Once again the Defective by Design have sprung into action to denounce another product from Apple, and once again nobody really cares. Defective by Design is a marketing campaign sponsored by the Free Software Foundation. While the FSF does plenty of good work, DBD is increasingly out of touch with the majority of users. Contrast the tone of the Defective by Design campaign with Stan Schroeder over at Mashable, who nails Apple's goals with the iPad:
Full story »
lozz
14 years 11 weeks 2 days 16 hours ago
But still defective
The ostatic site does have a point, of sorts.
It's true that many people buy devices simply to consume content. CD/DVD players and Tivo are good examples of these.
This is no reason to criticize the Defective by Design Campaign, however.
Not long after declaring that the internet was finished, Billy Gates decided that computers should be reserved for playing music, video and games, with only a small number of "power users" doing anything more useful with them.
If Gates had his way, all computers, today, would have been just like this Defective iPad.
The Free Software Community has invested years of hard work into ensuring that computers were not simply relegated to becoming elaborate entertainment devices.
Now, with Steve Jobs seeking to reprise Gates' original Luddite intentions, the FSF has every right to scream blue, bloody murder, So do we all!
Mr. Psychopath
14 years 11 weeks 2 days 15 hours ago
Interesting Argument
The author poses an interesting argument, but then kind of runs off on a tangent, so I'll sum up my own thoughts on this.
Is DBD's campaign necessarily effective? I don't really know for sure. It's certainly entertaining, and their coverage of the iPad event made for a fun day.
But in my opinion, I can't help but wonder if the FSF, and by extension GNU, are too focused on these grassroots efforts to drive people away from consumer products rather than help develop an alternative. Perhaps I'm misinformed, or not stating myself clearly. GNU certainly gets a lot done, and is a great rallying point for Free Software, but it does beg the question: is it better to simply argue against proprietary consumer devices, or is it better to rally together different community projects to build Free Software alternatives?
It is questions like these that makes me feel like there's something left to be desired with the FSF these days.