Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π
FLOSS software is trash. Proprietary software is trash. They are trash in radically different ways.
This is why when someone used to one has a look at the other they always go ugh, how can people live with this.
I'm comfortable on both sides, but I'm far more tolerant of FLOSS nonsense, because I know it's partly my fault for not using my abilities to improve it.
David Sugar
@doctormo @clacke there were concepts, like the Alan Kay's dynabook, where the code and the user lived very closely together and the platform made the code very interactively part of the user's experience, making it so simple even a child could do it, rather than being entirely separate things mediated exclusively by either a generous or very selfish priestly programming caste.
bs2
@gnutelephony
The emacs paper(?) mentioned how people that didn't consider themselves programmers (secretaries..) naturally started making their work more convenient by programming emacs. It just didn't seem like programming... Sometimes I wonder if we could start early with emacs or DrRacket or a shell and get people into a natural progression into becoming more and more able to do things on their own... It just wouldn't feel right to use clunk OSs or Office software..
@doctormo @clacke
Martin Owens :inkscape:
Yeah, pretty much.
But both are misaligned economics.
Proprietary is far to easy to extort money and ignore user's actual needs.
And Free Software is far too hard to earn money so most work is volunteer and doesn't have any duty to pay attention to user's needs.
We need to fix this by inviting users into contributing to projects. Making that possible to do at all is very new.
Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π
@bsmall2 @gnutelephony @doctormo 99.99% of software today offers no gradual progression from basic use with defaults via advanced programmatic use to application contributions.
Emacs and spreadsheets are fighting for first place but have different gaps. Spreadsheets have millions of "non-programmers" programming but no gradual path to core maintenance. Emacs has an earlier threshold to elisp but a pretty good path from elisp through plugins to core (I think?).
bs2
@gnutelephony @doctormo @clacke
My guess is we already have the hardware and software we need. It's all laying around to be put together with enough effort: get people's old machines and put 32-bit Debian on them with Tux-Typing, emacs, Racket etc. We just need a Cuban literacy effort kind of thing where people do learning workshops everywhere: make if fun/natural to replace spreadsheets with org-mode or something. Make racket-pict memes with kids. Any libre Blub lang would work too I guess.π
Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π
bs2
@gnutelephony
I'm wondering if the middle ground has to be covered by some sort of grassroots face-to-face movement. Like a barefoot doctor, or barefoot economist kind of thing. I've set people up with old PCS installed with Debian, GCompris, Tux-typing, emacs, DrRacket etc... but haven't found the right combination of place, people and time yet. It'll happen eventually though: gotta have faith!
@clacke @doctormo
David Sugar
@clacke @bsmall2 @doctormo Indeed, we are often awful at doing this, and there is no good model for covering that middle ground.
bs2
@clacke
My feeling is that emacs with org-mode should be able to do everything for non-programmers. For media-literacy everyone should probably learn some html/css anyway. I guess any office or setup just needs a few people that get into css for laying out pages and spreadsheets from org.
If git or some VCS was a basic literacy thing too, an "its-all-text" approach would be very tempting to anyone whose lost a lot of work through a HD failure or some other problem...
@gnutelephony @doctormo
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