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

[Samuel Thibault]

Richard Stallman, le Sun 20 Jul 2014 23:28:36 -0400, a écrit :
> [[[ 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?

I don't believe anything like that of course, that's why I wouldn't say
"order".  But being left behind brings quite some important rights to
request about it.

>     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.

Which thus means everybody, since anybody may become blind after an
accident for instance.

> However, that doesn't mean the program is useless overall.  It may be
> a tremendous step forward for the community.

If it is a tremendous step forward which leaves part of the population
behind, it's really questionable.  Precisely when it's a tremendous step.
How can you feel when you see the whole population get a tremendous step
and not be able to enjoy it?

> > 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.

And so handicapped people will always only come after...

[...]
> 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.

Not really, no, because the people who will rewrite it from scratch
won't be the same, since the upstream developers will probably not
take the pain to do the rewriting since they don't need the "feature".
The existing software will thus probably remain inacessible.  We'll
thus end up with an accessible fork, putting a burden on the people
maintaing it.  We have seen that happening over the past decade with
webbrowsers for instance.  If upstream is not dealing with it itself,
you end up having to maintain a patched version, which is never really
integrated upstream, and thus not integrated in standard distributions.
Handicapped people can then only use specialized distributions, and not
the mainstream ones.  That reduces their choice consideraly, and it's
not sustainable.

That is actually a ghetto.

I really weigh that word with all its heavy meaning.  This is something
that we have observed in the past decade: there have been various
specialized distributions, and people have enjoyed them, saying that
it was great to see handicapped people using GNU/Linux, which is great
indeed.  But that's a golden cage.  Handicapped people can then only
use the computers on which those were installed, they can only use the
software included in thoses distributions, etc.  "Better than nothing"?
Well, a problem is that quite a few people would then think "job done".
And indeed those distributions are a pain to maintain, and the people
maintaining them don't really plan on taking the time to do more (and
state won't spend the money on doing so since "job is done").  And thus
we never get beyond the ghetto.

> So the first time is not wasted, not even close to wasted.  Meanwhile,
> it may be useful for lots of non-handicaped users.

And handicaped users will just see their peer enjoying it without being
able to use it.  Isn't that ethically questionable?

(I was about to write "allowed" instead of "able"...  Of course
that wouldn't have been correct, but believe it or not, that's what
the feeling of handicapped people tends to be, ask anybody about
inaccessible buildings for instance)

> Thus, I stand by the position that the state has an obligation to
> aid the handicapped by funding accessible free software,

They already do it through various research & development programs,
producing free software.  We haven't yet seen them integrated
mainstream.

I'm sorry, but saying "the state will take care of it" really is not
an answer.  What do you think state did for buildings?  They haven't
only made buildings accessible, they have made it mandatory to build
accessible buildings.

So yes, it's up to upstream authors to do the basic work for
accessibility.

(of course, what "basic work" is has to be reasonable, and it happens
that it is).

Samuel