Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC's DRM Iplayer windows only

[MJ Ray]

"Dave Crossland" <address@hidden> wrote:
> I'm sad that people don't know how to "mute" the threads they find
> boring other than asking to censor the participants.

The above point was repeated three times in that one mail, which was
rather unnecessary.

We can mute the thread for all googlemail users by sending them known
spam with forged headers that make it look like part of the thread.

In general, be liberal and accept that not everyone filters mail from
their local user groups.  Be conservative in what you generate.

> I was hoping they would specify why they think the answers in that FAQ
> are inadequate answers their objections. [...]

The GNU/Linux FAQ is inadequate because it ignores frequently asked
questions like "Is this just credit-seeking by the GNU project?" "Why
does FSF still reject some groups who call it GNU/Linux?" and "How
have groups been persuaded to call it GNU/Linux?"

Some of the questions there that actually are frequently-asked ones,
such as the X11-Apache-Perl one, have weak answers and don't give
references to support the claims.  An answer sounds like mere opinion
even when it could be more quantitative.

Also, much of it focuses on what the GNU project doesn't or didn't do,
rather than what it does.  It's a rather negative and grating tone.

Finally, it's unstructured (compare with the GPL FAQ) and rather
random.  There are lots of questions there but I suspect many of them
are relatively uncommon.  It's mostly a list of "Questions I Wish Were
Frequently Asked" as far as I can tell.

So there you have it: that FAQ is a random list of weak answers to
unasked questions in an irritating tone.  I don't remember it ever
helping me in persuading people to name GNU.  Reposting chunks of it
seems to border on trolling in many free software forums.

And you may not fix those bugs, because it's verbatim copying terms.
Once you are aware of the problems, you need to wait until you have
forgotten the FAQ and can write something which isn't a derivation.

Hope that helps,
-- 
MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
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