[Wylug-discuss] New FSFE Free PDF Readers Campaign

[Smylers]

John Hodrien writes:

> On Thu, 16 Sep 2010, Simon Whiteley wrote:
>
> > This kind of 'commercial product placement' by publicly funded
> > organisations is fundamentaly wrong.  Unless GNU/Linux and other
> > alternative software is given the same kind of promotion,
> > particularly when needing to open such documents, we will further
> > entrech the mindset of 'Microsoft is computers'.
>
> Linking to PDFReaders.org and actively excluding Adobe Reader from the
> suggested list of PDF Readers that people use strikes me as equally
> entrenched.

Even if I were wanting to link to somewhere somebody could download a
free PDF reader, I doubt I'd choose PDFReaders.org as it is at the
moment:

* The second sentence has some confusing mention of open and ISO
  standards and patents, which is a distraction for somebody who's just
  trying to get some software to view a document. The third sentence is
  even worse, starting "You might want to promote ..." -- why would
  somebody who's come hear to download software be interested in
  promoting anything?

* It has a column labeled 'free operating systems', which doesn't really
  make sense. What it probably means is 'an OS which uses X and has a
  standard C compiler', but isn't essential that all free OSes are like
  that. And several decidedly non-free Unices definitely do.

  Possibly this is FSF trying to avoid saying the politically sensitive
  term"Linux". But a Linux user is going to think of themselves as using
  Linux, not using "a free operating system", so this is poor user
  experience.

  As is the footnote, which suggests you actually find out how to get
  the software from "the website of your distributor". That simply isn't
  helpful enough for the target users of a 'help, I don't have a PDF
  viewer, what do I do?' link. And "should you desire to build the
  software" is laughable -- is there anybody capable of downloading and
  compiling source code who wouldn't be able to find a PDF reader
  without this page?

* Adobe's PDF reader does get a mention, but only in the phrase that
  other alternatives to it also exist. For a reader who hasn't heard of
  Adobe's PDF reader, that's just baffling.

* The site's isn't very visually appearing, compared to the typical look
  these days of the sites the FSF are asking to link to PDFReaders.org.
  For such a simple site it shouldn't be hard to make it look nice, such
  that linking sites aren't concerned about directing their readers to
  something visually jarring.

  I think the Creative Commons licence summary pages do a reasonable
  job in this respect: anybody using a CC licence can link readers there
  without embarrassment.

> I don't see why the software development style should affect whether
> the government promotes it or not, so I'm thoroughly opposed to
> excluding free but closed source options while extolling the virtues
> of open source options.

I agree.

> Now if the argument was that it should be linked to a list of vetted
> high quality PDF readers for multiple OSs whether closed or open
> source, I'm all in favour.

Yes. A list of software would be a big improvement over linking just to
Adobe.

Other than that, a site should detect which OS the user is using, and
the most prominent content should be a small number of logos linking to
freely available PDF readers. (And for Linux, detect the popular
distributions and provide specific instructions/links for their package
managers. If you have to resort to linking to source, make this really
clear, with instructions.)

There could be additional information below the download links on what
free software is, so people can make an informed choice as to which PDF
reader to pick. And possibly site navigation links to finding out more
about PDF, software patents, and the like -- for the interested parties,
not getting in the way of the user doing what they want.

Bah.

Smylers

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