Ben Finney writes ("Re: The Spirit of Free Software, or The Reality"): > So the above seems to argue either that search engine icons are > sufficiently important that we can violate the Social Contract, or I've > misunderstood. I'd like to know exactly where that misunderstanding is.
You are arguing from the Social Contract. This is the Debian equivalent of godwinating the conversation. But I will try anyway. The point of having ethical principles is to do good in the world. We can disagree about what good is, of course. But our users are not harmed, and their freedom is not diminished, if we ship nonmodifable icons for proprietary search services.[1] There is no significant risk that anyone would think that these icons are modifiable. As I wrote before, in this case, pickiness about the modifiability of the icons /is/ harming our users (not very much, but still). You haven't come up with a counterargument to these points, which I made in an earlier mail. I have also made the point that we make an exception for licence texts. Obviously the situations aren't entirely parallel, but this demonstrates that the absolutist position you are arguing for is both contrary to our existing practice, and impractical. If you are saying that this principle of modifiability is entirely absolute and we have to make no exceptions at all at all at all, you have to address that point too. If we are prepared to make exceptions, no matter how narrow, then the question is: on what basis might we make an exception, and should we make one in this case ? I am happy that we should use our documented principles and aims to guide our actions, but if applying the letter of the law undermines our values, we should go with what is right rather than what is written down. One problem is that the principle that we should protect our users' privacy isn't written down in our foundation documents, even though it's clear that most of us (probably, an overwhelming majority) think it important. If it _were_ written down then it would be more obvious that there is a conflict between different principles here. As someone who has come to think that reference to foundation documents to illuminate these kind of problems is not normally helpful, I'm not particularly bothered that the foundation documents lack a commitment to our users' privacy. But if this bothers you then I would support a GR to improve this. If you are going to clean this up then you should probably also deal with the fact that they also lack a commitment to our users' security, and you should consider whether it would be useful for these documents to use words and phrases like `autonomy' and `in practice'. I'd like to thank Mike Hommey again for all his hard work and his toleration for this kind of conversation. I support his intentions as he has just laid out. Ian. [1] To be clear, I mean that the users' freedoms are not diminished, nor the users harmed, by the nonmodifiability of the icons. An argument could be made that the very presence of these search engine configurations is a problem, but if that is the case it doesn't depend very much on what icon is shown. The obvious counterargument is that respecting the user's autonomy - including not putting barriers in front of their choice to use a proprietary service - is part of upholding the user's freedom. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21927.39727.387280.432...@chiark.greenend.org.uk