On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 06:35:59PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 4:36 PM, Steve Litt <slitt@???>
> wrote:
>
> > the distinction he strongly made was that Open Source didn't prioritize
> > freedom, but instead prioritized convenience and value to business, and he
> > felt that was a bad thing.
> >
>
> You didn't dream this, it's what he says.
>
> The problem with the *a priori* approach that people must be won over to
> valuing their freedom first is that it doesn't win everyone. And Richard
> doesn't have a viable approach for the people it doesn't win. The problem
> with the Open Source approach is that some folks may indeed never get any
> farther than appreciating the convenience and value to business. But I
> figure that if we win some of them over to understanding Free Software,
> it's a win.

Dear Bruce,

That's a god point, indeed. If we all share the same motivation (i.e.,
to convey the importance of guaranteeing a fair set of digital
freedoms to digital citizens), then the differences between the two
narratives reduce in fact to the way we approach new users and
adopters. For some of them the "freedom first" narrative is the most
appropriate, while for others the "efficiency first" narrative is the
winning one. Fair enough, if the final objective is to let them
appreciate the importance of digital freedoms.

But we must ackowledge that, more often than not, even Open Source
evangelists focus almost exclusively on the convenience and efficiency
of the free software model, and never make the next step. There is
nothing wrong with that, but this is what has effectively led to the
identification of the "tiny virtual fracture" between FS and OS, which
reflects the fact that different people can stay in the same community
for different reasons, and with slightly different motivations.

In the specific case of systemd, the "this is technically superior"
narrative has been perused to superseed more basic (and more
important) aspects, which are human, social, and ethical before than
technical. Ironically, systemd is under LGPL-2.1+, so it's not a
matter of licenses (and never has been), rather a matter of attitude,
motivations, and objectives.

HND

KatolaZ

-- 
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