• Our users and free software

    From Andrey Rahmatullin@21:1/5 to Gerardo Ballabio on Wed Apr 6 10:50:01 2022
    On Wed, Apr 06, 2022 at 10:19:47AM +0200, Gerardo Ballabio wrote:
    "Our priorities are our users and Free Software" means that, in our decision
    making and our governance we should be oriented FIRST towards users and do what is good for the people who are using our software; and that our SECOND priority, only when not in conflict in the first, is to promote Free Software.

    I agree with your message generally, and this might be only a minor
    point -- but as I read that sentence, it doesn't say that our users
    come FIRST and free software comes SECOND. To me, it says that we have
    two priorities, with no particular ranking specified between them. The
    order in which they are listed doesn't necessarily imply a ranking and
    I don't think that was intended.

    Of course software is only useful as long as it has users, so it may
    be argued that users are "more important". But what you say seems to
    go quite further than that. If users' needs have higher priority and
    free software counts "only when not in conflict", then why isn't
    Debian shipping non-free drivers?
    That statement is indeed a well-known stumbling stone as different people interpret it in different ways and use it as a justification for various decisions. "Why we only (officially) ship ISOs that are useless to many of
    our users if they are our FIRST priority" is indeed one of these things
    where this statement is often mentioned.

    --
    WBR, wRAR

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