On Wed, 2009-01-14 at 22:06 +0100, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
Hi,
I can't see the neccessity for moving things. I haven't yet tried convincing other sites to add the button, but I don't think that people really care whether there is one paragraph or three, when deciding to add a button to their site.
I don't think it's the amount of text in itself, but rather the general appearance of the front page that will be a factor. My previous employer would for instance never link to a campaign, while a download portal might be concidered ok. My point is that I believe this campaign will be more successful if it doesn't appear to be one. From everyone else's comments it seems, however, that I'm the only one who believes so, and wouldn't want to force a compromise - but would of course appreciate it if we reached an agreement on the issue.
On the other hand it will IMHO drastically reduce the number of people that actually read about Free Software. It will also increase the amount of companies that want their proprietary viewer added, because they didnt get that *this is a campaign*. Also I think that we definitely need to include the arguments about open standards, because in contrast to Software Freedom, Open Standards and vendor neutrality are already perceived as issues by many organisations and will make it *more* likely for the buttons to be included.
This is a good point.
We could maybe still shorten the text if you believe thats important.
If we want to make it clear that it is a campaign, then it is probably not necessary. If we want to make it less obvious, then yes.
My Proposal (I included a note on inter-operability, since thats a famous buzz-word and changed the wording where it made more sense in short form):
I really like your proposal. It is a lovely compromise between my suggestion and the current text. But, as I mentioned, I don't want to force a compromise if we don't agree that it's a wise course of action.
The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a popular format to publish formatted text and documents. There are several different versions of it, some qualifying as an Open Standard, some certified by ISO, some encumbered by software patents. You might want to promote the versions that are Open Standards, because Open Standards guarentee inter-operability, competition and choice. Read more...
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, i.e. software that respects your basic four freedoms, which give you control over your computer and help protect your privacy. Read more...
The first "Read more" would lead to more facts about PDF and also maybe about standards, patents and document freedom.
The second "Read more" would elaborate on Software Freedom. We could also omit the second "read more" and just hyperlink "four freedoms" and "Free Software" but that might reduce the clicks on it...
These texts would have to written by someone before the site gets updated.
If we go for this option, I could try to make a first draft of the PDF-text. The second "read more" could link to FSFE's "about Free Software" page.
all the best, /Stian