GNOMG

Say a kind word!

I’ve been remiss about posting on my keynote at LibrePlanet last month, and have since given two other talks and moderated one panel. And tomorrow I’m on a panel at FCX2013.

LibrePlanet is a really fun conference, as it’s full of people who understand the importance of software freedom and the ideology behind it. As a result, it was so great to tailor my talk for the occasion. I wanted to mention this here, as there was one take away that I tried to impart in addition to celebrating the ideology of freedom and how it helps create better software for a better world – and that is to say a kind word. In the free software world, we are spoiled for choice, and if there’s something you don’t quite like you can always fork the code that’s out there and make it what you want. But despite the fact that there’s no reason to stay with any software you don’t like, not to mention all of our emphasis on community our collaborative outlook, we tend not to talk positively about software that we really like. We instead focus on the bugs and features we wish were included. Tons of people have commented to me about how much they like GNOME 3, for example, but the most visible press out there was negative. I encouraged the audience at LibrePlanet to say a kind word about the software that they use and like (and especially GNOME!) and I hope you will too.

In that vein, I personally have greatly appreciated how good Shotwell, the photo management software written by the nice people at Yorba, is. They’re running a campaign to work on another project – an email client called Geary. While I’m happy with Evolution, I just donated to Yorba to let them know how much I appreciate their awesome software and their hard work. Please donate to Yorba’s campaign and ask others who appreciate Shotwell to do the same. There are only 5 days left, but I still hope they can make their goal!