If people are going to use Facebook, they should access it with free software. And it is useful for GNOME to do a good job of that.
At the same time, using Facebook is a harmful practice. It gives a misleading impression of privacy, it has close ties with the CIA and probably lets the CIA look at everything people upload. (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook.) It uses Flash format for video, which is harmful to free software. Some of its services are SaaS, which takes away control of your computing just as proprietary software does. So if GNOME is to provide a special feature for using Facebook, it should also warn people that they shouldn't trust Facebook with anything sensitive. It should make sure Gnash is installed for playing Flash, rather than lead people to install non-free Adobe software. And it should not do anything to facilitate or encourage use of the SaaS features of Facebook. (Can anyone tell me what what an "empathy account" does and what an f-spot export configuration does?) It is also important to give equally good support to other systems people can use for telling each other about events; for instance, social networking sites of the free software community, and peer-to-peer methods. This way, GNOME won't favor Facebook over those other methods. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
