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Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] robots.txt disallows all spiders for maili


From: Noah Slater
Subject: Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] robots.txt disallows all spiders for mailing lists
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 23:19:17 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17)

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 12:39:44AM +0300, Yavor Doganov wrote:
> > Where would be the proper place to take my concerns about this matter?
>
> address@hidden

Thank you, I have sent an email with a summary of my arguments.

> > This isn't about making the archives Google friendly, it's about
> > making them people friendly!
>
> Right!  And we want to change the people in a way that they consider
> software freedom important.  Changing the society is the ultimate goal
> of the GNU project.

No, changing how people use and think about software is the goal.

I know that popularity isn't the goal, or we'd all be writing software for the
iPhone. But similarly, pragmatism and working software is pretty crucial if we
are going to be able to enjoy our freedoms. To that end, we absolutely need
software that is supported by an active, and accessible, community.

> So I don't think my "frame" is wrong.  Maybe a bit harsh, and maybe a
> route that only a few are willing to follow, but that doesn't mean
> it's wrong and inappropriate.
>
> I don't decide the policy of Savannah or the FSF-administered sites,
> so you can relax...

I am relaxed, and interested in the general discussion. Heh.

> > What you expect and what happens in reality are very different.
>
> Yeah.  It may also help if you don't resort to classic philosophy and
> well-known proverbs as arguments.  Every proverb has a
> counter-proverb, and I'm sure we both have better things to do than
> citing counter-proverbs.

Not sure what you're talking about here. I was simply pointing out that saying
"I wish all users read our documentation" doesn't mean they will and doesn't
mean we can abandon all other forms of support.

> > Mailing lists are useful for much more than bug reporting.
>
> I agree.  It would be nice if there was a free software-based search
> facility that would help finding the right answers.  Since there is no
> such thing, and the GNU project does not sycophantically follow
> well-known and already established non-free solutions in this area, my
> point still holds, even if we completely ignore the fact that the
> current state of affairs was solely driven by a solution to a
> technical problem.

Google is a service, and is neither free or non-free software.

A free network service P2P or federated Web-scale search project would be a
great idea, and promoting the discussion and development of this would be a very
healthy, and affirmative, move. See autonomo.us for more.

On the other hand, intentionally crippling one of our only support networks by
hiding the mailing lists from the temporally popular search engines would be an
extremely pernicious move that could only harm us in the long term.

Best,

-- 
Noah Slater, http://tumbolia.org/nslater




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