Re: Linux and Software Freedom

Kao wrote:
> 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.

You personally probably don't need need Firefox to tell you anything 
about its up to date status. Your Linux distribution handles your 
updates and your versions. That's relevant for the 1-2% of Firefox users 
on Linux for sure.

I'm open to allowing Linux vendors to change this -- they already change 
all of the update stuff in Firefox and this is tied closely to that.

> 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.

You call it "monkey reassurance" and that doesn't sound very nice to me. 
We have a lot of experience with regular users who do want the 
reassurance that they're up to date. Calling them monkeys isn't very nice.

You're able to take care of yourself quite well, obviously. You're in 
control of your software and know how to stay in control. Most users are 
not nearly so comfortable with computers and software. They need our 
help a lot more than you do.

I can see where this might seem odd because it's really easy to assume 
that everyone else understands and uses software just like you do. I 
fall into that trap pretty regularly. It's important, though, that when 
we're developing software for 1 billion users (we have about half that 
today and we want to double it :-) that we keep in mind that they're not 
nearly as sophisticated as we are and they actually need Firefox's help 
more than you and I do.

That's not to say that Firefox shouldn't appeal to users like you and 
me. Our customizability makes that possible.

> 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.

Maybe I didn't say this well.  I'm asserting that the purpose of the 
*version number* in the about dialog for most users is to determine if a 
user is up to date, not that the purpose of the About dialog is to 
determine if a user is up to date. The About dialog also tells users the 
name of the product and that's a really important user case as well. The 
about dialog has several use cases, but the use case for the version 
number in the about dialog of Firefox on rapid release cadences is to 
find out if you're on the latest version or not.

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

Thanks! I do think that you make a good point about Linux distros where 
the entire update mechanism is different and maybe they can change this 
as part of their other customizations.

- A