Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFS web site

[Andrew Savory]

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Alex Hudson wrote:

> On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 01:00:34PM +0100, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> >
> > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
>
> I would prefer to keep it identical to the FSF version, especially since
> I have seen people refer to freedoms by number in the past. But, I take
> Andrew's point - it would be useful to explain the numbering beforehand.
>
> I'm pretty confident it's a kind of hacker joke though.

Do you really refer in speech to the first freedom as the zeroeth freedom?

This does *nothing* good for the public perception of Free Software
advocates. At some point, FS has to meet the real world, and to be honest,
numbering the reasons why FS is good as "0, 1, 2, 3" sets us back years.
Just because the FSF happen to do it on their page doesn't mean we should
condone or propagate it.

So, since FSF numbers them, and we don't want to cause confusion, and
explaining a geek joke would look even worse, I'd suggest we drop the
numbers.

(Before you say it: I really can't be bothered to take on the illuminati
of gnu.org to get them to change their web site, but I'm hoping the more
reasoned UK people will do the right thing, and maybe set a precedent.)

(Even Asimov's robot acknowledged that calling the new law of robotics the
"zeroeth law" was a bit clunky, iirc.)

(enough with the brackets now ;-)


Andrew.

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