Re: [GSoC] Draft proposal for an Install Wizard for Guix

[Ludovic Courtès]

myglc2 <address@hidden> skribis:

> Thomas Ingram <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> On 03/26/2016 07:39 AM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>>> Personally, I would like to view the “wizard” as a helper, and not as
>>> something that hides everything and turns people into “end users.”
>
> Wow, Ludo, what do you have against "end users"?

I think that for people to enjoy their computing freedom, they must be
empowered rather than treated as “end users.”

I believe that the scheme under which experienced programmers write
intricate C/C++ code providing super-high-level wizards for “end users”
does not contribute to the emancipation of individuals.  When that code
is free, of course it benefits programmers (and so, indirectly, “end
users”) and allows society to have collective control over it.  But it
still leaves too high a barrier for many individuals to get into
programming and exert Freedom #1.

Now, I’m not saying that Guix{,SD} or Emacs are trivial for anyone to
hack on either, but I think their design where everything is exposed in
a unified way lowers the barrier to hacking.

I think a number of people here started contributing packages without
knowing Scheme, because they didn’t have to, and eventually became
almost fluent in Scheme as they hacked on it.  :-)

There was a talk last year by Mako on this topic:

  
https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/access-without-empowerment-libreplanet-2015-keynote

I hope this clarifies things!

Ludo’.