On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 10:53:36 AM +0200, Anders Karlsson wrote:
> * Ralf Corsepius <rc040203@xxxxxxxxxx> [20080827 21:41]:
>
> Yes, they could learn about the background of Linux, FSF, the Fedora
> Project and all things good. But forcing them to assimilate your
> political and philosophical views in order to receive help or
> technical advice - that is simply bad attitude IMNSHO.
very well said. I'll just add that is also counterproductive, as it's
guaranteed to make newcomers run away.
> It does not require a lecture, it does not require them to be educated
> on sociological and political ideologies. It requires only a straight
> answer. The answer could contain a pointer to a Wiki page about Fedora
> policy on patent encumbered tools and codecs. Leave it at that.
+1
Answering to Ralf:
> > You don't want to lean about your distro's heritage, backgrounds,
> > objectives and the consequences of these?
is this a trick question? The obvious answer of all the people who
don't know Free Software yet is "NO". Almost everybody who could be
"enlisted" by quoting him or her the GNU Manifesto ad nauseam already
uses free software or has decided to not use it period, because by now
he or she has already met Stallman and found a more or less natural
affinity with his arguments.
Almost everybody else, that is ~90% of people, couldn't care less of
what the heritage or background of anything "computerish" is: they use
computers because they *cannot* help it, if they want to get a job,
play 3D games or anything in between. Even if it were wrong, it's a
plain fact, so ignoring it these days only diminishes the support for
more FOSS in society.
This doesn't mean, of course, that if a newbie comes saying "I know
zilch about software, I installed Fedora because I only want to blog
but my PC is too old to run Windows", one shouldn't answer (politely!)
that maybe Fedora isn't the right version of Linux to run.
Marco
--
Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
software is used *around* you: http://digifreedom.net/node/84
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