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Okular is doing the right thing. NOT.Okular is doing the right thing. NOT.Posted Jun 2, 2009 21:40 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270)In reply to: Okular is doing the right thing. NOT. by GreyWizard Parent article: Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions
Again, I think you're overstating your preferred option as "the only tolerable option".
The point of free software is, as you say, that you control your machine. So, go control your machine! Set the configuration option or rebuild the package with your preferred default. That's what GPL freedom is about, not whether or not the default options suit your preferences.
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Okular is doing the right thing. NOT. Posted Jun 3, 2009 2:39 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]
"Again"? This is your first reply to me in this thread.
Your point seems to be that default settings can be chosen arbitrarily because users are prepared to spend unlimited time tuning their systems. Wrong. Changing configuration settings has a cost, including the possibility that a user will never discover the option at all. Therefore defaults are important and should be sensible for as many users as possible. People or organizations who wish to be bound by PDF restrictions are a tiny minority and so they should bear the cost of altering the configuration. Is that so hard to understand?
Okular is doing the right thing. NOT. Posted Jun 3, 2009 10:18 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] You're wrong. Free software is about you being able to scratch your own itches if required, not about having all your itches proactively scratched for you by others. Free software authors (or distributors) are under no obligation whatsoever to cater to the wishes of »as many users as possible«. If they don't, they may have to accept the fact that nobody but themselves may be interested in their output, but if they're cool with that then it is totally their option. The whole point of free software is that you are (or anyone is) free to change a free program to suit different preferences than those of its original author, and to pass the changed program on to others. So if the Debian KDE people won't uncheck that box for you, then you will unfortunately have to do it yourself, or else find another distribution that comes with it unchecked. You could even create your own Debian derivative that is 100% identical to Debian in every respect except that it has that box unchecked, and distribute that for the benefit of all the other users who aren't prepared to bear the cost of figuring out how to uncheck the box themselves. This is what free software is about, not getting everything perfect for everybody out of the box, which is obviously impossible.
Okular is doing the right thing. NOT. Posted Jun 4, 2009 6:05 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]
What makes you believe I am arguing that software developers and distributors have an obligation to serve their users? For various reasons, Debian developers WANT to serve their users. Their discussion, and the one happening here, is about how best to do that. Congratulations on noticing that getting everything right for everyone out the box is impossible. Please join the conversation AFTER you've figured out that this does not rule out getting as much right for as many people as possible.
Okular is doing the right thing.mostly. Posted Jun 3, 2009 13:23 UTC (Wed) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]
Sorry, the "Again" was ill-chosen, I was reemphasizing someone else's point, not my own, and should have expressed that more clearly.
You did correctly state one implication of my point. The complete point was that the essence of free software is that software creators can scratch their itch in whatever way they please and if downstream re-distributors and users don't like it, they're free to change it. That does imply that default settings are arbitrary, at the will of their creator.
Since neither of has any evidence as to the distribution of opinions across the user base, your estimate of a "tiny minority" has as good a chance of being right as any other. My own guess is that most users would be comfortable with supporting the flag by default if the warning behavior was changed to allow an override action as part of the dialog and to provide a better message (without the misleading word "DRM" - a simple statement that the author has disabled copying text from the document). I, for one, DO appreciate knowing when I'm breaking the author's expressed rules for using the document.
Okular is doing the right thing.mostly. Posted Jun 4, 2009 5:49 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] That does imply that default settings are arbitrary, at the will of their creator. No, it most certainly does not. Free software is not incompatible with striving for excellence. That means attempting to make the best decisions possible at every level, including making the defaults sensible for as many users as possible. Since neither of has any evidence as to the distribution of opinions across the user base, There is plenty of evidence on my side. But I don't care to present it because your challenge is not an intellectually honest one. You could apply this pattern to any statement, no matter how reasonable or self-evident. Do you have evidence that there is more light during the day than at night? Have you actually collected time series data of light measurements? Are you sure your instruments are calibrated properly? And so on. Would you waste time trying to convince me of the obvious? I hope not. Therefore if you insist that there might be more users who prefer to be constrained by PDF flags than not we will have to agree to disagree. I, for one, DO appreciate knowing when I'm breaking the author's expressed rules for using the document. Wanting to know the author's preference is not the same as wanting to be constrained by it.
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