Re: should we ship iceweasel (firefox) on the first cd?
cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote:
On Friday 02 March 2007, Halvor Dahl wrote:
I agree. There is no need wasting space for iceweasel on the first CD
because people will probably install Firefox from Mozilla anyway.
that's like saying you won't use generic drugs only the brand name
equivalents. Even though the only difference (often up to and including
where they are manufactered) is the box they're wrapped in.
You are completely missing the point. The battle is about getting
schools to use open source software in the first place. That is
their call and we have to convince them that the software is useful,
user-friendly and that it will not break. Well-known brand names
is extremely important when trying to establish that kind of confidence.
The Debian camp could really need a basic course in commercial thinking
when they believe they can afford to lose a brand name like Firefox. Not
much use for the strict principles when all the users are gone.
Debian really didn't have any choice in this case, Mozilla didn't grant us
the right to use the firefox name, and won't unless we give up the right to
fix things when they break. Since that's one of the core principles layed
out in the foundation documents of Debian (such as the debian free software
guidelines), there's nothing we can do about it.
How about a more pragmatic approach to the issue? How about making
exceptions to be able to use the brand name? How about negotiating
even more trying to find a solution that is maybe not optimal for
either party but good enough?
Maybe we should just give up the "out-of-the-box" idea and make
Skolelinux just a very small core of services and supply a list of nice
applications and how to install them.
And maybe, whe should give up on skolelinux all to gether, and just use MS
all the way, afterall that's what the typical parent is using at work,
right?
Why on earth should we do that?
Halvor
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