FOSS community, disabled users must learn to communicate

M. Fioretti mfioretti at mclink.it
Sun Mar 19 09:55:45 UTC 2006


On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 02:42:59 AM -0600, Christofer C. Bell
(christofer.c.bell at gmail.com) wrote:

> On 3/18/06, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at mclink.it> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > here is an article I wrote on this subject:
> >
[...]

>F/OSS software is more than just Linux and the OpenDocument format
>has nothing to do with Linux at all. Your article (while very well
>written) serves only to highlight the selfish whines of a few
>ignorant (in terms of uneducated) people

Thanks for appreciating the article. As far as your comment goes, I
surely agree (even if I would replace "selfish" with "more uninformed
that they can afford"). That's why I wrote:

>Disabled users fail to perceive that they have the same needs and
>rights of everybody else.

However, I think and hope that the article highlights more than that,
that is also the fact that too much of the FOSS community has an
elithist attitude and shortsightedness that it can't afford
anymore. Not towards disabled users, towards all the other 99.99% of
people who wouldn't touch source code if they were tortured, but are
no less valuable because of this.

That's why I also wrote, more or less, "the reaction of disabled users
has nothing special. It is simply the *same* that almost *everybody*
has towards the GNU manifesto. Blind people only have legal hooks to
defend themselves, but this is nevertheless the way almost the whole
world sees the FOSS movement. Let's acknowledge that, too".

Practically speaking, what I hope most is that this article leads to
as many direct talks as possible between FOSS fans and disabled
users. Organize meetings in your area with representatives of both
communities, write to local disabled associations...this kind of
things. Please let me know of any initiative of this kind.

Ciao,
	Marco

-- 
Marco Fioretti                    mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 3 for low memory      http://www.rule-project.org/

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
                                  Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)




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