Re: [Audio-video] http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2013/Samuel_Thibault_Jean-Philippe_Mengual-Freedom_0_for_everybody_really_.text

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

On 2014-07-18 at 12:36, Dora Scilipoti wrote:
> On 18/07/2014 01:26, Garreau, Alexandre wrote:
>> For instance, it wouldn’t has been so usefull that Emacs were free if
>> it weren’t so powerfull. The fact a useless software is free doesn’t
>> have any importance. The importance a software is free is
>> proportional to it’s usefullness.
>
> I'm not sure this is what you actually mean, but I'm concerned those
> statements seem to claim it is acceptable for a program to be
> proprietary if it does not comply with accessibility
> requirements.

No, quite the contrapositive: like Samuel underlined, it’s a lot worse
for a program to be proprietary (or not having free alternatives) if
it’s accessible, or powerful, or just very useful in any manner, than if
it weren’t. On another hand, a free software, by its potential tendency
to a more open architecture (like the one of Unix, Emacs, or other
powerful softwares) would better profit from the fact being
powerful/accessible/semantic.

Today it doesn’t make sense using free software for some blind people
who, without an iPhone, couldn’t move in their city. In that context
accepting the Apple hegemony is more liberating than not doing so, just
because we didn’t made free software enough accessible. For those
people, non accessible is not only harder to use, it’s *impossible*. The
important difference with non-localized, undocumented or complex
software, is that here the user can still use the free software, it will
just be harder. In the case of a non accessible software the user just
can’t, even if she want it really really strongly. So we’re in a
situation where we can’t just say “it’s for your freedom, try harder to
learn to use GNU/Linux”, or “buy a free-software compliant wifi
card”. Because if you’re blind, you can’t just try harder to see or buy
eyes (yet). Thus accessibility is a need a lot more urgent than
internationalization or documentation.

It is more important not only because these people just has not choice,
but also because accessible, hence semanticly-designed software is a lot
more powerful, a lot more flexible, a lot more extensible, and, with not
so much supplementary work (even less), allows to do a lot of exciting
things (like a diff tree with real-time cryptography-based P2P
collaborative vectorial/interpreted music or image development system
with P2P cache support… imagine what mankind could do with a such tool,
especially if that includes every human being, even including disabled
ones).

> That is like saying it is OK to abolish the "freedom of movement"
> right in democratic states that do not provide adequate means of
> travel for the disabled,

That’s not what we’re saying, but we’re saying that if we promote free
travel as a way of helping liberating mankind, adequate means of travel
for the disabled *should* be taken into consideration, especially if
that doesn’t mean redevelopping specific means of travel but just
optimizing and designing better the existing one so that we can make
them a lot more easy to develop and a lot more powerful for users.

> and it is useless for people who don't have the money to pay for the
> ticket.

…if we also extend the freedom of movement to the debate on the
relationship between individuals freedom, money and society we’re going
to go too far away from the initial debate :)

> I'm sure you would agree with me that those are completely different
> issues.

Yes. Indeed those are *parallel* issues. But they’re still linked. As I
said here (<http://sympa.liberte0.org/sympa/arc/liste/2014-06/msg00001.html>, 
unfortunately in French), it is stupid to argue the
importance of free travel without special technical means of travel like
trains, ships, etc. That’s what make primitivist anarchists ideas
absurds and that’s why Marx where so excited about trains, even if
trains didn’t abolish frontiers, as he thought. The social freedom, the
right is useless without the ability/capacity. And the more
ability/capacity/technical-freedom we give, the more the right/social
freedom we give is important.

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