[pp.int.general] Why Free Software misses the point

[Owen Kahn]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Andrew Norton <ktetch at gmail.com> wrote:

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> On 5/12/2010 7:30 PM, Felipe Sanches wrote:
> > * I am one of the (several) developers of Inkscape, a vector graphics
> > free software tool;
> > * I was at a conference and met a nice guy who draws comics using
> Inkscape;
> > * He is not a programmer;
> > * He wanted a feature;
> > * I knew how to do it,
> > * 2 days later the feature was incorporated into Inkscape.
> >
> > How much time would he have to wait for it if he had emailed Corel or
> Adobe?
> >
> > Results:
> > * He is a happy non-coder user with a practical issue solved
> > * I am a coder happy about being helpful to others
> * software gets more complex and more bloat to pander to every
> microgroup of users
>
Bloat and leanness depend much, much more on the leaders of a project than
on whether it's proprietary or open source. Inkscape, to its credit, has
always struck me as a reasonably lean program. This is simply not a critique
that can be applied ham-handedly to entire classes of software.


> >
> > This is a true story. You can see screenshots of the feature and his
> > blogpost about it (in brazilian portuguese) here:
> > http://nerdson.com/blog/connection-closed/
> >
> > Happy hacking,
> > Felipe Sanches
> >
> >
> >
> > ____________________________________________________
> > Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> > pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> > http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
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> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
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