From kde-promo Wed Nov 16 23:23:53 2005 From: Mihnea Capraru Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:23:53 +0000 To: kde-promo Subject: Re: [kde-promo] About the Free Software Association Message-Id: <20051116232353.17104.qmail () web26309 ! mail ! ukl ! yahoo ! com> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-promo&m=113218350730141 This short discussion has discussion has been started by one of my previous posts. I wanted to reply to each message separately, but it seems to make more sense to do it like this. If this breaks the mailing list's etiquette, please tell me, I'm new :) I wrote: "We don't say 'Free Software' in the first paragraph because we assume the target reader to not know what this is about. However, a link to the FSF should be placed at a prominent location to underline KDE's commitment to software freedom." Tom Chance replied: "I admit a personal bias here, in that I support KDE because it promotes free software. But this is a really bad decision. Mention the phrase with a link to the FSF definition page, don't be ashamed of it. That fact that KDE is free software is one of the key advantages." I agree with this entire paragraph, except mentioning the phrase 'free software' (or 'open source', for that matter) within the first paragraph. This is not because somebody should be ashamed of it, it's just because it doesn't deliver an understandable message to the prospective new user (regardless who the target user actually is - except the case when the main target is the Linux/Unix user) KDE's free nature is indeed one of its key advantages, but is this the sort of advantage one would expect a user to buy into? KIO slaves are a key advantage too, but saying KIO slaves in an introductory material would certainly scare some guys off. And since people tend to know what software is, while not knowing what free software is, wouldn't it be more efficient to first attract them to KDE, and after that educate them in the spirit of freedom? That would be like throwing seeds on a fertile soil, as opposed to throwing them on sand. As for political affiliation, I hope that sporting a link (maybe a banner) at a visible location would solve this matter. Aaron Seigo replied: "aside from the fact the FSF is not exactly KDE-friendly (unofficially they are tacitly supportive of us because we are Free Software, officially they recommend other software), not everyone out there holds with the philosophies and means of the FSF. they are more political than KDE is and i don't think we need nor want the association such a link on the home page would bring." I'm afraid there is already a link there, the first sentence goes something like "KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment", whereby 'Free Software' is a link to the FSF. I think that used to be Open Source, and than it changed. I'm quite aware that the FSF has a dark and quite dirty history with regard toi its relationships to KDE. But the Open Source Initiative seems to be even worse in this respect, so why link to them? Maybe the best solution would be designing KDE's own software freedom manifest. and "in face, i wouldn't use the term Free Software as it has all sorts of odd connotations in english. Open Source is more widely known and clearer." This is indeed a strong ambiguity, but maybe it can be partially solved by calling the link 'Software Freedom". Freedom does not make anybody think of freeware, I suspect. Tom Chance replied: "Personally I always find this (common) view very odd. Open Source is only known to some geeks and IT managers, and the name makes no sense without explaining all about source code. I've always found explaining freedom much easier to non-geeks... this is in all kinds of crazy things I do locally with absolutely normal people in the arts and activist worlds. Time yourself explaining "you're free to do X, Y, Z" versus "the source code, which is ... is open, which means ..., which allows you to do X, Y, Z" :D" It is indeed easy to explain 'Free Software' to artists or activists, but these people are already a special group, and what holds of them does not hold of a majority. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind targeting the artists at all :) Leaving these things aside, I suppose this topic has much more to do with politics than promoting. To sum up it's relevancy for the promotional efforts: it makes sense to use KDE in order to attract people to software freedom, not viceversa. Mihnea ___________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de _______________________________________________ This message is from the kde-promo mailing list. Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on or temporarily stop your subscription.