybody the source code for handling it. That means you can actually stop using my software if it sucks, and you don't have to leave behind all your data if you do. (And it is *YOUR* data, not mine.) Eben Moglen gave a very inspiring speech at the Red Hat Summit. He talked about free software in a way that I think a lot of people can really relate to. Watch it: http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/videos/ Go ahead, I'll wait. He talks about freedom and free software without coming across as a programmer. Because, you know, he's not a programmer. He talks about freedom from a perspective that non-programmers relate to. So when we talk about freedom in our documentation, that's the kind of talk we want. Because sometimes you just have to remind people why freedom is so important. -- Shaun _______________________________________________ gnome-doc-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-doc-list
