Proposal: Revision of policy surrounding 3rd party and non-free software

Josh Boyer jwboyer at fedoraproject.org
Wed Jan 22 01:10:46 UTC 2014


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 7:55 PM, Ankur Sinha <sanjay.ankur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2014-01-21 at 19:36 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
>> > PS: Anyone that feels that "free choices suck", needs to move to
>> > Mac/Windows already and be done with it.
>>
>> I'd prefer they write a patch to fix the things that suck, or a bug
>> report if they can't write code.  If nobody did that then Open Source
>> software wouldn't work or exist, including Fedora.  Please be mindful
>> of the replies you give to people.  Empower them to make a difference.
>>  Don't kill your contributor and user base by telling them to use a
>> non-free OS because they point out something is suboptimal.
>
> My statement reads completely different out of context. The context for
> me entire e-mail was Matthias' statement:

Your statement will be read out of context a lot.  Particularly
throwing it in as a PS.  It's nothing personal and I'm not meaning to
pick on you specifically, but I see that argumentation quite
frequently.

>> If you want to keep our users from seeing non-free options to keep
>> them
>> from recognizing that the free choices suck, then you've already
>> admitted defeat...
>>
>
> It is meant for people that are more than willing to simply move to
> non-free software because "free software sucks" rather than trying to
> improve it, as you've pointed out.

The context is irrelevant.  If someone does not know about free
software, how it works, and how they can participate to improve it,
then of course they are going to be willing to move to non-free
software.  Who isn't looking for the easiest and most pain-free way to
get something done?  If someone does know about free software and
still says it sucks, remind them it will only improve if people pitch
in and help.

Sure, they might just be trolls that show up to deride things and
laugh at us, but you really can't be sure unless you try and educate
them.  Being dismissive and telling them to use another OS just
because they complain that something sucks is not going to help.

At any rate, I believe we agree for the most part.

josh


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