Subject: Weird About behaviour and some Open Source rehashing
From: Mike Nordell (tamlin@algonet.se)
Date: Fri Jul 13 2001 - 06:52:23 CDT
I have been looking at this earlier, and can't really say why it behaves
like this. Perhaps Paul (or basically anyone) could shed some light?
In Win32: display the About dialog. Dismiss it by clicking OK.
The AbiWord Frame seems to first get "pushed" (to the bottom of z-order?),
the window(s) behind it gets completely repainted, and _then_ AbiWord is
again brought to top. This is a quite irritating flicker, and now I've
finally gotten the thumb out of my a** to try to fix it, but I'm still at
loss at 1) why it was implemented in such a way, and 2) what _is_ creating
this weird behaviour.
The second thing has to to with Open Source vs. Free Software, and I'm sure
I'll get some bad comments here.
Selecting "About/Open source" from the menu displays an ugly Assert dialog
(since my exe wasn't started from the intended directory). Shouldn't this be
displaying a default dialog of some kind, pointing to fsf.org or gnu.org, if
it was unable to find the local web-page? Possibly also adding some default
(English) text like "I wasn't able to find the HTML page xxx, but for
information about Free Software you can look at xxx.org.\nFor comparison,
you could also look at yyy.org and se how we are protecting your freedoms".
Which brings me to the local web page (and a flame-magnet IIRC from the last
time).
We _are_ a Free Software project, and as such we should IMO be _proud_ of
it, not trying to hide it behind some ESR "Open Source" mumbo-jumbo.
IMO we should change the About menu text to "Free Software". Then the local
HTML-page should *explain* the difference between Free Software and Open
Source, telling the reader that Free Software _defends your freedom, now and
forever_, while Open Source is just... Well, it's Open Source. This also
goes for the web-sites copy (if it's still there), it should be changed to
_not_ trying to display AbiWord as some half-hearted Open Source software.
IMO it would only hurt us in the end, trying to please the masses and
pissing of the ones that knows the difference.
AbiWord is Free Software and I'm proud of that!
/Mike
P.S.
IIRC I was met with rather harsh arguments by a former SourceGear dude the
last time I brought this to light. Argument was "people don't know the term
Free Software", but this time I will in no way fold. If people don't know;
educate them! There is no way I'll try to promote a Free Software project as
Open Source "because our virtual marketing wants to". I have my pride, and
so I hope all other Free Software developers have.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Fri Jul 13 2001 - 06:50:51 CDT