On Sun, 2006-11-26 at 14:57 -0500, Jacques B. wrote: > > Thus the predicate for not trusting the petition site as a means not to > > sign is easily solvable with only a little amount of detective work. > > Fair enough. I wasn't suggesting it wasn't his work. Just that it > wasn't particularly obvious from reading his home page and from the > rest of the info. Something one would have expected seeing the > importance of the topic to this individual. ---- given that there is information on his web page about his stand against software patents in general http://perens.com/Articles/PatentFarming.html, his being former project leader of Debian Linux and self declared "spokesperson and one of the leaders of Free Software and Linux" - it's not much of a stretch to create the nexus of his motivation for his open petition to protest the Novell-Microsoft agreement. ---- > > > As for not signing petitions that you don't understand, that's a > > blinding glimpse of the obvious. > > Better to admit ignorance than to try and mask it and lose credibility > when the obvious surfaces, hence why I made that fact clear. I could > have read the info on Wikipedia and his sites and claimed otherwise. > But I am not that kind of person (nor am I suggesting others who've > posted are). As for finding the time to read up on the topics > pertinent to the debate in order to assume a justifiable position, I > just don't have that time. I leave that for those closer to the pulse > to duel it out and hope that good will triumph over evil. Better to > have the issue debated by a handful of knowledgeable, competent people > than a large group of ill informed or uninformed people. That would > hurt the cause more than help it. > > Now if the issue was something to which I was more on the pulse of, I > would quite possibly take a public stance on it. We can't all be > activists. We can't be well versed on everything Linux. We all > contribute in different ways. It would inappropriate to criticize > someone for not getting involved without knowing a person's reasons > (which is something that a person can choose to share or not). A > person can be a great contributor to Linux without getting involved in > this petition or that issue as a whole. My advice was if you are > going to get involved, be well informed so that you can do so > competently, don't you agree? > > If anyone suggests otherwise, then they are being extremely unfair, > unreasonable, and will risk doing more harm than good in their quest > to further their side's position on the issue. > > We only have to do two things in life, pay taxes and die. Everything > else is a choice (well so is not paying taxes but you know the > saying...). Fair enough to seek to raise awareness and involvement in > a topic. But not to expect it. ---- I guess that we all have well informed, or uninformed opinions on just about everything in the universe...sort of whether we see the glass half full or half empty I would suppose and we always have the prerogative of changing our minds down the line anyway. The fact that Linux, be it Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise, Debian or even SuSE is capable of providing both a rich server and desktop environment today is the result of the efforts of a great many number of people who ardently believe in the concept of Free Software that is free for use by users and not subjugated to corporate whim. If this issue isn't important to you or other users of Fedora then I would suppose that you have to ask yourself why you are using Linux and not Macintosh or Windows. The goals of Free Software are clearly delineated at http://www.gnu.org/ - Anyone using Linux and not familiar with the intentions of GNU or the Free Software Foundation really needs to work through this since having no informed position is simply not excusable. I apologize for debating this since that was never my intent for the posting...I actually give people credit for being able to discern whether they want to sign or not sign a petition and can only wonder what your motivation is for staking a position that it might be a mistake for people to sign it. Craig
