On Tuesday 11. February 2020 07.46.27 Nico Rikken wrote:
By putting the Reuse project and the GNU project against each other I tried to favor a small targeted project compared to a large, seemingly all-encompassing effort. But as you showed me, even GNU has its points of focus.
The aim of something like GNU now should be a computing environment that allows people to conduct their lives, to interact with other individuals and organisations, and to focus on making their lives better, whether it is to help them organise their lives, pursue their interests, be creative, or simply to be educated and entertained.
Of course, to counter those who claim that their phones offer such an environment, it should be noted that such an environment should naturally be Free Software from top to bottom and uphold the user's need for things like privacy and safety. Otherwise, we wouldn't be invoking the GNU name in talking about it.
With regards to funding, there might be other organizations willing to sponsor an effort, as long as the goal is clear. So that is where to begin.
This is one area where the FSFE should be central, in my opinion. It should be a venue where things get done by people being able to bring different skills and resources to bear on problems that need solving. Where else would sponsors and those with financial resources go to get such things done otherwise? And where else would developers look for meaningful areas of endeavour that advances society in some way?
I know we live in an age where entrepreneurism is encouraged and people are meant to have great ideas, seek capital through "the market", and so on, but we all know how that usually ends up. The skill-sets for success as an entrepreneur and for producing decent, lasting, non-exploitative systems can be rather different, and we shouldn't expect people to master both realms. Otherwise, we really are minimising the chances of anything constructive getting done.
In regards to the PDF issue, it makes sense to first get an idea of the scope of the problem. Like I mentioned, I heard some reports about this issue, but am not aware of the current problems on this topic. Collecting theses reports can help to scope the issue: what organizations are not using open standards, what proprietary extension are we talking about, and what use-cases does it relate to? Then we could move forward by requesting the organizations to adopt open standards, by suing them into compliance, or by developing software that provides a workaround.
I agree. For all I know, my experience was based on a misunderstanding (perhaps there wasn't an actual form involved), or involved me not having the right software (despite trying different versions of different tools), or involved me not choosing the right settings (in the frustratingly opaque and poorly-designed interfaces, thinking specifically of anything that seems to be developed for GNOME these days).
We need to understand the capabilities of Free Software today, what the missing capabilities are, how those capabilities are used, what people's experiences are with the technology, and whether (and in which ways) Free Software fell short. We need to assess which projects would form the basis of supporting what is missing, whether they are capable of adding support, and whether they are interested in doing so.
We also need to establish patterns of behaviour in organisations that have power over us so that the software we use is not rendered inadequate due to unnecessary technological change. This leads to another area of endeavour entirely: that of organisations focusing on sustainable, enduring, undemanding solutions instead of pursuing needless change and causing confusion, frustration and waste.
The pdfreaders.org website currently lacks information on typically used extensions. Also there is no way to file a complaint on a specific case that could help paint a better picture of the current situation.
The PDF Readers campaign focused on anticompetitive and coercive practices, which was an important thing to do. But as I have noted before, we also need to be able to answer the follow-up questions of what people should otherwise be using after telling them that a document format and a software package are not the same thing.
At the time of writing, it is just you and I having this discussion, Nico, because our mails have not made it to the list, but I hope that others have useful insights that they might eventually be able to share with us.
Paul