Explaining Open Standards email attachements

[Sam Liddicott]

  On 05/04/10 17:35, Hugo Roy wrote:
> Le lundi 05 avril 2010 à 17:28 +0100, David Gerard a écrit :
>> Er ... that's a political document.
> Last time I checked, political involves "power" and social control.
> Here, it is just about: if you use Open Standards, it works. If you use
> something else, it's wrong because you cannot be sure it works, which is
> a pity when you are communicating.

Yes, but this is exactly the opposite with ogg.
What makes "it works" in real life is not open standards but wide-spread 
adoption, however much we like to think otherwise.

I want open standards, but I don't push losing arguments in order to 
advance open standards.

If me or others persuade the average man to use ogg and he actually 
follows our advice, he'll come to hate us and think we are idiots 
because instead of making things easier we made things harder for him 
and all of his correspondents.

We then have to explain it's part of a larger campaign which will 
actually bear fruit for him in a few years time if he can just bear with 
it.

That makes it a political document, because it's about social control. 
Us controlling him (by giving him half-truths) and asking him to 
sacrifice his convenience (and his friends) for a potential advantage so 
that in a few years things will be just as easy for him as they were 
before he listened to us BUT ALSO easy for some others who have made a 
conscious decision not so support proprietary standards and thus "made 
things hard for themselves" (if he'll listen for long enough to 
understand what proprietary actually means - or why it's bad). [Note I'm 
expressing this from his point of view]

> This one is political:
> http://www.fsf.org/news/why-im-rejecting-your-email-attachment
>
> I am sure you see the difference ;)

The difference seems to be in the intended audience.
*
Sam*
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