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Re: [Fenfire-dev] FFF Extraordinary Meeting


From: Benja Fallenstein
Subject: Re: [Fenfire-dev] FFF Extraordinary Meeting
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 17:54:54 +0300

Hi!

Still nobody else who has anything to say? :-o

On 9/2/05, Matti Katila <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I wasn't sure about this because I felt that we are more *hackers*
> > than *researchers* -- i.e. more concerned with writing useful and
> > elegant programs than with whether we are discovering something *new*
> > that nobody has even thought of before.
> 
> I feel the same. I think the word research needs to be removed.
> It would be also nice that anyone who can turn on a computer can also
> understand what's the purpose of the association.

Hmmm, yeah. But the purpose of the association is to develop Fenfire,
and I don't know a good way to explain Fenfire so that anyone who can
turn on a computer can understand it :-/

> > - Software should be free.
> > - The purpose of this organization is to develop Fenfire, which aims
> > to be a new basic infrastructure for computing. For basic
> > infrastructure, it's even more important that it's free.
> > - All software released by this organization will be under a free license.
> > - Recognizing that there is non-free software in our world, too, the
> > association may also license its code to developers of non-free
> > software, so that non-free software can run on the Fenfire system,
> > too. (However, all code published by the association will also be
> > available as Free Software.)
> 
> It's kind of heavy to say that aim is to be a new basic infrastructure :)
> But yes anyway, who would say that isn't the aim? :)

Exactly :-)

> > I don't know whether we can find a good formulation for this, but I
> > think this is what I'd like the constitution to say, essentially. How
> > do you others feel about this -- is this the right direction to try?
> 
> I don't think that we need to have in the constitution: "software
> needs to be free" aiming that the association is to "translate" every
> peace of software to free ones. Altough it would be nice if we can say
> between the lines that one part of the association's ideology is free
> software.

I think it doesn't work to say this between the lines, because we
already had our previous constitution rejected because it wasn't
"ideological" enough, and this is our ideology ;-)

Of course we shouldn't say, "the purpose of this association is to
make all software free." The point is to say, "All software should be
free. The purpose of this association is to make one specific kind of
free software"...

Hmmm.

Then again, how about something along the lines of, the purpose of
this association is to find (research) and implement more efficient
user  interfaces, and publish them as free software?

I think that could be generally understandable.

--------------

Hmm. Trying to get closer to a wording, I have the problem that it's
not clear to me whether "making free software" or "making better
software (/user interfaces)" is really our purpose.

Hmm, if I put it that way, the natural answer is, "making better free
software." ;-) But that's not exactly the right thing.

We want to make software that's better than any current software, and
we want to publish it as free software. But is the reason we want to
do that that we want more software to be free, or that we want
software to be better?

I'm not sure about this right now, so I'll just send this e-mail
rather than keeping you waiting :)

- Benja




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