Re: Icon designer wanted (Aquamacs Emacs)

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Tim McNamara <timmcn@bitstream.net> writes:

> "Luis O. Silva" <l.o.silva@mail.ru> writes:
>
>> On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:23:55 -0600, Tim McNamara writes:
>>
>>    TM> How well software works is a central issue in getting people
>>    TM> to use it.  If the Free Software movement is content to have
>>    TM> a limited market and minimal adoption, well that can't be
>>    TM> helped.
>>
>> There is no market. Free developers don't produce commodities. They
>> aren't looking for customers. They are freely working to create a
>> free tool (which is always better than the tools which are
>> commodities).
>
> Except that many of the free tools are not superior to the
> proprietary ones in practice.  And without attending to that, free
> software risks being nothing more than a pedantic, philosophical
> stance and being nothing other than marginal.

Why should that bother authors of free software?  Every piece of free
software started out in this state.  History should have taught you
that this does not preclude it becoming important.  But the freedom
means that its unimportance need never be terminal.

>> If people don't understand freedom it is useless for the movement
>> to have millions using free tools.
>
> On this I am afraid we have irreconcilable differences.

Definitely.  You are missing a grasp of history.  Linux started out
among Unices as a bad joke.  So did GNU.  The one thing that made sure
that they did not die like many other bad jokes was its freedom.

The value of a free press is not that its newspapers are cheaper or
glossier than elsewhere.  It may or may not be so.  But it is not
important in the long run.  Those that reap the benefits of freedom
without contributing to it are fast in calling it dispensible.

> You (and David) are over-focused on free software in the abstract
> sense of freedom.  Fine as a principle but it does not increase the
> freedom of computer users on a daily basis.  IMHO where freedom
> counts is not in the abstract but at the keyboards and mouses and
> displays of users.

You are confusing freedom and convenience.

> If the goal is to promote freedom for computer users and to change
> the world for the better, then attention must be paid to the
> useability of free software and removing the obstacles to adoption
> by the mainstream.

I recommend that you read up about what freedoms free software is
trying to preserve.  You could start at
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>.

Those freedoms ensure that _if_ somebody works on convenience, his
work will not disappear.

> If the goal is to carve out some morally superior stance, then by
> all means carry on as you are.  As far as I can tell, that's all the
> current approach is going to get you.

Well, it obliterated most commercial Unices by now.  I think it is
doing fine, considering that it's not useful.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum