Re: how to make decisions?

[Jonathan Wilkes]

> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:25:49 +0200
> From: Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden>
> To: Graham Percival <address@hidden>
> Cc: David Kastrup <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> Subject: Re: how to make decisions?
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> Graham Percival writes:
> 
>> What's depressing?  I didn't see anything unusual in those
>> comments.
> 
> I would not use the word depressing, but I cannot help wondering
> why someone would think that, anno 2009, using musixtex would
> be a good idea, and needs to blog about it and get comments
> to find out about the existence of LilyPond.
> 
> Also, it is saddening to read a senior consultant with a PhD
> suggest the use of a proprietary software package.  Hopefully
> he'll hear about Sibelius' [development] demise and takes
> the lock-in-to-a-possbily-dieing-vendor viewpoint into
> account when suggesting "software solutions".

Advocating for free software is a lot more complex than just telling
people to avoid vendor lock-in (which can happen in free software[1].
And having a PhD does not mean a person has the time
to do a full-on research project to figure out if the four freedoms of the
GPL are actually a viable way to protect users' freedoms.  Heck, they
probably don't even have the time to really grasp what "user freedom"
even means, if we're being serious about the true extent of that phrase.

This is especially problematic because the most obvious user-facing
part of free software-- the graphical user interface-- has historically been
the weakest link.  So there's the quite real deficiency in what the user
_sees_ when they open Pure Data when compared to Max/MSP-- which
is immediately apparent-- and they must weigh that against the ethical
implications of using proprietary software-- which require a research 
project[2].

Similarly with Sibelius.  I don't understand why you're saddened by this,
especially considering you're fighting on two fronts because even with the
frontends Lilypond has no _easy_ way to make tweaks to a large score
without unreasonably long periods of recompilation.  Did you really expect
composers and engravers to spend time they don't have solidfying an
ethical argument against software that does a decent technical job for them
in order to use an ethical alternative that will clearly require more of their
time in order to finalize output?

[1] See tivoization, as well as software-as-a-service.

[2] And since when are PhDs more likely to make ethical decisions outside
of their area of expertise?

-Jonathan

> 
> Jan