[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents under education/information licenses

[David Monniaux]

I wanted to comment publicly, however, that I think it is very unfair
of you to respond twice to me... One, your public reply, is more
friendly and the second your private reply far more aggressive.

Ok, just so that everyone is informed. I wrote to Greg, after his answer to my first message, which I considered insulted my intelligence :

< Apart from that, I would be glad if you would not use formulas such as
"your argument is seriously lacking in consistency". Given that you
have attacked essentially a straw man throughout your message (from
lack of knowledge of the issues), this sounded like a rather
pretentious judgment. Richard Stallman can get away with that kind of
things because he's Richard Stallman, but you're not. >

I may have been excessive here, but let me tell you an anecdote.

I've done political... let's say, lobbying, for lack of better words, on questions of copyright and computing. I've had to deal with people in my own camp (those supporting free software and the like) whose intellectual rigidity, in my view, really hampered our final goals.

I remember for instance a guy (whom I'll leave unnamed) that interrupted me when I was talking with a member of the board of administrators of [[SACEM]] (the French society of authors and composers) and proposed to the guy that artists, authors etc. should be funded by worldwide sponsoring and that copyright should be abolished. He then went on to quote Richard M. Stallman.

Regardless of whether abolishing copyright is a good idea, this means of action was stupid:
* Very few artists know RMS. Citing him won't help one bit, or, rather, it conveys the idea that he is some kind of guru of a cult.
* Proposing radically different things to people just frightens them and then shuts their mind to some intermediate proposals going in the right direction.

End of the anecdote, which I think makes for an interesting parallel:

Most people we're dealing with in the "real world" don't know what "free" as in "free software means".
What we propose to them is radically outside their frame of mind.

Some of these people are willing to take steps in our direction (we may even get help... er.. prodding them in the right direction). If we rigidly refuse to take some steps on our own, I think everything will fail : we will not get free content, and we won't even get nearly free content.

-- DM