Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Thibaut Verron]

>   > Surely you don't want to convince them to use an inferior product just
>   > for purity of software?
>
> Are you defining "superior" and "inferior" based on practical
> considerations only?  Most people think that way; business and the
> media inculcate that way of thinking.
>
> However, the GNU Project follows the values of the free software
> movement, which hold that most important characteristic of a program
> is whether it respects the user's freedom or tramples it.  If you
> value your freedom strongly, you will consider any free program better
> than any nonfree program.
>
> Based on these values, switching to a free program is always a step
> up.
>
> The people who use lastpass are probably not supporters of the free
> software movement.  Probably they think that lastpass is better than
> no program at all.  They might thing that lastpass is superior to some
> free programs.
>
> If we want to persuade them of something, we need to argue based on
> premises they agree with.  We may need to make arguments that can
> persuade even a person who thinks that a nonfree program is a good
> thing.

I agree with all of that. But I'm an idealist: I think if the software
is free and has as many or more functionalities (e.g. MS office vs
Libreoffice, Sublime Text vs Emacs), the argument should convince
everybody, no matter how much they care about freedom.

As an aside, English is obviously not my native language, but in
French, there is a subtle difference being persuade (persuader) and
convince (convaincre): the latter appeals to reason and facts, the
former to emotions. I don't know if the same difference exists in
English, but if it does, I think that what we want is to convince
people to use free software.

> But we must be careful not to endorse the idea that a nonfree program
> is a good thing.

I don't think that I said that.

But a feature available in a non-free program can be a good feature
which we might want to add to free programs (assuming that it is
possible without compromising on freedom, of course).