Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Perfectionism

[Jean Louis]

You know Dima, I cannot argument to generalism: "many people",
"developers run away", "bunch of stubborn people", etc. Just bring up
specific arguments. I did not see one.

When trying to judge about the group and its efforts, I am always
watching on results, and not what appeals to me personally or not. I
don't mind how people talk, and what kind of flames are there, it is
all human. The mailing lists are not a final product of the FSF, it is
an insight into past communication processes. Those are not final
products, but development of it.

I am watching on fine results here:
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

There are more than 10 free software distributions, endorsed by the
FSF, and all in the spirit and by foundation as envisioned by GNU
operating system. There are happy people using the free software.

I have made many people happy by installing free software for them.

So results are what matters to me.

Some are going to support it, some are going to hate it, I could not
care less.

Jean Louis


On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 09:15:32PM +0200, Dima Krasner wrote:
> ---- On Thu, 10 Nov 2016 19:09:55 +0200 Jean Louis  wrote ---- 
> >I really don't see strictness there. And I fully understand that 
> >somebody who did not research the definitions of words, and in general 
> >about free software -- that such person may get impression of 
> >strictness. It requires learning.
> 
> Many people who don't know what free software and the FSF are see discussions 
> like this one and may get the false impression of strictness.
> 
> >Finally, the GNU GPL license, the free software world's license, is 
> >according to media most widely used license for software, in the whole 
> >world. If so, then those developers did understand the reasons and 
> >purposes of the free software. 
> 
> Don't forget more permissive, non-copyleft licenses like MIT and Apache have 
> conquered the open source scene (e.g. GitHub) and this trend also affects 
> free software, as a subset of open source software.
> 
> When developers run away from free software and the GPL because they don't 
> like the free software movement's attitude for whatever reason (read: bad 
> first impression due to TL;DR of fsf.org), we lose man hours and working 
> hands.
> 
> >The words debian or things like "-debian" are nowhere forbidden to say 
> >or mention. 
> 
> I don't see why a distro cannot put a link to Purism's site on its homepage, 
> even if it's unclear whether or not it is endorsed by the developers. After 
> all, Trisquel's packages mention Ubuntu in many places.
> 
> >You should put attention on differentiation, and not equation. Not 
> >everything is equal to everything. Debian GNU/Linux as distribution 
> >and movement is not equal to things like "-debian". 
> 
> And putting a link to a site does not mean endorsement.
> 
> >Further, with the generalization, you do not bring up arguments. 
> 
> First impression matters. The FSF has always been bad in PR matters, IMHO. 
> Again, as I said before: those who don't know the free software movement 
> might see mailing list threads like this one, their length and the arguments 
> discussed, then decide the entire free software movement is a bunch of 
> stubborn people they cannot work with.
> 
> Dima