Re: Advocating non-free softwares

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 1:21 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Those who don't care will not actively help Free Software including
>>> LilyPond, so it is in LilyPond's best interest to make them care.  Which
>>> is not necessarily the same as annoying them.  But it is also not the
>>> same as hiding under a rock.
>>
>> I would agree with what Ryan is implying (or, at the very least, what
>> I am inferring):
>> This thread is well out from under the rock and past the line of
>> annoyance for many of us.
>
> Then it would seem that many of us have forgotten what brought LilyPond
> to them in the first place.
>
> Without the GNU project, there would be no LilyPond.  We would not have
> a build platform, we would not have GUILE, we would not have the
> enthusiasm of its founders.  Without Free Software, it is not even
> conceivable how LilyPond could have been started.

Being one of the prime reasons of why LilyPond got started and got to
where it is now, I believe I have say in this.

Our mission has always been to provide excellent music notation in a
free software package to as many people as possible, including those
using windows and macs. We have no business doing ideological
advocacy, and frankly, the original message that started this
discussion

>Thanks for your encouraging words about Frescobaldi.
>
>Could you please be more aware and more careful about advocating the use
>of non-free operating systems?

is way out of line. This is asking users on a user-forum to censor
themselves for the benefit of some political agenda that certainly has
never been mine.  It has nothing to do with music notation, and there
are other forums that are better suited to political discussions.

I am and have been ambivalent about being part of the GNU project.  It
has come with a lot of harping about how we should say things (like
insisting on naming Linux as "GNU/Linux"), with little in return.

--
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen