[Scale-planning] Free Software Representation at SCaLE

[Mark Holmquist]

I don't like leaving questions unanswered, so I'm going to answer Lei's,
but let's make this very clear:

I am *****not***** asking this list to consider the below concerns.

I am *****NOT***** even suggesting that they should so consider them.

I *****AM***** pretty sure that it's impossible to do at the current
moment without the risk of alienating a large audience. Therefore,
**************DO NOT************ consider implementing the alternatives
below, at least until the world is less reliant on nonfree software and
they can be implemented without losing any audience at all.

With that out of the way.....

> So what alternatives do you have? Would it make you more happy if we
> don't use Twitter, Facebook, and G+ as communication channels? What
> do we do instead? Have you seen http://twitter.com/gnulinux ?

GNU Social, the Diaspora Project, and many other more specific-use sites
endeavor to change the landscape. Identi.ca, too, is a very active,
viable alternative. See http://www.fsf.org/share for the FSF's view on
Twitter and others (likely that the channel to which you linked was set
up by one of the FSF members who already had an account, or who didn't
mind taking the risk).

> What's wrong with having an iPhone app for the SCALE schedule? Is it
> also against Free Software principles to have a win32 port of Emacs?

The act of publishing an iPhone application isn't free, so you are
directly supporting those applications when you even create one. The
win32 port of GNU Emacs does reward people who use nonfree software, and
they list Windows on their supported platforms, but they don't provide
binaries at all. I think releasing generally functional source code
cannot be looked upon as an act of endorsing one system or another. And,
since SCaLE (I think) uses a third party to publish these apps, consider
that supporting companies who support nonfree software is just as bad as
supporting 20th Century Fox, who supports the MPAA, who supports SOPA.
(I don't mean this as a trump card, it's only an analogy).

But, all of this aside, there is *no reason* for the conference to worry
about these steps now. There are simpler, more basic things that need to
be settled first!

-- 
Mark Holmquist
Student, Computer Science
University of Redlands
MarkTraceur at gmail.com