Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-marketing (324 mails)

[Abhradip mukherjee <abhradip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

@Fabrice
> Freedom of choice is rather something that matters to me.
> Do you understand ?
Sorry for my late reply :) Yes I understand and I thank you for your
support to Freedom of Choice. But let me politely remind you that
misinterpreting a philosophy is not a good thing. Freedom of choice is
not applicable here because the choice is being made in between right
and wrong.

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 12:50 AM, Kevin "Yeaux"
Dupuy<kevin.dupuy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> With all due respect, let's emphasize "openSUSE" (you know, the product
> we're working on here) over GNU or Linux. Yes, we thank and pay respect
> (and in many cases help) the causes of GNU and Linux and the FSF (well,
> I could argue about that, but I won't) that have brought us to where we
> are today, but if we waste time talking about how we should reference
> what is to the user *an obscure computer terminology* (You, I and
> everyone here knows how important the Linux kernel and the GNU software
> is, but average users don't care),

I am not saying that you should go to a ice-cream shop owner and tell
him why this is called GNU/Linux. You can just say "openSUSE is built
upon the strong foundation of GNU/Linux system". To them it is no
different from saying "openSUSE.....of Linux system". They wont
understand any of them. But I am talking about the active community,
the contributors, the ambassadors, the openSUSE project's official
terminology. openSUSE project should show the support to Free Software
Movement by officially calling it GNU/Linux. The ambassadors must
refer to it as GNU/Linux in front of future developer meets to inspire
them to develop free technology (A nice non-free project for openSUSE
wont help free software movement. Opera might be a good example of
such kind.). Community should call it GNU/Linux to remind themselves
of their main goal to contribute to free software movement.
Contributors must understand that they are contributing to a better
future (instead of thinking that they are just developing a better
product for sale).

> then you're going back on the goal of
> all of us: to get openSUSE (and thus open source software) into the
> hands of as many people as possible.

Good logic, but who told you that people will run away from it if they
hear it is GNU/Linux or a free software instead of just linux and open
source software?

> And let me repeat something I said earlier: the average user who is
> interested in trying something new other than Vista or XP or OS X
> *doesn't care about GNU or Linux or anything*.

That's something we must try to change. We should try to tell them
that it is better for you to use free software if you want to be
assured that your data and system is protected from any bad coding. In
case of free software we can say that because we have access to
original source code to check and a license that allows you to use it
anyway you want for any period of time.

> That's the "mysterious
> internals" of the computer, what they care about is that we give them a
> great experience both on the software and in the community.

So as I said changing the name wont affect the common user base
negatively but can motivate developers more.

> So let's
> worry more about that than about what we call GNU or Linux or something.

Lets worry about this community being misguided by underestimating
common users and not letting developers and contributors be aware of
GNU project and its importance.

- ADM
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