Re: [Bug-gnupedia]Submissions in Word Format

[Alexander Braun]

->Also, if it is an issue of Microsoft is a 
->for-profit-company-and-patents-its-software-to-make-money versus 
->everything-should-be-free-and-flowers-for-everyone and WE WON'T under any 
->circumstance use MS products, then this is short-sighted and narrow-minded 
->stance.

Sorry, I won't agree with you. This is not only an issue of Microsoft or
not Microsoft. A similar discussion is the gif-discussion which also
occurred on this list. I bet there will occur a thousand other discussions
on similar topics. 

The topic is: should a FSF-related project use and admit non-free software
or non-free formats. I would say no.

First of all I can't see any difference in the fact that .doc is "only" a
non free format and not a non-free software. The software and the format
are tightly connected. And they can be interpreted both as a kind of a
language. The format matters too in terms of the FSF and so it should for
this project. 

Second, Microsoft is only one example, Unisys another. Unisys tries it
once and again every five years to frighten every webmaster by claiming
their patent. Then not much happens anyway. So this company does not seem
too aggressive. Unisys does not intend (as far as I know) to destroy
and attack freedom actively. But the format is patented, though.  It's
non-free. And you won't find any gif on the fsf site for exactly this
reason.
On the other hand Microsoft is not very peacefully. According to the
Halloween-Documents they intend to attack the OpenSource and the
FreeSource movements, because they feel threatened by Linux. They intend
to pollute everything that is free, so they can earn money with it and -
finally wipe it away. The Halloween-Docs were about 2 and a half years
ago. But I think Corel is one of the visible beginnings of this battle.

So if you allow .doc then you let them in. Then you open the door
explicitly for the most aggressive company at this time. And you open the
door very wide. Because then you have to allow Excel-Sheets, Powerpoint
Presentations, everything the Office packets offer, just because such a
vast majority of people uses them. 

This will kill the project, I'm sure. 

Third it is very shortsighted to say Microsoft is the product in every
living room. Microsoft is very dominant in the USA and in
Europe. That's it. The most people on this planet don't even own a
computer. China, the country with the largest population, is pushing
Linux, because it is free. Wide areas in Africa even can't access
electricity. If we're planning such a gorgeous and highly ambitioned
project like a free and undependent encyclopedia for the whole planet,
which will take about ten to twenty years we have to think exactly of
these people too. And we have to take care that no non-free component
would spoil the efforts.

By the way - I don't think this really to be a problem. Everyone who
can write an article, is also capable of clicking on file->save
as.. and choosing html. Every version of Word seems to support this
feature - terribly bad though, but it produces something which can be
viewed in a browser. And this html is free because it is a free
format. And the professor you described in your mail propably will use
sgml or latex anyway. At least the professors I was confronted with
while studying did this. 


->The majority of authors out there could not care less about computers. They 
->are not EVER going to care about the "format" of a file. All they care about 
->is that it's easy to type, easy to edit, and easy to print. They are going 
->to leave the "conversion process" to the IT types, and they are not going to 
->worry about it.
->

That's another contra against .doc-format. The fact that lots of people
don't really care about living a life in slavery as long as they don't
feel it physically must not be the reason to support this attitude. 
In this case GNE would even be a chance to tell people not yet
confronted with the new terms of freedom in an IT-society, that frrdom
still exists and that they should try to support it in a way - even if
it is only by saving their documents as html.


->Unless we make a really good and really smart programs that will be easier 
->to use than MSWord for the purpose of posting to the web, then we will have 
->to contend with .doc files.

We have lot's of this tools. Kword is a startingpoint. Another one
would be StarOffice, which also will be under GPL from version 6
on. abiword is not quite ready yet, but it would also be a very good
wysiwig-tool. But the most suitable for this project IMHO would be
Lyx. We could write a GNE-template for Lyx and then it will even be
the most easiest tool to use for the user who does not care about
computers. 

(By the way, I think I would prefer emacs :) )

But there are plenty of tools and plenty of alternatives, which
produce free code. So why accepting .doc-files. I even would say
accepting doc-files could be interpreted as advertisement for the
non-free, if so much alternatives exist. 

Lot's of people use other non-free products like MS-Frontpage, which
also can produce free code.

There are so many other ways to produce a suitable document besides
MS-Word, that it is by no means necessary to allow it. But furthermore
I think it is wrong.

alexander