On Tue, 2010-04-06 at 20:08 +0100, Theo Schmidt wrote:

Of course it depends on the person you are sending the file to, his or her environment, and your aim. Is the person computer-literate? Is it a large company? Is it a government office in a country required to accept your ODTs? Do you want to "educate" or cause the least bother?

As bother is a personal measure, I think that each person can be educated towards their own personal aims - once they can be recognized. Switching of ones aims is a different topic.

* Idealists [perfect-world] can be educated towards the ideals

(I am not an idealist so this description is incomplete) An idealist wants the problem to not be there and will act ideally, reluctant to sacrifice ideals, and expects others to do the same. This attitude preserves the ideal by not changing, and consequently is often seen as not understanding of the nature of change required in others comes across as unhelpful or unforgiving, and therefore unattractive to non-idealists.

* Pragmatists [help-my-correspondents] can be educated towards pragmatism

(I am not a pragmatist because I will adopt the pain) Pragmatists will take intelligent steps to avoid pain, but will not willingly adopt pain as idealists do in bringing about the ideal. They willingly use .doc instead of .docx when educated because they see that it aids communication. They will not use .odt because it hampers communication although it aids the communication of the ideal. Pragmatists can be used to spread the message as they help others aid communication according to their natural impulses to help others.

* Minimalists [help-me] can be educated towards minimal steps

(I am not a minimalist) Minimalists must feel the pain in order to make the change. They will use .pdf instead of .docx, but only in order to avoid the complaints, and will secretly suspect that the recipient is being awkward and should just upgrade to the latest software.

I had a painful conversation with someone sending out docx posters. I explained nicely the problem and solution and got an annoyed message back asking why I didn't just say "send me a PDF" instead of all the other guff she didn't have time to read or comprehend. I was shocked, having understood that if there is a problem I should not just demand the solution but explain the problem and how to avoid it - but I learned that not everyone cares that much, especially people who don't enjoy technology.

This brings us to a new group * evangelists [help-the-world]

(I think I am an evangelist) To avoid frustration, an evangelist should understand the path between the current state and the ideal and how it will be traversed most efficiently. This includes and understanding of how to deal with non-idealists in a way which will further idealistic aims as far as the non-idealists can be persuaded to - and this will not be perceived as a disadvantage by the non-idealist. i.e. the non-idealist acts to the good he sees although it is not the good the idealist sees.

It also requires understanding of the temporal paradigm - i.e. there are more non-idealists being born every minute, therefore in order to avoid failing, evangelists should adopt solutions which increase the rate of adoption and education by non-idealists by appealing to the values of non-idealists. Otherwise, in rejecting the message, non-idealists also shield from the message those that they would have influenced and thus we lose out to the temporal paradigm.

In past times, Idealists would have formed a monastery, but evangelists understand that to convert is better than to separate; answering the Buddhist concept of Bodhisattva.

[I'm a non-pure evangelist because although I spend my money on vendors that support open-ness, and act as an advocate to others, I don't see why I should suffer with poor drivers in the mean time, so I use non-free software because it liberates me more while waiting for the free software. (i.e. I may as well walk in the prison-garden before my release. Remaining in my cell doesn't help my lawyer argue my case, and using incomplete open source graphics drivers doesn't help convert my family to free software).]

Which brings us back to Theo's question on the document: Do you/we want to educate or cause the least bother?

And this question: Which is your target audience? * Evangelist => strategic document like this message * Idealist => "Like the Why I rejected your attachment" link you posted * Pragmatist => How to communicate: A view of interoperability * Minimalist => Simple etiquette: How to stop your correspondents complaining

I think your document is directed to the pragmatist but it contains elements of idealism that they cannot appreciate as they go contrary to the pragmatists notion of "good"

Sam

Sam

On Sun, 2010-04-11 at 10:23 +0100, xdrudis wrote:

I enjoyed your discussion, mostly agree with Hugo Roy and won't repeat arguments.

Sam Liddicott wrote :

...

And this question: Which is your target audience?

• Evangelist => strategic document like this message
• Idealist => "Like the Why I rejected your attachment" link you posted
• Pragmatist => How to communicate: A view of interoperability
• Minimalist => Simple etiquette: How to stop your correspondents

complaining

I'm sorry but I don't think this is helpful. You can't come and start classiying people in groups and thinking you know everybody is one of those patterns and you just have to decide what to tell them in order to manipulate them to achieve your goals.

I agree, and that is not what I was trying to do. I meant that each person may act according to the good that they see. If a person cannot see the ultimate good of free software but can see a lesser good (like interoperability) then they may act towards the lesser good (and so do that good) and still advance the aims of free software. They are not manipulated, but rather offered (and receive) the good that they recognize, which also benefits others.

That shows, and creates the same kind of rejection advertisement causes. You should just say what you have to say, try to make it true, understandable and coherent, and to summarize what's in it the best you can when you point someone to it, and let people, in their knowledge and diversity do what they want/can with it.

Yes. But different people see different advantages. We can communicate in relation to the advantages and benefits that they can see. To communicate advantages that they cannot see is to fail to communicate.

If you think you are what you call an evangelist, then write a document about what an evagenlist can tell others to help them understand things. Not a document about what an evagelist should know, and much less about what an idealist, pragmatist or minimalist should know. Assuming they exist, you don't know what they need, you only know what you have to offer: offer it.

Well... I thought that is what I had done. Idealists and pragmatists do exist, they are the main factions on the fsfe mailing list, I've been on the pragmatic side of many debates. I recounted a discussion with my first minimalist in my recent message.

These groups differ in the way they perceive the benefits of free software. Only idealists properly comprehend the idealistic benefits.

I have something beneficial to offer pragmatists that can also advance the higher aims of the idealists. The warrior and the scholar can both work towards the same goal from different perspectives.

The rest of this mail is more general and likely offtopic, or at least too long for the small portion on topic, so anyone reading furhter has been warned.

I just wanted to give my opinion that I think you (maybe Sam, but possibly more other people than intersect in part in this attitude) are very eager to understand people and adapt to them in order to be effective in what you try to achieve.

I see why you say this, and there is something in it. It's not that I want what can be called "success" and any price, but I don't want people to be left out when they could get some benefit.

For me this has 2 problems:

• you assume an undestanding of people you often don't have, so your

models of the people you interact with are too weak for the confidence you put in them. The only person you can aspire to really know is yourself, so offering (never imposing) your views and knowledge to others is often a safer bet than adapting to the views or knowledge you think others have. They can think for themselves, so they'll pick what they can use from what you tell them better than you can pick it for them. If they don't believe all you say or do all you tell them it's not your failure, it's their judgement.

I would rather say that if a person won't accept the greater message of freedom they may accept the lesser benefits. I don't adapt myself to their views but present of my own understanding those views that they can accept.

• you assume people are static (or you care for an interval short

enough to ignore people evolution during it). Since you care about the present situation and want some result from your interaction, or some present success you adapt to the present state. This may give better results now but it may give worse results in the long run.

It may be; I recognize in principle the sorts of dangers you refer to, but I feel that in fact that familiarity with free software and those who use it will help them to recognize the greater goods, and expose them more often to those ideas, increasing the likelihood of their acceptance and understanding at some future date. There is a potential that it could live them in a worse position but we can never know.

Sometimes you tell something to someone with the utmost care to help her understand what you think and why you do what you do, or are what you are, or think it is best also for her to do so, and she just thinks you are crazy and moves along. But then she lives on, gets other inputs and maybe the fifth person she finds with similar views makes her change her mind in a way that wouldn't have been possible if that was her first time hearing it, i.e. if everybody had always adapted too much to her.

I think we are in closer agreement that you think. We both have concern over what would have happened.

In fact I do what you generally suggest; I only know what I have to offer, and I offer them (the three things).

An example:

I myself know nothing about food, for instance. I use it every day but I'm bad at cooking and not a gourmet at all, nor knowledgeable in dietetics. More or less like many people are with computer science. Yet I have vegetarian friends which are in the process of maybe convincing me to leave meat. The first time I found one I thought it was unpractical, likely unhealthy, odd and made no sense. The first arguments I didn't buy (poor animals? why should I care more for a life form that -like me- eats other life forms than for a purer life form that builds life out of dead matter and raw energy? poor vegetables !). I was unconvenienced to find restaurants with more diverse meals apt for my accompanying vegetarians, or having to eat things I wouldn't have tried if I wasn't at their home but I now appreciate the meals I've discovered I like , the habit of looking at the menu before going into a restaurant and the later arguments (the one about energy cost of producing meat instead of vegetables has quite convinced me).

If every vegetarian had adapted to me and offered me only the vegetable dishes I already liked, or come with me to the first restaurant and eating what they could I would probably not have learnt things I like having learnt. So I thank them for being a little nuisance.

This is a good example. It is notable because it is unusual - most people will not be vegetarian. Also those who would persuade you are your friends, and as you say below, you may be regarded as an idealist and so you are open to persuasion based on ideals.

I may be regarded as an idealist, inflexible, antisocial or whatever, but I think the anti-social attitude is that of only pretending to go with the flow and accomodating others instead of sharing your knowledge and contributing what you can to your society (and letting others ignore you if they will).

If this is what I were doing I would agree, but I don't pretend, and I genuinely want to give others all the benefit they are able to receive. It takes generations to change minds sometimes. Those who resist the ideals may adopt for pragmatisms sake, and expose the next generation to the ideals.

Showing yourself, teaching others to do what you think is right (and why) and letting others ignore you or disagree is not being stubborn or misantropist, it's being honest and confident in the intelligence of others.

That is a description of what I called idealist, and this approach appeals to idealists as you showed with your vegetarian example.

And I may have no proof of that intelligence, but I have no reason to think intelligence is not uniformly distributed, and anyway, if people are stupid there's no solution, so let's handle the other case.

I think here is the point; you say "if people are stupid there's no solution." Rather than just handle the other case, I am considering this case too. I effectively suggest in my previous message that they are not stupid, and that there is a solution for those people. If they cannot receive all of the good, maybe they can receive some of the good.

If we see that it is this case I have been talking about as pragmatic or minimalist then perhaps we see that there is no argument - as I am talking about how to reach people who were otherwise unreachable anyway.

And I think it's perfectly fine to mix political and practical advice in any text. What use is knowing how to do something if you don't know why you should do it or what would the world get out of it ? What use is knowing what needs fixing in this world without knowing how to fix it?

I agree, I meant to say that some of the practical advice advanced the political aims to the short term inconvenience of those who followed it, and therefore it can't be presented as pragmatic advice without looking like a lie to those who cannot yet appreciate the political aims. Thus it cannot be presented as pragmatic advice to anyone who can't recognize it as being political - which if it is a successful document will be many of the readers - some of whom will be policy makers in business or government.

But I agree we should not lead anyone to deception if we can help it.

I agree with that point very strongly.

Saying that all software works with all standards is not helpful.

Quite true.

Saying that it's best to choose any program that works with standards and asking your peers to do so will help society including the person you're telling it and you can tell them this will possibly involve more effort for more reward than what they're doing.

Yes.

But it is also important to let them understand what doesn't work in their current practices, because they may not know that not everybody uses their same program and version, or that their message is being silently lost.

Yes.

A few times when I've complained of email attachments to the sender other people that didn't complain initially have told that they weren't able to access them either.

Same here.

Sometimes even all people adressed were not reading the attachment and the sender kept thinking they did. Many did not know the problem was the sender's choice of format, so they didn't complain, it was simply too difficult to tell what was happening when something in their computer didn't work.

Yes.

Sorry to waste your time with my ramblings.

I think this is one of the most productive discussion for a long time, I appreciate the time you took to explain yourself - thank-you.

I think we are clear that really the contentious part of this discussion is how to treat those who can't accept the ideal message. You think to move on, I think that it is my father or my sister and that it is worth a little more time, and why not for someone who is not my father as well...

If someone will support open standards because the software is gratis, then it is a weak position but will do for the very short term and will still advance the aims of free software.

If they later support it because of interoperability then they become an advocate with ability to convince others to be pragmatists - i.e. "it solves a problem."

We can discuss how to convert a pragmatist to an idealist, how to help them recognize the value of freedom. One way is with Richard Stallman's original printer-driver story. Once a user is happy with the convenience of interoperability, they are open to the idea of loss of convenience as with Stallman and the buggy printer driver. They can then recognize the convenience of interoperability as a freedom that needs to be maintained and the principles and ideals by which it is maintained.

I also find the idea of low-cost software for use in countries with a poor exchange rate (can't afford expensive software) to be a compelling argument for those who want equal chance to participate and communicate on the internet. i.e. low-cost is also a freedom to those with low-income, who can also work and contribute to increase the "commons" for their own country men instead of being bound to the crumbs from producers of proprietary software. This argument appeals to idealists albeit non-free-software idealists.

any other ideas?

Sam

Theo Schmidt schmidt@umwelteinsatz.ch writes:

Ideal? Pragmatic? Compromise?

ODT DOC RTF (if no fancy formatting) HTML (a very good exchange format for some people and tasks) PDF (if no major editting required)

This is the kind of concrete information that in my opinion would make http://www.documentfreedom.org/ a better site.

Hugo's "Send me attachments I can read, use open standards!" concentrates on email. This is a particularly challenging environment since it is usually not ok to send the same data in multiple different formats (large emails are frowned upon). I think we should be more general and not concentrate on email alone.

Offering both ODT and PDF is easy on a web site. In my opinion converting one web site to use open standards also matters a lot more than converting a single email user simply because a web site usually influences more people.

Notes: None of us need ever to send OOXML. TXT is not a good idea because then the question of character set arises.

for most uses (where formating is not important) txt inside the body of the email is the best option. makes it easy to quote etc... character set is also not much of a problem today since the character set is described in the MIME header and most programms can deal with all of the character sets. although UTF-8 encoding should be preferred today..

so i would list TXT as "ideal" (for most pruposes).

mond.