[Foundation-l] Two tests for the freeness of activities related to project content

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
When you conflate impoverished and principled readers, you are talking about
two distinct demographics. The issue is that modern software requires modern
hardware and when there is no money for software, chances are that the
hardware is substandard. This is not the case for "principled" users. They *can
and do *buy the hardware to run the latest and greatest software.

An impoverished reader might use skype, a principled reader would not. One
group is about cost to them and the other is about principles. Politically
it is expedient to make these group seem to be as one. They are not. It is
for instance known that Microsoft prefers people to use their software
illegally then to have them use other software. It is for this reason that
the argument that copyright violation is stealing is a lie; when Microsoft
truly believed this, it would fight illigal software everywhere equally and
this does not happen.

Free software and free standards are very much to be preferred; they create
a level playing field and they ensure innovation better then proprietary
principles will ever do. Please keep the arguments sane, impoverished is not
principled, conflating them makes for a poor argument.
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 1:32 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've come up with two tests which can be applied to issues like the
> file format discussion in order to reach the determinations which I
> believe to be most correct.
>
>
> ==Two Tests for the freeness of activities related to project content==
>
> ===Impoverished/principled reader test===
>
> Imagine people who are sufficiently impoverished that they can only
> afford zero cost software or who are sufficiently concerned about
> their freedom that they only use legally licensed Free Software.  Does
> taking the action discriminate against these people?  Does taking the
> action give them a materially lesser experience?
>
> ===Impoverished/principled author test===
>
> Imagine a collection of authors or publishers who are sufficiently
> impoverished that they can only afford zero cost software or who are
> sufficiently concerned about their freedom that they only use and
> distribute legally licensed Free Software.  Would they be able to take
> the same or materially equivalent action related to their own content?
>
>
> === Examples ===
>
> ====Using a free software flash module to support clients which can't
> handle the HTML <canvas> tag====
>
> This passes the impoverished reader test: The impoverished reader can
> be given the <canvas> tag which has equal or better functionality OR
> the reader could legally use Gnash.
>
> This passes the impoverished author test: The impoverished author
> could legally perform the exact same action while paying no fees nor
> using/distributing any software which was not freely licensed.
>
> ====Parallel distribution of Video in both Ogg/Theora and  Flash Video
> because Flash video is more widely adopted====
>
> I think this passes the impoverished reader test: The impoverished
> reader can view the Ogg/Theora file, and the differences in
> quality/bitrate are neither likely to be material nor were
> contributing factors in the decision to offer Flash Video.
>
> However, this clearly *fails* the impoverished author test:  The
> impoverished author can not legally engage in parallel distribution
> himself without paying codec licensing for encoders and fees for the
> distribution of material in the licensed format.  The author could
> distribute exclusively Ogg/Theora, but that wouldn't be equivalent
> because it has significantly less adoption (and that was the reason to
> consider parallel distribution in the first case).
>
>
> ====Parallel distribution of hypertext in an eBook format where only
> *reading* tools were non-free, and some free ebook formats====
>
> What if a format is totally free to authors/publishers but isn't
> useful without a non-free reader?  I believe this has been for some
> ebook formats, at some points in time. We'll presume that the free
> format isn't materially worse than the non-free one.
>
> This passes the impoverished reader test:  The impoverished reader can
> use the free ebook format.
>
> This passes the impoverished author test: He's free to turn out ebooks
> in both formats just like we are.
>
>
>
> It was re-reading some of Geni's posts that made me think of
> describing this "impoverished author" test.  Much of Wikimedia's
> mission isn't merely providing read-only content at no cost to the
> public,  it's also a mission of enabling authorship by building a
> collection of works that others can build upon.   It's isn't good
> enough that our content be available to free software users, it also
> must be free for authors to emulate, modify, and/or republish.  As
> such, both tests are equally important.
>
> I wouldn't presume to apply these tests to things unrelated to the
> content (all that stuff our users are creating and posting in the
> projects) such as Wikimedia office activities: Our mission is one of
> enabling the world through freely licensed educational materials,  not
> the creation/promotion of freely licensed office materials. (Although
> there are practical and ethical reasons outside of the Wikimedia
> mission why preferring freely licensed solutions is generally good...)
>
> Thoughts? Holes? Better restatements?
>
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