Re: Linux and Software Freedom

Hello,

On 17 août, 08:32, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
> The goal was to remove version confusion and make the most common use of
> this dialog: to check if you're up to date, as usable and obvious and
> functional as it could possibly be. I referenced the above case an a
> real world example of confusion and lack of usability for the use case
> of a user wanting to know whether she is up to date or not.

I think the very point of incomprehension here is that you assume the
most common use of the about dialog is to check if firefox is up to
date. This is non-trivial. This is not expectable.
Personally, if I want to know if i'm up to date, I ask my package
manager to check for updates, and if there aren't, so I'm as up to
date as I can be. Period.

I barely remember that once ago there was an entry in firefox's menus
clearly and cleverly labeled "check for updates". THIS is the place
where I'd go checking if I'm up to date on system without a package
manager.
"update" is a word which is very recognizable and tightly related to
being up-to-date, even after l10n, a lot more than "about".

OTOH, I expect the about dialog to give me actual and absolute
informations about the software I am currently running. I don't care
if it is up to date as of 3 minutes ago, because it's not informative,
this is monkey reassurance «all is fine, I checked, you're up to
date». When I open that about dialog, I want informations about the
software.

Please give us data explaining why you assume that the most common use
of the about dialog is to check if firefox is up to date, because it
sounds like a huge distortion of what good old english words actually
mean. I didn't see any in this thread, sorry if there are.

And btw, even if i dislike this idea, thank you for your work on
Firefox.