"the alternative that you found technically superior to another is the nonfree one, and you expect that a user would most likely decide to choose it rather than free one, when presented with all arguments, am I right?" -- I expect that _some_ users will, yes. Which, in my understanding, will be an exercise of freedom. Freedom means making fully informed choices. A "choice" to use a free program made simply because you were unaware of a non-free one can hardly be described as freely made. Plus, users' awareness of the (technically better) non-free program will incentivize the free program's authors to improve it, an incentive currently lacking (and it shows -- the free program has long languished at mediocre quality).
On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 4:11 AM, Dmitry Alexandrov <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> It's one thing to promote free software by creating a free program >>>> superior to a non-free one, pointing users to both, explaining the >>>> advantages of the free program (including the freedom part), and >>>> then letting the users decide. It's quite another thing to simply >>>> hide the non-free program from users. ... Is the assumption here >>>> that users are unable to see their own best interests, even when >>>> presented with all the arguments? ... If no, why not point users >>>> to both free and non-free alternatives and trust them to decide? >>> >>> ... >> >> My question grows out of the discussion here: >> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2018-01/msg00036.html > > Just to be clear, as (I suppose) few of subscribers there are able to judge > about programs that run on iOS from their own experience. > > In this case, the alternative that you found technically superior to another > is the nonfree one, and you expect that a user would most likely decide to > choose it rather than free one, when presented with all arguments, am I right? _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
