Free Your Phone

[Renaissance Man]

On 21 Jan 2007, at 9:54 pm, David Schlesinger wrote:

> >Both my girlfriend and father are aware of Free Software and what it
> >means. This is due to me coming across the FSF out of curiosity about
> >GNU, and then passing that knowledge onto them.
>
> That's nice.
The point is these people are certainly not geeks, so it's certainly  
incorrect to assume that only geeks know about Free Software and the  
benefits of supporting it.
> "Runs free software" doesn't appear on the checklist of features  
> that the average person is looking for or cares about. That's  
> unlikely to change.
Yes, very unlikely to change when people successfully oppose efforts  
to increase awareness of it through projects like OpenMoko.
> I never said they were "incapable", just that they _don't_. If  
> people factored freedom into their general buying decisions,  
> Western nations wouldn't be running the kind of trade deficits with  
> China that they currently do...
I agree that market economics creates such externalities, but just  
because market economics has such defects doesn't mean that they  
can't be mitigated by agendas like that of the FSF.

Buy Local campaigns, for instance, have been shown in many countries  
to mitigate problems like the one you mention.
> >Out of interest can you define your use of "political agenda"?
>
> In this instance, an agenda based on one party's apparent  
> dissatisfaction with not getting the credit they assert they  
> deserve, and which has nothing to do with software development or  
> any piece of software's being more or less "free".
>
Okay. Well I guess this is the fundamental difference between the way  
you and I look at this issue. You think the FSF and supporters are  
pushing an agenda simply to get more credit for their efforts. I, and  
others, on the other hand, think the FSF and supporters are pushing  
an agenda to promote Free Software.

Renaissance Man