[Fedora Board issue tracker] #182: GNOME 3.12 pushes Google and other commercial, non-FOSS "apps" at users

[Eric H. Christensen]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 11:34:08AM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 11:17:16AM -0400, Eric H. Christensen wrote:
> > That's great that these companies contribute to FOSS projects.  I'm less
> > likely to complain about services that are developed as FOSS that they are
> > commericalizing. Making it easier for our users to start using their
> > closed projects, however, is not okay. It does not forward our cause for
> > FOSS. Otherwise we could lump Microsoft into that group since they have
> > made contributions to FOSS projects (including the kernel) in the past.
> 
> So, from the three issues that I identified in the board ticket
> (presentation of proprietary web services as applications, curation of the
> list of services, applications interacting with proprietary services in
> general), it seems like you are really more interested in the _second_ part:
> the selection and curation of the list. Not _necessarily_ whether the
> website code (either frontend or backend) is free / open source, although
> you consider that an important factor.
> 
> Is that a fair characterization?

While I feel that the selection and curation of the list is very important for the community (and very much a slippery slope), I wouldn't put anything on that list that wasn't FOSS.  We won't make FOSS succeed by pushing non-FOSS solutions (particularly those solutions that make it difficult to leave).

There is also a difference between a "webapp" and a website.  The prior is an alternative to software running on your local desktop (it's SaaS) while the latter is simply a place for consumables.  I wouldn't be against adding a "webapp" link for someone who stood up a service where LibreOffice was used as the SaaS solution as that is clearly FOSS in comparison to Google Drive (or Docs or whatever it's called this week) which isn't FOSS.  As far as I've seen there hasn't been any desire to provide links to websites outside of what we add to FF.

- -- Eric

- --------------------------------------------------
Eric "Sparks" Christensen
Fedora Project

sparks at fedoraproject.org - sparks at redhat.com
097C 82C3 52DF C64A 50C2  E3A3 8076 ABDE 024B B3D1
- --------------------------------------------------
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1
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=Ygh2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----