Notices by Björn Schießle 🌍 🇪🇺 (bjoern@mastodon.social), page 12

Wow, when I heard the rumors last week I bet that this will not going to happen. But now #Microsoft really surprised me by joining the Open Invention Network #OIN. This also means that they have to stop using #patents against #Android! https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-entire-patent-portfolio

@calisti As far as I know no. But while thinking about it, it would be nice to be able to follow a Discourse category and then get every new post in your stream and be able to reply directly. Maybe you should send a feature request to the Discourse developers. 🙂

Bist du dir noch nicht sicher wen du bei der Anstehenden Landtagswahl in #Bayern wählen willst? Vielleicht gibt dir der Digital-o-Mat ein paar Anhaltspunkte https://bayern.digital-o-mat.de #FreieSoftware #FreieBildung #OER #Netzpolitik #Politik #ltwby18

@MatejLach
So let's stick to the hard arguments we have. The licenses. If it meets the Free Software definition it is Free Software. Of it meets the Open Source definition it is Open Source which in practice means that it is always either both or nothing.

@MatejLach
Doesn't Evince implement DRM for PDF's. AFAIK you can disable it in the settings, but it is there if I remember correctly. And what about the Gnome Online Accounts which "advertise" Facebook, Google & Co. Note I don't want to talk bad about Gnome. It is a great Free Software project with great people and I use it every day. I just try to illustrate how hopeless it is to use all the soft arguments to draw a line between terms where you will never reach consensus.

@MatejLach
Not sure if you can really find a overall vision in such large and diverse projects. For example I used to read from time to time the mailing list of the Gnome Foundation and RMS regularly had a hard time there to raise his voice regarding software freedom because the project is so large and diverse these days.

@MatejLach
Now imagine that you meet at day one a contributor of one of the projects who says "X is a great Open Source project" at day two you meet another contributor to the same project who says "X is great Free Software". Did the software changed between day one and two? No. Did the license changed? No. Did the community changed? No. That's all I and the article at FSFE.org says. We should be careful to pick the right "enemy" and don't fight against ourselves.

@MatejLach
Take a big project like Linux, KDE, Gnome, you will find people in there talking about Free Software, Open Source, FOSS, FLOSS, Libre Software,... Some will contribute to kickstart their career, some for money, some as a hobby, some because they like to collaborate with people all over the world, some to learn, some because they care deeply about software freedom? What does it mean for the result (the software)? Is it Free Software? Open Source?

@MatejLach I would even say that we also agree on the importance of the philosophical differences. That's why we talk about Free Software. Of course Open Source and Free Software put the spotlight on completely different values. But we don't use it to divide the community. We are a really heterogeneous community these days. We don't ask you about your political view, your gender, color, mother language we just come together and build Free Software and thereby making freedom.

@MatejLach
As said, we are sister organisation. That's not one-sided but a mutual commitment. We share the same values and goals and just adopt our message to our target audience, the citizens and politicians of our region. So this shouldn't be a surprise. We are also in regular contact and often discuss campaigns before they go live, etc.

@bob I removed Aral because he said that he want to wind down... I agree with your argument, but how could we drop the term Open Source? We can't forbid everyone to use it. So I see two options, accept that there are multiple terms. Or fight against it and thereby against your own community, people who build great Free Software, often care deeply about software freedom but prefer (for whatever reason) another term. I'm sure our real enemies would love option two. ;)

@MatejLach
... So we prefer to talk instead about why Free Software is great, why you should use it and run more positive/optimistic campaigns like "Public Money? Public Code?". At the end we fight for the same but we address the audience each time in a way that fits best. Also if you look at political campaigns it shouldn't be hard to see (huge) differences between the US, Europe, Asien,... That's why the network was established.

@MatejLach I removed aral because I said that he want to wind down, so let's respect it.
To your question. I think it is important to adjust your argument to the audience if you want to be successful. But with cultural differences I meant more something like (careful this is super simplified giving the char limit) that FSF has often success with "negative campaigns" like Bad Vista, etc in the US. While for most Europeans positive campaigns resonate better...

@aral Same here, enjoy your evening. And if you are at FOSDEM by any chance, let me know :-)

@aral I would invite you to look at our work and campaigns and judge by yourself: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/campaigns.en.html https://fsfe.org/work.en.html

@aral ... Maybe we should talk about this over a beer (or any drink you prefer) if we have the chance to meet at a conference. I don't think we are that far away. But the 500 char limit and maybe the fact that I'm not a native speaker makes it harder as it should to come together here.