Re: [libreplanet-discuss] New GNU

[Michał 'rysiek' Woźniak]

Dnia środa, 9 maja 2012 o 21:40:13 Richard Stallman napisał(a):
>     Action comes first, then blah blah about values, and changing
> the blah blah IS important - but talk of values is a shadow of the
> primary thing, the changed behavior.
> 
> People's behavior comes out of their values, and the values are
> broader since they apply to many areas.  For instance, if you value
> freedom, that will manifest itself in many different kinds of
> behavior.

Problem I see with that is that people in general and en masse do not, 
from my experience, act consciously and coherently based on values. 
They do have knee-jerk reactions based on some values important to 
them; and at the same time they often state they heed values different 
from those that caused those knee-jerk reactions.

There are noble exceptions to this rule, of course.

> Thus, the more important goal is to encourage people to value
> freedom, not just one kind of behavior or another.

I agree that the best we could achieve is to have people value 
freedom. I do not think, however, that trying to change people's 
values in the hope they use Free Software as a result is the most 
effective course of action. It will work with those few noble 
exceptions I referred to above, but not to the so-called general 
population.

Hence, I think we should act the other way around - get people to use 
Free Software, and *then* show them, why values it's based on are 
better.

Mozilla did not get people on Firefox by preaching the values behind 
it, but by creating the best browser then available, getting people to 
use it, and then telling people about the values. Obviously they made 
many (a bit too many, I might add) compromises to that end that I 
would not make, still - this example is relevant here, I believe.

And I do think Free Software *is* technically better many a time. So 
this vector is open to us.

> To refer to discussion as "blah blah" is rather dismissive.  Since
> discussion is vitally important for communicating values, I think
> it is counterproductive to refer to it that way.

I think "blah blah" was just a "<placeholder>" here, not meant to be 
dismissive nor floccinaucinihilipilificating. I do, however, agree 
with you here.

-- 
Pozdrawiam
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak

Fundacja Wolnego i Otwartego Oprogramowania

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