Hello everyone,
I would to present a project proposal to you, which can be found below and also ask you for your input on the proposal.
Regards,
Stephan
-- PROJECT PROPOSAL: FreeAlternatives (LibreAlternatives?)
Lately, I've again and again stumbled accross a problem. People have been asking for Free Software Alternatives to proprietary programs. I am sure that most of you know this problem and there is no way of actually knowing every single alternative out there. Now this is the point where 'FreeAlternatives' drops in.
The idea is to have a database containing information on which software package is a Free Software alternative for one or more proprietary software packages. There are some problems with such a database and one of the major problems is probably keeping maintaining the database.
But there is a possible solution for this. FreeAlternatives should be a community-driven project, asking users to contribute and also enabling them to do so. Now this could lead to invalid data quite easily. Here an approval system for new submissions comes into play.
THE APPROVAL SYSTEM
First of all, every user has to register to add new entries or modify exitsing data. Upon registering a user gets a score assigned, which should be 0 points for normal users and maybe a few points for users known to be part to the Free Software movement (ie. users registering with a gnu.org, fsf.org, fsfeurope.org, fsfe.org, etc. email address).
Now, if user A, with a score of 0, submits an entry the entry should not be added straight away, but rather be added to some sort of 'to be reviewed' queue.
User B, with at least a score of user A's score plus one, sees the submission which needs to be reviewed in the queue, reviews it and either approves it as being a valid entry, or marks it as invalid. Whatever action user B has taken now, there is still need to review if his decision was correct.
At this pont user C, having a score of at least user B's score plus one again, sees the entry in the queue and either approves it or marks it invalid.
If the submission has been approved and marked as valid it is added to the database and made 'world-visible'. If not it is deleted from the database again. Both user A and B get, if their decision has been 'correct', a point added to their score making visible that they 'know what they are doing'. One might also want to remove a point from a user's score for adding invalid entries (and also for users approving such entries).
This method should make sure that the data in the database is correct.
I also think that having some score-treshold, which cuts down the need for two approvals to one for experienced users might be a good idea. This should make it easier for such experienced users to add entries or modify data.
As I mentioned earlier, only users who want to add entries to the database have to be registered. Read-only usage is possible for everyone without the need for registering.
DATABASE CONTENTS
Now, what data should be in the database? For starters, one needs the name of the Free Software package, an URL to the project's page and a list of proprietary packages it can replace. Additionally, one might want to list the license of the package and a brief summary of its functions.
It is also possible that the information changes and thus there should be a way of changing information in the database similar to adding a new entry. Approvals for such changes should be needed as well to ensure that the database stays 'clean'.
ACCESSING THE DATABASE
How should the database be accessible? Obviously, there should be a web-interface and a command-line client accessing the database via the net. However, I think that providing all information the database contains to users and also having some kind of incremental update method is a good idea. As the software running the 'system' should (has to) be Free Software this enables users to have their own mirror of the whole database for offline use in an organization for example.
Last but not least, why am I informing you about this project? Quite simple, I would really like to make this project community-driven as a whole. I want your input such as questions on things that are unclear and your ideas on how things could be better or are plain wrong in your opinion. If enough people think this is a good idea there will also be need of hackers, translators (?) and any other help available when starting the project.
So finally, I would like to ask you for your input and would also like to start a discussion on this idea.
Stephan Peijnik sp@fsfe.org wrote:
The idea is to have a database containing information on which software package is a Free Software alternative for one or more proprietary software packages. [...] the name of the Free Software package, an URL to the project's page and a list of proprietary packages it can replace. [...]
I'm surprised that this comes from someone @fsfe.
In short: catalogues of non-free software are considered harmful.
I think this is a project that will present free software as a poor relation whenever the non-free software is better-known, because two software packages are almost never identical. That does not always mean that one is better than the other - they may just do things in different ways and it may frustrate users who knew the legacy proprietary package when they have to relearn.
It is not that relearning is frustrating, but that unexpected relearning is frustrating. A list of non-free-software and free software "equivalents" will probably create a false expectation that no learning will be needed if you knew the legacy software listed. I have tried it a few times in the past and now think it should be avoided. Please, learn from my mistakes.
I don't see how this project helps free software:
1. If the non-free software is better-known than the free software, it seems better to promote the free software independently of it instead of spending effort putting it into this catalogue. Adding it to this catalogue cannot itself make it better-known than the non-free one.
2. If the free software is better-known, adding it to this catalogue would enable people who have tried it to find proprietary alternatives.
Instead, could you list common file extensions or MIME types and list the applications which can open them? A free software filext.com.
Could this be shared with mailcap-like files? (Do gnome and kde still use them? GNUstep has NSMIMETypes.)
Finally, I don't see the point of listing drivers or plugins by their non-free equivalents instead of just by the hardware device (drivers) or the file type (plugins).
Hope that starts some discussion,
On 1/4/07, MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
In short: catalogues of non-free software are considered harmful.
At least it is often harmful to me not having such a catalog. We have over 10000 users and they ask me often for proprietary software products and sometimes I do not have enough information to suggest an open source alternative. I am aware of 2 sites that can help: Wikipedia and www.osalt.com which is not community driven. Swik.net is helpful too but it does not refer to proprietary software or file formats.
What about enhancing the Wikipedia content? Isn't that good enough? We should discuss how to enhance it because there are different pages that needs to be considered: product pages, file format pages and more general pages like 'Flowchart' and such...
Regards, Torsten
You might also find http://www.gnu.org/gnu/for-windows.html helpful, it doesn't list open source alternatives, but only free software alternatives for some programs running on Windows.
On 1/4/07, Alfred M. Szmidt ams@gnu.org wrote:
You might also find http://www.gnu.org/gnu/for-windows.html helpful, it doesn't list open source alternatives, but only free software alternatives for some programs running on Windows.
That gives me an error 404.
Torsten
Hi,
Alfred M. Szmidt schrieb:
You might also find http://www.gnu.org/gnu/for-windows.html helpful, it doesn't list open source alternatives, but only free software alternatives for some programs running on Windows.
I just get a 404 Not Found error for that page.
Best wishes Michael
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 14:20 +0100, Michael Kallas wrote:
Alfred M. Szmidt schrieb:
You might also find http://www.gnu.org/gnu/for-windows.html helpful, it doesn't list open source alternatives, but only free software alternatives for some programs running on Windows.
I just get a 404 Not Found error for that page.
He means http://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html , I suspect.
Which does contain a list of non-free apps they replace :)
Cheers,
Alex.
Hi,
Alex Hudson schrieb:
He means http://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html , I suspect.
Ah, thanks! :)
Which does contain a list of non-free apps they replace :)
Yes, I would prefer something task-oriented: Text -> word processing -> LaTex/OpenOffice.org... or something similar.
Bye Michael
Which does contain a list of non-free apps they replace :)
Yes, I would prefer something task-oriented: Text -> word processing -> LaTex/OpenOffice.org... or something similar.
The Free Software Directory has something like that: Text creation and manipulation --> Word processing, http://www.gnu.org/directory/
You might also find http://www.gnu.org/gnu/for-windows.html helpful, it doesn't list open source alternatives, but only free software alternatives for some programs running on Windows.
I just get a 404 Not Found error for that page.
Sorry, I meant: http://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html
Am Donnerstag, dem 04. Jan 2007 schrieb Torsten Werner:
In short: catalogues of non-free software are considered harmful.
At least it is often harmful to me not having such a catalog. We have over 10000 users and they ask me often for proprietary software products and sometimes I do not have enough information to suggest an open source alternative. I am aware of 2 sites that can help: Wikipedia and www.osalt.com which is not community driven. Swik.net is helpful too but it does not refer to proprietary software or file formats.
How about Tuxfutter? (German site) http://www.tuxfutter.de/wiki/Hauptseite
It's a software catalogue for migrating from Windows to [GNU/]Linux. Unfortunately they are not so concerned about the freeness of the software.
There is also an English section http://www.tuxfutter.de/en/wiki/Main_Page
...but most of the content is in the German section, sorry.
On 1/4/07, MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
In short: catalogues of non-free software are considered harmful.
I agree.
On 1/4/07, Stephan Peijnik sp@fsfe.org wrote:
Lately, I've again and again stumbled accross a problem. People have been asking for Free Software Alternatives to proprietary programs. I am sure that most of you know this problem and there is no way of actually knowing every single alternative out there. Now this is the point where 'FreeAlternatives' drops in.
I think we shouldn't present *every* single alternative to proprietary programs, but only a polished and well organized list of good free software programs.
Couldn't be this part of the advocacy project ???
--- Stefano Spinucci FSFE fellow
"Stefano Spinucci" virgo977virgo@gmail.com wrote:
I think we shouldn't present *every* single alternative to proprietary programs, but only a polished and well organized list of good free software programs.
Couldn't be this part of the advocacy project ???
Actually, why not work on persuading FSF to release the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory http://directory.fsf.org/ data under a free software licence (not FDL)?
I would help work on adding features like MIME-types, file extensions, approval voting better indexes and search interface to quagga (the software running the directory, which seems to be perl/python/ mysql/xml so I can hack it) but I'm deterred a bit because the database is a valuable part and that's not free software. Any features I added to quagga could be used to support the not-free-software database, so it's not pragmatic for me to hack quagga.
Is there enough interest to start a GPL'd alternative database?
Regards,
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 12:14 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
"Stefano Spinucci" virgo977virgo@gmail.com wrote:
I think we shouldn't present *every* single alternative to proprietary programs, but only a polished and well organized list of good free software programs.
Couldn't be this part of the advocacy project ???
Actually, why not work on persuading FSF to release the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory http://directory.fsf.org/ data under a free software licence (not FDL)?
If you want to do that, please don't use a software licence - they don't cover the rights involved.
In particular, in this part of the world at least, there is a database right which applies, so the data will be covered by both copy right and database right. Something like the GPL doesn't address the latter; it's really the wrong tool for the job IMHO.
I guess it would be possible to add an extra license, along the lines of:
"This data may also be covered by database rights, the rights holders being <persons X, Y, Z> and the year of first publication being YYYY. The rights holders explicitly give permission freely for any activity controlled by these rights."
That ought to be sufficient to allow people to freely copy/extract from the database without fear of further repercussion, but I would favour a more generic license which doesn't address specific laws - that would be more "portable" across the world, I think (since in other WTO-but-not-EEA places, similar rights _are_ part of copyright, as I understand it).
Without such a license, many uses will be restricted - in particular, commercial use.
Cheers,
Alex.
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 12:31 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 12:14 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Actually, why not work on persuading FSF to release the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory http://directory.fsf.org/ data under a free software licence (not FDL)?
If you want to do that, please don't use a software licence - they don't cover the rights involved.
Or a document license.
I don't think the FDL is much use in this scenario, either, just to be clear :) Not for us Europeans, anyway.
Cheers,
Alex.
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 11:17 +0100, Stephan Peijnik wrote:
So finally, I would like to ask you for your input and would also like to start a discussion on this idea.
http://www.osalt.com/ seems to do more or less what you're putting forward in many ways (modulo the usual language issues).
Personally, I don't have much of a problem referring to proprietary applications: most users outside our community I deal speak in those terms (e.g., things are "Acrobat files" not "PDFs", and anything that opens in their word processor is a "Word file", even if it's not .doc).
However, I'm not really sure of the utility of it. Aside from the big desktop apps, everything else is quite murky - there are many alternatives, and it's difficult to point people in the right direction.
Rather than necessarily comparing applications, it might just be better to showcase best-of-breed apps for every major function area you can think of: personally, I do think it's worth signposting alternatives to things like Access and Sage, but I think that's more exceptional (as in, most people I talk to don't expect there to be an alternative: so they wouldn't even look for one). In general, people would be as happy (if not more) looking for "word processors" or "graphics software" instead of needing to compare them against "Word" or "Photoshop".
Cheers,
Alex.
Stephan,
Am Donnerstag, den 04.01.2007, 11:17 +0100 schrieb Stephan Peijnik:
Lately, I've again and again stumbled accross a problem. People have been asking for Free Software Alternatives to proprietary programs.
thank you very much for your initiative and for presenting your idea to the critical eyes of this mailing list :-)
I tend to agree with the majority in this thread that thinks it is better to let people search by task than by proprietary software solutions. There are quite some reasons I see:
* Advertising a program as a "drop in replacement" for another program usually creates false assumptions - I've made this experience myself, too.
* The best Free Software program depends on the task, not on the proprietary program you would use to do it. The best replacement for Winword probably depends on whether you want to create a mathematical book, an invitation for your birthday party, or business cards.
* Task related lists even helps people that look for software and don't even know a proprietary program to do it.
* I would not say that it is generally a sacrilege to even mention the name of a proprietary software product, but it still is usually better to avoid it.
I also think that FSF's Free Software Directory is a very good start for that, and I like the idea to add things like a mime type, file extension, or RFC number lookup feature.
So it might really be a good idea for those interested in this project to contact FSF and ask if they would accept some help.
I generally would avoid to build something new completely from scratch when something close to what I want is already there - I would rather offer my help extending what's there to what I want.
Just my 2 cents, Reinhard
Today LWN published a copy of "Open Source Catalogue 2007" (http://lwn.net/images/pdf/opteros-catalog-2007.pdf) by Optaros (http://www.optaros.com/).
Licensed under Creative Commons License (Attribution 2.5), the catalogue is designed to help companies decide which open source projects are enterprise ready.
Not all listed software is free software, nevertheless this may be a good hint also for the Free Software catalog.
bye
--- Stefano Spinucci FSFE Fellow