Free Your Phone

David Ford david at blue-labs.org
Sun Jan 21 23:58:46 CET 2007


Please take this off the list :)  You and I disagree about whether they 
are pushing their name more than pushing free software.  You and I are 
not going to agree on this, nor will others.  Free software existed 
before GNU, it will exist after GNU.  To be honest, it was "Linux" that 
catapulted "free software" such as GNU software into the limelight.

No more replies about this on the list please.  This is for everyone on 
both sides of the fence including me.

-david

Renaissance Man wrote:
> 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
>
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