[Wylug-discuss] New FSFE Free PDF Readers Campaign

[Lee Evans]

>The web sites I manage will not point to pdfreaders.org.
>Frankly its a "it can't be good for you unless it hurts" campaign.

I agree wholeheartedly with the comments that the approach rather than
message here is poor - the pdfreaders.org thing really isn't helping anyone
and is probably detrimental to the not unreasonable goal of promoting
alternatives to commercial software.

A recent research study found Acrobat to be the most exploited application
on the Internet, so we regularly deploy an alternative to our client
networks and encourage others to do the same. 

The simple fact is that most people aren't aware and for the most part
probably don't care about 'free as in freedom' software and are quite happy
with any 'free as in beer' application that is easy to install and easy to
use. You've hit the nail on the head that people certainly won't sacrifice
convenience/usability or functionality for a bit of someone else's moral
high ground.

Lee


-----Original Message-----
From: wylug-discuss-bounces at wylug.org.uk
[mailto:wylug-discuss-bounces at wylug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Will Newton
Sent: 17 September 2010 16:35
To: WYLUG list
Subject: Re: [Wylug-discuss] New FSFE Free PDF Readers Campaign

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 4:22 PM, Tim Medcalf <tim at kadixi.com> wrote:
> Agreed - I can't see how this site (at least in its current form) will 
> really change anything. John makes some excellent points.
> I know this isn't really the point of the campaign by my experience of 
> promoting FOSS to the unenlightened is that its always been most 
> beneficial to lead with the "free as in beer" bit first...and once 
> people are sold on that, move on to the "free as in freedom" point.
> When people realise that they don't need to spend a fortune on 
> Photoshop et al, and can replace it with GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus 
> etc it opens their eyes and they can begin to appreciate the wider 
> implications of proper software freedom.
> Trying to get Joe Public to forsake an application that doesn't cost 
> anything with ones that potentially don't work as 
> smoothly/reliably/easily (or are a lot harder to install) is not going to
work IMHO.
> Just my £0.02

I've installed evince on Windows in preference to Acrobat Reader or FoxIt in
the past. It's faster, doesn't run "Adobe bloatware update centre" in the
background and renders quite well. The printing side of it is the only bit
that's lacking in my experience, which may well be a deal breaker for some
people.

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