Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Proposal for "FUD responses" wiki pages

[Michael Lamb]

> Coming up one-sentence rebuttals will be pretty difficult and most people
> willing to open the link and read that will most likely be willing to
> read the one paragraph response.

I expect that some of these responses will be models for copy-pasting
into forums, as a quick way to ensure blatant falsehoods don't stand
unopposed.

That said, I agree that "one sentence" is arbitrary, when what I mean
is, "as concise as possible" for use in situations like these:

Many of these arguments occur on Twitter. I have no intention to
promote the use of that platform, but it would be useful for those
that do use it to have good responses that fit into far less than 140
characters.

Many of these arguments occur on IRC. It's very bad form to paste a
paragraph into a chat. A short reply followed by a link may be best.

> Giving people paragraphs to use (either at a party or in an email
> discussion) may give the impression it is a sales pitch.

Maybe the guidelines would be better written:

- A very short, concise reply, for a person unwilling to spend more
than a moment, or for use on platforms like Twitter. Followed by
- Longer replies, addressing details with evidence, but prefer linking
to articles rather than writing one of your own here. For
disagreements on the Internet, short, reasoned, evidenced, polite, and
considerate of the other's position is best.
- For those that are interested enough to "engage", a link can take
them to longer multi-paragraph articles that do not clutter the
conversation with "walls of text".

> "companies really don't like GPL"
>
> "Isn't that only true for companies who are making and selling
> proprietary software?

Hmm. I think I disagree, this "exact phrases to say" style sounds more
like a sales pitch to me, or a call-center instruction manual. I
prefer the "list of facts" style reference.

But! I don't think it matters: I may be very wrong, and there's plenty
of room for both. I don't think we need to legislate that here. Let's
just collaboratively build out some pages keeping the "target
audience" in mind, and see how it goes.

Unless you feel very strongly about it? If so, I'll defer to the
list's opinions.

> Did you know that companies in many industries
> that don't produce software themselves find GPL attractive?"

(I'm unsure about this specific response myself. Many non-software
companies have indeed been convinced by software industry propaganda
and license-compliance analysis tools that GPL is a "risk," even if
the product they sell has nothing to do with software. High-profile
companies like Google institute blanket bans on the AGPL. Other
businesses, even non-software ones, look to the Silicon Valley giant
as a model of success. The argument given is that they'd be "giving
away their competitive differentiation point." This trend is yet
another thing I want to counter with this resource; I think
non-software businesses _should_ find the (A)GPL attractive, and for
entirely selfish reasons too.)

>> I mocked up some examples here:
>> https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Datagrok/Misinformation

I placed these pages in this location under the assumption that if the
idea is viable, we could with one command move the whole structure out
of my /User:Datagrok/ page and into LibrePlanet Wiki proper. Can
anyone confirm that this is actually a thing that MediaWiki supports?