* Brian Cameron (Brian.Cameron at Sun.COM) wrote: > > Glenn: > >>> In situations where there is no clear pointer, such as DVD playback, it >>> might be most reasonable to just do nothing for now. >> >> Maybe. I wonder though if we couldn't come up with 'something' to >> explain the situation to the user why they can't play their media that >> is both useful and doesn't generate a 'negative experience' (a tall >> order I know). > > How about this? > > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
Possibly, but we'd certainly need to add some context for the user in whatever dialog that we present them. Ideally, something like: The system is unable to play this 'media' due to the lack of a free and redistributable codec (or something along those lines, I'm sure someone could come up with better wording that conveys the same message). And then we can point them at that link? > I think that the DVD media issue is a great example of how non-free > software can be bad. Richard Stallman would go so far as to claim it > hurts society, and is even evil. > > Since free software is, of course, relatively popular in the 3rd world, > denying such people the ability to use technology like DVD's seems to > support Stallman's point, to a degree, I think. > > I am not sure I agree it is "evil", though I can understand how Stallman > connects hurting society with evil. We could debate whether denying > the poor the ability to access DVD's really hurts society, or whether > the world's poor really would consider free software to begin with. But > I think Richard's essay would help to educate people about the > underlying issues about freedom and technology, and how you lose freedom > when you buy into non-free technologies. > > In other words, the consumer who has purchases a stack of DVD's should > be aware that by making this choice, they have given up some freedoms. > The freedom, obviously, to access the data purchased on the platform of > choice without fear of legal issues. Definitely agreed with most of this, but I think we're going to get 'deer in the headlights' looks if we start trying to educate users philosophically (at least for the users who 'just want everything to work' and don't care about the issues/politics/laws involved). Basically I think we need to tell them that we can't play the media they're trying to play gracefully and then tell them why we can't in the simplest most informative words we can come up with. Cheers, -- Glenn
