On 02/11/10 08:20, Stephane Ascoet wrote:

Jelle Hermsen a écrit :

...

I derived this idea from social psychology and I would love to hear what you all think of it.

Hi, I think you're right. We're facing the same issue while trying to convince people to stop meat consumption.

Often I think it is a case of people valuing different goodnesses. A person did not chose proprietary software for bad reasons, but generally for reasons which when balanced seem good. Sometimes the reasons come from a different perspectives which are often unassailable, but not shared by both groups.

For example; with meat, I consider that I must eat some protein and ask: which is most kind - to let the protein enjoy a few years life as a cow, or to make it have a shorter life as a bean, or in a tank? I consider that my protein would have more happiness as a cow and so by market forces I eat meat so that more protein may have more happiness. This is not a widely shared perspective but yet the only pro-vegetarian argument I know that comes near it relates to ill-treatment of animals, and of course I want my meat to be happy before I eat it. (I don't eat a lot of meat).

I think this viewpoint may be instructive in the software-advocacy field too, and that Jelle raises good points; So I now try to extent what I learn from my views on meat to a general form and come to this principle which I learned somewhere else:

Add to the good others already have

which means don't ask others to throw away their current position and start again to "do it right" and this is logical for you would be asking them to have confidence that you are exactly right, otherwise the next day someone else may point out your error and they would have to "start again" again.

I made an observation about contexts yesterday in relation to a computer product that has Z in it's name. It's name is spelt TZ and it's name is pronounced TeeZee because it is an American product. To the American The product is "TeeZee" as spelt and there is an unconscious underlying American context. To me as an Englishman the American context is raised to surround the name and affect how it is pronounced: "TeeZee" and spelt "Tee Zed".

The point of this observation is to show that the American does not realise that the product name is not pronounced as it is spelt because his context blinds him to that.

The American could have this explained to him, but he would only truly appreciate it when he realises that outside USA represents a bigger market than inside USA.

We know that the proprietary captive cannot understand the disadvantages of captivity until it prevents him from exercising liberty.

Therefore, as is said, attacking reasons which from his context were un-important or seemingly somewhat beneficial questions his judgement and as Jelle says makes you an enemy.

The safe thing to do is to add to the good they have. Once the TZ product is marketed outside the USA, the marketing department are happy to revise the "pronounced as it is spelt" belief, or even change the name.

So my view is offer to add to the good people have; acknowledge how their choice helped them, and offer them more help.

Sam

On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 18:28 +0000, David Gerard wrote:

On 2 November 2010 17:12, Matthias Kirschner mk@fsfe.org wrote:

...

I think you can explain such things, but than you have to be careful about the tone.

Anecdotes and war stories help. Any sysadmin who's ever been screwed over by a proprietary software company will be a BIG FAN of free software, simply to defend their company. I've found (as a sysadmin) that these also help sway management opinion, at least slightly.

Thanks for all the replies. Quite a lot of food for thought, to say the least. I really love the different approaches and view points you all have. It shows me there's no groupthink in the FSFE and I like that very much. Groupthink is another term used in psychology which I often recognize in free software / open source communities. It can lead to a great amount of people adopting a quite extreme opinion in a short time. Anyway, that's a totally different story :)

Because of the multitude and variety of ideas I don't think it's a good idea to change the advocacy FAQ. At least not at this point. I do however believe it's a very good thing to keep thinking about how to advocate free software.

One thing I learn from all your responses is that there's really no single approach which can act as a panacea for free software advocacy. Different people need different approaches and that's just one of the things which add to the already multi-faceted free software movement, which in my opinion makes it very exciting.

I'm very glad I decided to join the fellowship. I'll read all the ideas and urls you sent, it's a great source of inspiration.

Basically, people don't take advice.

@david: I think you have a point there. That's why it's a good idea to not make it sound too much like an advice. It might actually be much better for people to do the math themselves and just give them enough information to do it. I'm quite aware that this approach really depends on the amount of involvement of your advocatee (I don't think that's really a word, the person you're advocating to?) The link you send (http://mindprod.com/ethics/persuasion.html) reminds me of politeness theory.

Hi, I think you're right. We're facing the same issue while trying to convince people to stop meat consumption.

@stephane: I believe reactance is a universal problem which applies to many situations in which you're trying to convince someone. Meat consumption, animal testing, climate change, you name it, they all have much in common and reactance is a great part of that.

So my view is offer to add to the good people have; acknowledge how their choice helped them, and offer them more help ... The safe thing to do is to add to the good they have.

@sam: I really like your TZ analogy and I totally agree with you context is very important. It can serve as a building block for your message.

Yes, this is a good aproach. But sometimes it is also difficult not to mention the problems of non-free software.

@matthias: True. But there's a time and place for everything, and at the same time trying to convince people and addressing problems might not work well.

Best regards, Jelle