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

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

    > But your blindness does not make you ethically entitled to order a
    > specific person do specific work to help you out.

    Well, I wouldn't say "order", but quite close.

How close?  What power do you believe you are entitled to?
When someone releases a useful free program that isn't accessible,
how would you have the community react?

    I agree that we shouldn't say that accessibility is part of freedom 0 as
    you defined it.

Ok, but the name of your organization implicitly makes that claim.
That's the problem.

If you are willing to change your rhetoric, which includes that name,
maybe we can cooperate with you.

    Can we instead say for instance that freedom 0 is useless without
    accessibility?

No.  We can say that the program in its current form is useless for
the handicapped absent the accessibility they need.  However, that
doesn't mean the program is useless overall.  It may be a tremendous
step forward for the community.

    Accessibility is not just a matter of patching over the software.  Doing
    it that way is unproductive at best: one would have to continuously
    send patches to free software as they are created and developped, and
    accessibility will thus always lag behind.

Better late than never.

Ideally, free software developers will design the accessible way from
the start.  But if a certain project doesn't do that, it's not a
disaster, it's merely less than ideal.

Even if the best way to give that program the missing accessibility is
to rewrite it from scratch, every job is a lot easier the second time
than the first time.  So the first time is not wasted, not even close
to wasted.  Meanwhile, it may be useful for lots of non-handicaped
users.

Thus, I stand by the position that the state has an obligation to
aid the handicapped by funding accessible free software, but that
with individual developers, the most you can do is encourage them.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.