Re: Poll results: User views on the FDL issue
On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 01:26:52PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
[...]
> The preamble of the survey was terrible, in my opinion. I found
> it in the mail log, but not in the results posted here or on
> the poll results text file. I consider it incorrect on several
> key points and it states a lot of the surveyor's beliefs. For a
> self-selecting listener opinion poll (SLOP), this seems likely
> to influence which listeners respond. Additionally, it should
> have contained some details about what happens to responses,
> especially how and when the results would be published.
It was intended to be a very short introduction to the issues (which
turned out to be really hard to write since each issue is complicated)
to make sure they at least had a vague idea what the poll was about. I
did encourage them to read Manoj's draft statement.
Nonetheless, I think it was still too long and probably contributed to
the low turnout.
> [...]
> > 5. Is Debian making a big deal out of a minor issue? Should Debian be
> > focusing more on creating a usable operating system and less on worrying
> > about licensing issues?
>
> This question is very troublesome. It's actually two different
> questions and rather biased wording. The original post of it
> was missing a word, too. I don't think it's safe to give much
> weight to the answers. If a respondant read this question
> before answering any (as they can with an emailed survey),
> it may have biased all their answers even further. :-(
The intention was to see if people were voting based on a perceived
overreaction by Debian to licensing issues in general, or perhaps a
frustration with the release cycle (e.g. we're wasting time on other
things when we should be releasing). Think of it as a
knee-jerk-o-meter.
Given that only 60% voted "Yes", and a few of those clarified that only
this particular licensing issue was overblown, that indicates to me many
had not given knee-jerk responses and had given some consideration to
the GFDL before answering.
--
Society is never going to make any progress until we all learn to
pretend to like each other.
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