Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Wikipedia day at Madlab

[MJ Ray]

Simon Ward wrote:
> Speaking of unfortunate banners, does anyone else think the fundraising
> banners on gnu.org sites are offensive to the eyes?

Yes and it seems a very poor shop that the besieged souls who donate
their time to moderate GNU's mailing lists get the ugly banners on the
list moderation queue pages.  It's reduced how often I mod my queue.
(Would a developer-democracy-run FSF make this mistake?)

> I can try to summarise open source as lacking the values of free
> software, or a marketing term to try and make free software acceptable
> to those who care less about its values, and in doing so dilutes the
> meaning, but I don’t think it conveys the whole story as well as the
> article “Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software”[1].
> 
> [1]: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

I've never found that particularly useful.  It's a bit long and
academicish, digresses early on and tells open source supporters what
they think (which will annoy many). It doesn't mention what I feel are
the worst problems: the phrase "Open Source" is more ambiguous and
OSI's definition is too long for most people to remember.

I feel the "We speak about Free Software" document is shorter and
punchier.  Read it at http://fsfe.org/documents/whyfs.en.html

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire for various work http://www.software.coop/products/