[WSIS CS-Plenary] Collaboration software debate

[Vittorio Bertola]

Georg C. F. Greve ha scritto:
>  vb> At the same time, it seems to me that renouncing to have meetings
>  vb> because there is (yet) no real time translation tool is as
>  vb> ideological as renouncing to have meetings because there is (yet)
>  vb> no free software tool for conferencing.
> 
> While you are right to point out that ideology is not a bad word per
> se, it is generally used in a derogatory form such as the one that
> you demonstrate in your message.

Actually, I just pointed out that "we're not doing it because we can't 
get translations" and "we're not doing it because we can't get free 
software to do it" are both ideological assertions - I never implied any 
negative meaning to this.

(BTW, the first assertion would not be ideological, but practical, if we 
actually had Bureau members who are not able to communicate in English, 
but to the best of my knowledge this is not the case.)

> By clearly expressing that you disagree with a certain course of
> action and making its "ideological nature" the reason for your
> disagreement,

Uhm... where exactly did I say that I disagree or that, if I did, I 
would do so because I despise ideological reasons?

I would please ask you to feel free to criticize my opinions, but do not 
criticize your preemptive interpretation of my opinions. It is extremely 
easy, when discussing in electronic form, to completely misunderstand 
what the other person said, so everyone should put extra care in that.

> To the subject matter:

I think that no one disagrees with the idea that you should practice 
what you preach. I think that some people just think that, while you 
build your perfect world in which all your principles will be reflected, 
you have to accept some compromises when the deviation in practice from 
the principles is neglectible in comparison to the advantage that is got 
by such deviation.

You are free to think that there should never be any deviation, but 
please accept that others might have a different opinion, and a full 
right to act according to it. (Also, in the specific, unless your 
ultimate target is to outlaw all proprietary software, you should be 
ready to live peacefully with people that gladly use and support the 
proprietary development model and perhaps consider it even ethically or 
practically better than the free one.)

> Unless WSIS Civil Society wishes to officially assume the position
> that people using Free Software and people from the South with less
> extensive hardware and connectivity should be rightfully excluded from
> its political discourse

But if we have no discourse because there is no acceptable tool that we 
can use to discuss, then everyone is excluded and we don't get to anything.

Again, this is my personal opinion, but I really don't see why you can't 
just let other people do things their way when they have a different 
opinion than yours.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...