RE: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)

[Ryan Mann <rmann@rmisp.net>]

Hi.  I forwarded some of your responses to Chris Hofstader's testimony in 
the Microsoft case and this is the response I got back from him.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 10:06:15 -0400 
From: Chris Hofstader <ChrisH@Freedomscientific.com>
To: 'Ryan Mann' <rmann@rmisp.net>
Subject: RE: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)

Hello,

Thanks for forwarding the thread on to me.  I'm always happy to hear from
the open source, blinux community.

If you read my written testimony, I state clearly that there are a number of
good accessibility aids available for the Linux OS.  I add that the Linux AT
software is written by a group of hard working volunteers.  I do wish that
some of the open source vendors would start investing in accessibility the
way that Microsoft, IBM and Sun already do.  With a reasonable level of
funding the volunteers could become professionals and not concern themselves
with doing the really cool work happening already and paying the bills too.


If you also look at my resume (put in as Exhibit 1), you will see that,
along with Richard Stallman, I was the co-founder and president of League
for Programming Freedom.  I have been a vocal advocate for Project GNU and
have worked on the defense of a number of companies being sued for patent
infringement and user interface copyright issues.

When it comes to accessibility, however, I believe the single most important
aspect is getting jobs for people with disabilities.  With estimates for
unemployment among blind people running as high as 75% and with virtually
all potential employers requiring skills in MS Windows then it is essential
that adaptive technologies work in the environment that the consumers want.
In the commercial environment, Microsoft is the overwhelmingly dominant
source of Operating systems and, for a long time, Microsoft has invested
time and resources into accessibility and is the corporate leader in this
area.

Permitting incomplete or altered versions of the Microsoft operating systems
to be sold will reek havoc on a system level product like JAWS and all of
its competitors.  I, therefore, stand behind my testimony entirely.

Respectfully,
Cdh

Chris Hofstader
VP, Software Engineering
Freedom Scientific, Inc.
11800 31st Court N.
St. Petersburg, FL 33716
PH: (727)803-8000 ext. 1061; (800)444-4443
Fax:(727) 803-8001
email:  ChrisH@freedomscientific.com
Check out our website!  www.freedomscientific.com
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Mann [mailto:rmann@rmisp.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 8:56 PM
To: chrish@freedomscientific.com
Subject: Re: I swear to tell the truth, (fwd)




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 20:44:19 -0400
From: Scott Howell <showell@lrxms.net>
Reply-To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: I swear to tell the truth,

What amazes the hell out of me is that if the sighted folk of the world only
gave some though to the matter, they'd probably agree that editing a file is
considerably faster then any gui. Not to mention keyboard access can out run
a mouse clicking any day...that's a proven fact. <grin> Oh how I love these
discussions. Did I mention that do to windows the adverage employee is
producing less? Afterall all that crashing and rebooting reduces output
don't you think??


On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 07:48:43PM -0400, Igor Gueths wrote:
> Hi Cecil and all. An example. I was using War Ftpd on my Winblows 
> laptop. It uses Unix style permissions for file access. Only problem is
that the gui makes it extremely difficult to set file permissions, and very
hard to tell to what exactly you are setting those permissions to. In Linux,
all you have to do is edit a config file, and that's it! A process that
should take 1 or 2 minutes, took me about three hours because of the f-ing
gui!
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Cecil H. Whitley <cwhitley@ec.rr.com>
> To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 6:57 PM
> Subject: Re: I swear to tell the truth, 
> 
> 
> > Okay, okay just one more and I might shut up.....
> > Blind people need a GUI.  Isn't that the real msg?  Why doesn't he 
> > give them the real story?  Text mode os's are accessable to a degree 
> > that a GUI will never be by their very nature.
> > 
> > Cecil, stater of the obvious.
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca 
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca 
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

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