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