Explaining Open Standards email attachements

Hugo Roy hugo at fsfe.org
Mon Apr 5 16:22:41 UTC 2010


Le lundi 05 avril 2010 à 17:08 +0100, Sam Liddicott a écrit :
> My point as I first mentioned is that I cannot tell if your text is a
> political document or a guide to interoperability. My point is that it
> can't be both.

This text is not a political document, nor a guide to interoperability.
This is just an explanation of why it is wrong to send proprietary
attachments with emails, because you never know if the person you send
it to will be able to read it correctly.

> I'm trying to improve the text as you invited.
> 
Yes, thank you for that.

> > can you tell me where in
> > this text you see an unhelpful, inconvenient, geeky-stupid text?
> 
> No, because it is not sufficient for anyone non-technical to act upon.
> It will have to be accompanied by a technical explanation which will
> be perceived as geeky, and as I explained, also unhelpful,
> inconvenient and stupid. For instance:

That is not the purpose of this text to be a technical guide. I leave it
to those who share the link to explain how to do that.

> 
> "When you attach a file to an email, please make sure that your
> correspondent will be able to read your files correctly. It is a basic
> principle of courtesy. And there is an easy way to make this possible:
> use open standards."
> 
> As I showed, with mp3 the correspondent likely will be able to read
> the file correctly unless they have taken an active and informed
> decision to not be able to. With an open standard that you mention -
> ogg - this is not true at all.

Yes, this is true. If you send an ogg file, you make sure that your
correspondent will have the possibility to read the file correctly with
the software of his choice, including Free Software!

The matter of will is not the same as the one of possibility. 

> With ogg, your statement "If you do so, your correspondent will have
> the possibility to choose which program he or she wants" actually
> becomes "your correspondent will probably be required to choose a
> different program to the one they usually use" - as you showed when
> stating recently that the correspondent may have to install VLC or
> Firefox.

Yes, if they use software that don't handle Open Standards, which is in
most of the cases Proprietary Software we want to fight against.

I'd like to say that your statement here is wrong, because it applies
for proprietary formats, not to Open Standards, where people have the
choice.

When you get a proprietary attachment: then you are require to choose a
different program that the one you use. If you get an Open Standard:
*it's up to you*.

> 
> > 
> > The point of this text is to give an easy explanation of why open
> > standards are important, taking the example of emails. In doing so, it
> > also tries to raise awareness on some Open Standards such as ODF and
> > OGG.
> 
> Then it is a political document and not an instructional one. Is the
> audience intended to be those who are already aware of the issue and
> just need to have useful information gathered in once place, or is it
> intended to convert and/or raise awareness among those who aren't
> aware of the issues?

The purpose is to give an easily understandable text to explain it. The
target is people aware of the issues, who want to share the link when
they get proprietary attachments.

> 
> > 
> > All the rest is up to you and the others, to refuse or accept mp3 files
> > or not. I don't care and I do not want to discuss in the text to reject
> > mp3 files because they're not Open Standards: I understand it is about
> > convenience, but I want to say that convenience comes on both sides.
> > That's all.
> 
> 
> For sure, I don't think that such a discussion it belongs in the text,
> but it is one of the questions the text raises; it is an implicit
> self-contradiction in the text - that widespread standards aid
> interoperability, not open standards Open-ness is just a partial
> driver for wide-spreadness, not a substitute.
> 

I strongly disagree here. Widespread standards (that's a pleonasm) aid
the one in control of the standards. Open Standards aid interoperability
because control of the standards is shared.

Best regards,
Hugo

-- 
  Hugo Roy                           im: hugo at jabber.fsfe.org 
  French Coordinator            http://www.fsfe.org/about/roy 

Free Software Foundation Europe works to create general understanding
and support for software freedom in politics, law and society-at-large.
For more information, see http://www.fsfe.org
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