Re: Policy on software used to create desktop theme?
On 26/10/16 at 23:36 +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> Onsemeliot <onsemeliot@gmail.com> (2016-10-26):
> > Politically it makes a big difference if we use artwork created with
> > non-free tools to represent free software. It would be totally different
> > if there was no free software available for doing this kind of work. But
> > we have great tools and plenty of people who are doing amazing stuff
> > with it. Therefore, what good reason could there be to further accept
> > submissions done with proprietary tools for such representational
> > purposes in the future?
>
> Conversely, what good reasons are there to discriminate against them? “You
> suck, you didn't use the right tools!”? That's not what Debian is about.
>
> > If not even the free software community thinks using free tools for doing
> > our artwork is the right thing to do: Who else should?
>
> You're missing the point, which I've highlighted already.
I think that Onsemeliot's point is that it's a missed opportunity. You
mentioned the Social Contract in an earlier message. What it also says
is:
2. We will give back to the free software community
[...] We will communicate things such as bug fixes, improvements and user
requests to the upstream authors of works included in our system.
What we are essentially doing here is communicating that using
proprietary software provided a better result, and that the free
alternatives appear buggy or counter-intuitive (quoting what you wrote),
without communicating precise details about what's wrong and could be
improved to upstream authors of the free alternatives.
So we are clearly missing an opportunity to advertise the free
alternatives, and to provide feedback and contribute to improving them.
You might not value that goal very highly and prefer to remain
pragmatic. But you can probably agree that it's a valid point.
A similar situation would arise if the DPL was using proprietary tools,
e.g. to prepare and give presentations about Debian.
Lucas
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