On 15/03/07, Alfred M. Szmidt ams@gnu.org wrote:
The process is that there is a random chance of more freedom at the end. You simply have no clue if these people will be able to liberate these devices. You have no knowledge about these developers are capable of. People have suggested several ways that the FSFE could do better instead of having a raffle that gives out non-free software to people, my personal favourite is that the FSFE gives it to the first person(s) to liberate the device in question, and on top of that, you should give them a life time membership in the FSFE.
How does someone liberate such a device without having the device to work with?
_That_ would make it a high chance of more freedom in the end, but not by distributing things randomly, and on top of that asking people to pay for it.
If someone tells me that they have the technical ability to free a device, then I'm going to trust them. If that person also shows a commitment to Free Software, whether by being a GNU contributor, an FSFE Fellow, member of FSF, whatever, that adds more credence to their claim, IMHO. So when FSFE say "look, we have some vouchers for non-free devices here that can be made free with a little bit of work. We'll give them to people capable of doing that work, so tell us if you're interested in working on this". I don't understand why, when someone has already shown support for FSFE's work by supporting us, that we should then not believe them when they tell us they can carry this work out. Why do you believe FSFE's fellows are so dishonest?
You keep insisting that we'd be distributing the device randomly and it's continually pointed out that the devices would only go to those who've said they'd work to free the devices. People who've already shown a commitment to Free Software ideals by joining FSFE. Why do you distrust them so much?
Cheers,
Gareth