On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 03:24:52PM +0200, deloptes wrote: > tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: > > > 1. it is an insult towards those actually doing something Like > > (random example) this electronic music composer [1] and professor > > (chosen at random among my acquaintances) who makes a point > > of using free software and introduces his audience, music > > students to it > No insult tomas - it's reality. One small tree can not stand the avalanche. It is -- you said "nobody is doing anything". But there are folks doing something. Declaring them non-existent is perhaps the worst insult possible. Whether they succeed (or rather: how much and what they accomplish) is, of course, up to debate. > > 2. it is defaetist "the others have won, anyway, just accept it > > and give up". No. Truss up your sleeves ;-) > > > > No give up - we have to bring it to the next level - if it is not handled at > political level, you can indeed drink a glass of water and go play with > linux in your basement soon. Of course it is political. That's why there are political organisations doing good ol' lobby work. Since you talk Europe, have a look at FSFE's campaign "Public Money, Public Code" [1], which is directed at EU politicians to convince them that whenever public money is spent on making code, this code should have a free license. As those things go, "we haven't won" (you never do, in politics), but there is some amount of success. And there is a bunch of EU parliament MEPs who do understand those things pretty well (look up, for example Julia Reda [2] who isn't MEP anymore, but did an outstanding job there). > Also there is nothing going on in Europe anymore (at least not significant > except SuSE). There is a lot to discuss about and someone must stand for > this what happened in the past 15y - especially after 2008. Those things have become international anyway. SuSE is as much European as Debian is Oceanic. This [3] isn't perhaps the newest data, but has a nice pic. Looking at this pic, EU doesn't look underrepresented. Rather Asia, Africa and big parts of South America, esp. Brazil (although they have Mageia :-) > > 3. it's not fun. And that is perhaps the biggest crime on the > > spirit of computing. Alan Perlis [2] must know! > > > > What do you mean? Did you read his quote? Fun in computing is the most important (I'd tend to agree with him). Doing free software is bound to be more fun for many reasons (the margin of this mail is too narrow to write them all down). Ergo... > > 4. it could be a poisonous meme planted by "our opponents". > > Where did you pick that up? > > What do you mean? Demoralisation [4]. A classical trick of the trade. Now I'm not insinuating that our opponents are Nazis (the first example in the ref is pretty unfortunate, alas) -- but that kind of trick is of course played in any commercial endeavour. There are companies you pay money to do that. Business as usual. Cheers [1] https://publiccode.eu/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Reda [3] https://debian-handbook.info/browse/stable/sect.debian-internals.html [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_%28warfare%29 - t
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