negative campaigning?

[Federico Bruni]

Il giorno mer 26 lug 2017 alle 13:28, Ioli Papadopoulou 
<i.papadopoulou at sophimail.com> ha scritto:
> Excellent topic; thank you for bringing it up.
> 
> 
> Avoiding negative language will help us become BETTER ambassadors of 
> FOSS. Negative language creates negative feelings about us!
> 
> We can simply take lessons from other industries facing the same 
> problem. For example, let's see the language of small "natural 
> cosmetics" when they try to fight against "synthetic" dominant 
> competitors. They keep on pointing out what they do better, to the 
> Customers benefit: "no parabens, no additives, no chemicals, only 
> natural ingredients" etc. They do not name or imply their competitor. 
> They just repeat what is "better for you" and "does not harm you".
> 
> 
> So, to come back to software: we could use strong laconic statements, 
> such as: "Debian sends no telemetry reports". It is true, everybody 
> understands it and it is not aggressive.
> 


Hi Ioli

It looks like your opinion is the opposite of Daniel's opinion.
He's saying that we, as free software activists, should do _more_ 
negative campaigning. Why? Because a positive attitude, like caring for 
the privacy of the users, may be perceived as more valuable if people 
knew that proprietary software/services behave very bad in this regard.

I agree with Daniel and I don't think that negative campaigning means 
negative language.
The american FSF has done lot of negative campaigning, in a polite and 
positive way (as when you provide alternatives).

> 

> Persistence and patience are necessary, too. People need time to 
> contemplate and then change; they cannot change overnight.
> 
> Is it possible to make a "collection" of nice, positive statements 
> about FOSS and then distribute them to all members? I thing that some 
> of us, including me, would need some help, in "expressing in a 
> positive way"!
> 

Something like this? :-)
https://fsfe.org/campaigns/ilovefs/whylovefs/whylovefs.en.html