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

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

Le 31/07/2014 à 00h47, Richard Stallman 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. ]]]
>
>     I would like to go on discussion about some points that I don't 
>     understand yet well. In particular, to explain why, for me, 
>     accessibility isn't a functionality. Because a functionality is a task 
>     that can do a program (or not do). In this meaning, as you mentioned,  
>     the capacity to vocalize the screen is a functionality.
>
> Everything that a program can do, that some person wants it to do, is
> a functionality.
>
> But there is no point arguing about the meaning of "functionality",
> because all that does is distort the meaning of what I said.  In
> effect, you are trying to block clear communication between us.
>
> Even if an argument could prove that the word "functionality"
> should mean something different, it would not change my position.  I
> would just state it with some other word.

Yes, thus I think that you shouldn’t interpret that as criticizing your
position but the words you use. Because it seems for several persons
“functionality” is something optional, inessential, and thus reducing
for accessibility. So a such word can be confusing and lead to mistakes
and misunderstandings.

>     And if it doesn't seem a disaster, it can become one in some 
>     circumstances. 1st, when French State chooses LibreOffice and refuses to 
>     use another thing, it prevents many people to work for it due to 
>     inaccessibility of the suite.
>
> Much worse things can happen.  For instance, if the French State
> chooses Microsoft Office, it subjects all the employees to Microsoft's
> power, destroys the computational sovereignty of France, and directs
> the whole country towards nonfree software.
>
> We will campaign with all our efforts for France to use LibreOffice
> or some other available free program.

You misunderstood the problem: the problem isn’t that France did use a
free software/non accessible software, the problem is that this free
software *weren’t accessible*, while it should have been. We can’t ask
people to use proprietary software because it’s accessible, as we can’t
ask to use non-accessible software because it’s free. Both *should* be
considered. Because we can’t accept that all a category of population
get spontaneously excluded of its work, loose it and loose its mean to
eat and live. At least government should have continued to pay them
while trying to make it accessible, or at least trying to search an
accessible free software.

What we want to achieve is certainly not to promote proprietary
software. That is ethically unacceptable. What we want here is to
promote accessibility in free software (and also free software in
accessibility) so that a such absurd and dangerous situation doesn’t
happens again. It is not acceptable that trying to get freedom and
autonomy with free software we make some others loose it. It’s an ironic
and really sad thing that should never happens that using a proprietary
software could be a good thing, it just shouldn’t happen at all… but it
does, and we have to change that.

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