Comment on "Nine Attitude Problems in Free and Open Source Software"

[Diogo Santos]

Sex, 2008-10-24 às 04:19 +0100, Noah Slater escreveu:

> Is it not best to tolerate differences in opinions? To work towards furthering
> your goals? Not to alienating the very people who may share, and may be working
> towards those very goals?

Tolerate is not the same as agreeing. Is just accepting the right of
other people to have different opinions.

> Cannot Debian teach users about freedom, simply because they also provide means
> for installing non-free software? Must things be so black and white?

I believe they can!
Although there're distributions that just don't make it a user choice,
and others that simply don't care about freedom, and that don't make
compromises that may really necessary to allow the user to use the
computer. And I will accept the right of them to do that, but I can't
say is right, and I will always say is wrong and consider those persons
enemies of user freedom because they really don't care about it, and are
acting against it.



>   You are using non-free software, therefor you could not possibly stand for
>   anything I agree with. You are part of the problem and I wash my hands of you.

I don't think that making a pontual and temporary compromise on
something you really need to be able to use other Free Software. Is to
be an enemy of Free Software. Although I believe that no-one should be
put in a situation like that.

The primary aim of the Free Software community should always enable
people to use only Free Software, because if people are educated to use
Free Software, if they can use it, then they I'll not use non-Free
Software. Therefore the real enemies of Free Software are things such as
software patents, DRM, proprietary specifications for interoperability,
comercial agreements that forbid Free Software, etc...

Eliminating proprietary software is not our real goal, it will be only
be an fortunate side-effect of educated people that have real choice to
use Free Software. Our goal should be eliminating barriers to the
development, success, and popularity of an 100% really free computer.

I consider my self an hard-core Free Software supporter. I only use Free
Software on my computers and I don't even use any adobe flash player
because I consider the format evil to the web and user freedom. I
promote all that, I teach people about Free Software every day. But I
can understand that my situation may not be possible for everybody (only
for most people). Although we have make great strides in making 100%
Free Software the reality for most people, it's still not for everybody,
but it's getting better every day.



with my compliments
Diogo Santos