Re: Skills classification -- proposal

[GNU Herds work team]

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> > Why Software must follow the 4 freedoms but not Data, Hardware,
> > Documentation or Art?

Richard Stallman wrote:
> In general I think that functional information must be free.  Software
> is functional information.  Documentation is functional information.
> Some data is functional information.  All that must be free.
>
> Art is a different issue.  See my speeches on Copyright vs Community.
>
> As for hardware, the question of free or not in this sense is not
> meaningful since there is no source code and there are no copiers.



> Why do you want to use this category?  How would it be relevant?

You exposed the need to avoid showing to the public non-free skills. So we are 
looking for a category to classify the skill-fields users fill.  We can take 
this opportunity to allow to tag skills more precisely, exposing for example 
if it is Software or Documentation:

(Option 1)

    Initial flag
      * Pending to classify

    General flags
      * Unknown
      * Abstract

    The actual classification
      * Software
        * Free Software
        * Almost-Free Software
        * Partially-Free Software
        * Non-Free Software

      * Other


(Option 2)

This option only evaluate the freedom of Software skills.  Note as Hardware, 
Data, Documentation and Art is not classified as free or non-free.

One advantage of adding the Hardware, Data, Documentation and Art flags is 
that classifying something e.g. as Documentation expose it clearly to the 
user that it is not Software:

    Initial flag
      * Pending to classify

    General flags
      * Unknown
      * Abstract

    The actual classification
      * Software
          Free Software
          Almost-Free Software
          Partially-Free Software
          Non-Free Software

      * Hardware
      * Data
      * Documentation
      * Art


(Option 3) The more complete classification could be:

    Initial flag
      * Pending to classify

    General flags
      * Unknown
      * Abstract

    The actual classification
      * Software
          Free Software
          Almost-Free Software
          Partially-Free Software
          Non-Free Software

      * Hardware

      * Data
          Free
          Non-Free

      * Documentation
          Free
          Non-Free

      * Art
          Non-Sharable
          Sharable


We think the best option is (Option 3) due to it allows to tag skills more 
precisely, but without forcing it.  It could be the same work with a lot more 
of information to the user.

What is your category proposal?


Note that Almost-Free & Partially-Free Software would be applied only to 
software distributions.



Example of the Skills section of a resume:

   NetBSD             | Almost-Free Software
   Ubuntu             | Partially-Free Software
   Web Development    | Abstract
   HP PA-RISC (hppa)  | Hardware
   C++                | Free Software
   gNewSense          | Free Software
   Oracle             | Non-Free Software
   Cartography/Maps   | Non-Free Data
   games data         | Non-Free Data
   games data         | Free Data
   GNU Emacs Manual   | Free Documentation
   MS internal API    | Non-Free Documentation
   KDE Logo           | Sharable Art
   GNOME icons        | Sharable Art
   Mac OS X icons     | Non-Sharable Art


Skills tagged as Non-something or Pending to classify would not be exposed to 
the public.




Appendix
========

Some software distributions:

    gNewSense        | Free Software
    ...              |
    Debian GNU/Hurd  | Free Software
    Debian GNU/Linux | Almost-Free Software
    ...              |
    Debian           | Almost-Free Software
    Gobuntu          | Almost-Free Software
    OpenBSD          | Almost-Free Software
    FreeBSD          | Almost-Free Software
    NetBSD           | Almost-Free Software
    ...              |
    Ubuntu           | Partially-Free Software
    ...              |
    Mac OS X         | Non-Free Software
    MS Windows Vista | Non-Free Software




Proposed roadmap
================

  1. We hope finish the development in one or two weeks.

  2. We will write a guide the help the people who classify skills. At
     least initially we can realize such classification task.

  3. Somebody with native English level should check the English version
     of the webapp, which is used as base to do the translations. For
     example, some guys has reported that the reading of the FAQ section
     is not very good.

  4. Update the translations.


Best regards,
The work team
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