On 12/18/2012 10:08 AM, zx spectrumgomas wrote: > > > Facebook, Google+, Twitter. > > I think Guilers are wrong not managing an account like that. > > With google+'s account is different. > *** No it's not. Anyone can create an account anywhere, and then grant it to some authority figure, or share admin privilege with other people in a community. The question is not who is administering the account, but what does it imply for users to use that service. In any and all these cases, you're deflecting public activity (free software can be understood as a common good) to a private space (a privately-owned company, that DO NOT respect user's privacy to any acceptable level.)
You're talking about convenience, while you should be thinking about freedom. You should be asking yourself: if I am free to represent or promote a free software on private ground, does that benefit others' freedom, or does that impede their freedom? Is that allowing users to participate without constraint? Is that nurturing the community? Think carefully. Attracting a mass of users would probably benefit the community, but moving the conversation to private grounds, where a private for-profit company can claim copyright on your contributions, and will track user behavior, certainly won't. That has nothing to do with being a newbie, or reaching a large "social network" (remember: the social network is made of human relationships, not corporate goodies), or confusing community and mass-media. I would, personally, accept the use of such services for *announcements*, that link to free, non-tracking, community-operated sites, such as this mailing-list, the IRC channel, Andi Wingo's blog, etc. I know that rms would simply say something in the lines: these services are tracking their users, and they're not free software, so don't use them. > I have to see if Diaspora has communities and it works well. Then I > would open an account there. > *** You could as well setup a Lorea seed, a StatusNet instance, a pump.io, or a Mediawiki. Oh, wait: LibrePlanet *is* a MediaWiki. (hint, hint) That said, I think you've got a point in saying that Guile would benefit from more attention. But I don't see *marketing* as a way to achieve it. Instead, the community should provide working examples of code that works, such as The Gimp, etc. and expose the differentiating features of Guile vs. other approaches. GNU projects' pages are usually terse and the Guile one is no exception. If you're so inclined, you could explain why you're choosing Guile over another solution, how you got started, what things were enlightening, and what others were difficult to understand, or counter-intuitive. Replying only this set of questions would make a terrific wiki page, and probably encourage more experienced Guile developers to help you on your learning path. Truth is, beyond the Blub Paradox[1], there's another one: the more experienced one becomes at programming, the more one tends to forget about how difficult it was to get there. == hk [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html (lookup "The Blub Paradox")
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