Free Software Evangelism, revisited

[Steven]

I believe Ottavio started the thread with the question whether or not you
could call yourself an evangelist when you also trying to make money out of
it. Maybe this wasn't the first post, then I've missed it.

You can measure the amounts of products you sell, but to my knowledge, you
can't 'scientifically' measure the amount of believe or sympathy one has (or
gained during your speech) for Free Software. Your assumption says believe
in Free Software is *always* less useful than buying the products simply
because believe is not quantifiable as the amount of products. I don't agree
with this.

For instance you give a speech and sell no products at all. But a group of
people decide after hearing you talk to do some research and decide to start
their own Free Software project. You can't measure it so it is not or less
useful than selling a single or more products ?

I think the ability to measure something depends on our knowledge and skills
to measure it and says nothing about the subject being measured. Simply
because we are not able to measure something doen't make it less effective
of useful.















On 5/27/06, Shane M. Coughlan <shane at shaneland.co.uk> wrote:
>
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> Ricardo Andere de Mello wrote:
> > Of course that having money and doing what you like is a good thing, and
> > that you can have both things, but Im again asking you, if you could
> > only choose between a normal job with free software, and a more
> > profitable job without free software, what would you choose?
>
> I think this has drifted a long way from the point of the thread.  The
> original point was about what constituted success in promoting something
> like the idea of Free Software.  Tying that into vague and inherently
> subjective views on 'good', 'bad' and 'worthy' is both confusing and
> unhelpful.  I believe sticking to the point is important.
>
> I stand by my original assertion that any unmeasurable advocacy is less
> useful than measurable advocacy.  Whether the advocacy is geared towards
> profit or not is a mute point.  That has nothing whatsoever to do with
> Free Software as a concept.  Free Software is about Freedom for the user.
>
> Shane
>
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