Hi Stian, Hi Henner, Hi Hannes,
* Stian Rødven Eide stian@fsfeurope.org [2009-01-09 14:49:32 +0100]:
On Fri, 2009-01-09 at 01:07 +0100, Matthias Kirschner wrote:
I tend to be against moving the text. As than we could also delete it. Nobody will read it when it is on another site.
I disagree with your assumption and counter with mine ;-)
My belief is that the number of links to pdfreaders.org could be substantially higher if we moved the text. While most Free Software friendly organisations would have no second thoughts about linking to it, the site will not receive the exposure it deserves from outside the community as long as it appears to be directed towards potential Free Software activists. The added number of links would clearly outweigh the number of people not clicking on "About".
I think many organisations that don't know what Free Software is could be more easily convinced to link to pdfreaders.org if the text on the front page were "lighter". In my view, these are the people that we want to reach, as PDF readers in general could be a good way to show the diversity and possibilities of Free Software -- much because it breaks the preconceived notion of Adobe's monopoly on reader software.
If I still haven't managed to convince any of you than I shall concede. Although I feel strongly that this would be very advantageous for the campaign, I will now let the popular vote decide and not push the argument further.
Here the pros and cons from my side _for_ moving the text. That is having the following paragraph as first paragraph:
There are many programs to read and write PDF documents. The following list of PDF readers is vendor neutral. All of them are Free Software[, which means that you can use, study, share, and improve it]:
[Table]
Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe’s PDF reader also exist, but like it, their internal working is a a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data.
[Footnote]
And move the rest to About/Background. This way Free Software is also very prominent on the first page, but the background stuff about PDF and further info is moved.
Pro: - it looks less like an advertising campaign (which it actually is ;) ) - the first page is cleaner - more people might therefor link to it
Neg: - Not so many people will probably read the background about PDF - If "Open Standard" is not written on the front page, perhaps some governments don't want to link to us because it is good to link to "Open Standard" pages :)
Hannes, Henner, Stian (or anyone else): what do you think?
Best wishes, Matthias