hplip: hp-toolbox advertising?

[Simo Sorce]

Bernard,
I can't agree more with what you said, this discussion is silly, it
start reminding me some of the more brain-damaged discussions on Debian
lists. I hope it is an isolate incident, and is not becoming the norm or
next we will declare that Trademarks, documentation, and just everything
in the world is software and any license but the GPL is bad.

Don't get me wrong, I love the GPL, it is the license I use for my
software, but _software_ is the key here. Names, logos, documentation
are a different matter. Please let's not get stupid and let's recognize
things from what they are.

Trademarks, are not good or bad by themselves, it is the use you do of
them that can be good or bad. HP's trademark/logo in hp-toolbox is on
the side of the "good" way much more than what is the Mozilla's Firefox
trademark/logo.

On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 19:04 -0600, Bernard Johnson wrote:
> All the "free software zealots" say to vote with your pocketbook.  I
> did.  I bought a $1000 SOHO printer BECAUSE THEY HAD LINUX SUPPORT.  And
> not just a blob, real GPL software.  Now I hear total bogus arguments
> like "it's advertising" [but don't look at these other things that are
> advertising as well that we will let slide] or "yeah, it's free but it's
> not good enough"[2][3].

HP People didn't attach any string to the use of that logo for that
software, so any discussion about removing it, is just plain silly, IMO.

We are beyond "free software zealots" we reached the point of "berserk
kamikaze zealots" if we actually go down this road.

> This is exactly the attitude that will cause Linux to not get any
> support by vendors.

Wise words. We need more software not less, there is still a *LOT* of
software niches that have no sort of free software of any kind, and
pretty big ones.

And people here waste time arguing by a trademarked logo in a GPL
package that comes with no sort of requirements? Are you insane? Or
what?

> The fact of the matter is that it takes vendor support to make
> Fedora/RedHat anything other than a toy operating system for many uses.
>  At many junctures, we have to make conscious trade offs between
> idealogical beliefs and functionality.  That trade off may be a little
> recognition of the hard work that someone / some company put into the
> software, and I say that's great, give it to them.

If only this little "advertising" could be used to make more companies
write and distribute GPL software I would ask for MORE of this kind
advertising, that would be just great.

On the software quality I would really avoid commenting, we have such
crap in free software that complaining about the quality of *useful*
*free software* is beyond my comprehension. When the people that don't
like it, will rewrite and support a better piece of software to cover
the same functionality, then they will be entitled to speak about
removing others software.

Please, I beg you try to use your head and think:

a) what is the right thing to do to help users (NOW, not "in 10 years
maybe") with *free software*
b) what is the right thing to do to spread more *free software*
c) what is the right way to get more vendors to help us with *free
software*
d) what is the right thing to do to avoid waisting time and produce more
*free software*

To me the answers are pretty clear wrt this case.

Simo.