Whiprush of ars fame has a great rebuttal to Nicholas Petreley‘s trash. I added my own comment on his blog about something I think he missed, and which is probably Petreley’s single biggest screwup- the misconception that Free Software must have lots of options because Free Software is about choice. Sure, Free Software is about choice- but that’s why we have xfce and kde and openbox and so on and so far. But in our design, GNOME has instead chosen to honor the notion that Free Software is a moral right for everyone and as such we work hard on i18n, a11y, and above all usability. As Havoc says, if we limit ourselves to the geeky 2% of the population, we’re losing- Free Software must vigorously work towards something the other 98% of the world can use if we want to win. And Petreley wants to be content with that 2%, it seems.