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Comment by aiilns | Hacker News Reader

Your comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of F/LOSS. It's a movement for software's freedom and consequently users' freedom.

Programmers from all over the world work on their free time on projects, some foundations exist supported by individual donations and companies' funding. Some companies release their code as F/LOSS.

There is no single entity that dictates what software is built and moreover people working on F/LOSS are (I would say) on average more aware/sensitive of their work's impact. I know for example that GNOME people are actively trying to better accessibility and would welcome the help (your time and skill or donations, or both).

https://wiki.gnome.org/Accessibility

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On the one hand, you are right. GNOME has been doing good work in the past. The move from CORBA to D-Bus didn't help to stabilize the AT-SPI, leaving us with a halfway broken system for years. But please dont get me going on donating to GNOME. I once donated 500 EUR to GNOME, back in the days when they had their friends of GNOME initiative. I was trying to earmark my donation so that it goes directly to Accessibility development. I neither got a thank you, nor did my donation ever get listed on their friends page. All I got out from this was the feeling that my money was effectively lost somewhere in the system.

Also, I am contributing to F/LOSS code since about 20 years. You might think I am "fundamentally misunderstanding" things. I believe I just have a different opinion on things then you. Lets leave it at that.

That's open source, not FLOSS. Open Source is a pragmatic movement that simply believes in open collaboration. FLOSS is a much more activist movement, many of who's proponents believe that proprietary software is inherently wrong and an abuse of users. That's not really a tenable position to take when the FLOSS ecosystem so regularly fails users with assisted needs.

Don't judge a loose movement as a whole against the standards of some members. And it is perfectly fine to advocate for an ambitious position even if it is not yet achieved.

You can be the owner of a publishing house and advocate free speech and still you might not have the resources to publish every worthy book.

If there are more contributors then the accessibility will improve, but unlike a commercial project you can't just oblige/order someone to do it. You have to motivate people - with the right skill set - to donate their private time to this cause over all the other causes (or non-programming activities they could support).

So great to be idealistic but you have to accept your own limitations. Maybe getting something to work for most people is simply a more achievable mid-term goal than addressing each special case, no matter how important.

>Don't judge a loose movement as a whole against the standards of some members. And it is perfectly fine to advocate for an ambitious position even if it is not yet achieved.

Not just some members, but the founder members and in fact the organisation that they set up to promote free software, the FSF, which campaigns on the basis that non-free software is "An exercise of unjust power".

As for not yet achieved, the free software movement was founded in 1984. Richard Stallman was celebrating the achievements of 15 years of free software back in 1999.

I'm sorry, but your conflation of Open Source with Free Software would appall Stallman and the FSF who go to great lengths to emphasise that FLOSS is quite separate and has had a very specific meaning right from the start.

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