> I see a lot of ways in which this is harmful to the cause.
I'm trying to understand your meaning. You went on to say:
> You can keep long-term goals in mind while also working towards smaller short-term goals. Almost every political party and lobby organisation in the world is doing exactly that.
But every example of such political parties/organizations I can think of (in my experience) has 'puritanical' wings that serve to establish the key direction.
> It's not explaining the message very well, it's actively turning people off, and it's preventing some free software from being as useful as it could be.
I was unable to follow your logic. Perhaps actual example of this happening would be useful.
> By focusing only on the endpoint you're actually doing more short-term thinking rather than playing the long game.
Forgive me, but it appears like you're focusing on practically achievable goals rather than having a long term plan. If Ubuntu continued along its current path of just partnering with vendors, only "they" being able to build the signed boot images that machines boot, then it is not unreasonable to suspect that at some point users will lose all ability to build their own kernel for their machine.
> one possibility is that concrete is a better understood material than some novel "concrete like structural material," so it's more acceptable in safety critical situations (e.g. people know how it fails, how to detect failures, how to remediate problems, etc.).
Your explanation and argument looks correct to me. However, I should point out that concrete structures fail regularly and frequently, and sadly with great loss of human life, most recently in Miami. I should also point out that I've seen this argument used as a tactical trick. I watched a Microsoft rep using this argument successfully convince a management team that they should use Embedded Windows instead of Linux because, just as you pointed out, "we know how it fails", "we know how to detect failures", "we know how to remediate problems".
> they say they already (indirectly) pulled that same CO2 out of the air, instead of the ground, so overall the process is carbon neutral.
I find that difficult to understand. If the output is CaCO3 that still needs to kilned to make CaO, then CO2 gets emitted. Even if that volume of CO2 was obtained from dissolved CO2 in the ocean, one would have had to expend energy to extract that CO2 from the ocean and that energy would have generated emissions as well.
If the output of this is just CaCO3 again, then I fail to see how this is a better solution than carbon capture using a clay geopolymer technique that goes directly to a concrete like structural material. What I mean is, wouldn't it be better to just skip all of this and go focus on rediscovering the technology for "creating" rock like what was possibly achieved at Cuzco (Hatun Rumiyoc) or Pumapunku? Or more realistically in the short term, using fly ash and silica flume or slag to make concrete without requiring CaO?
I am curious what is your take on Davidovits geopolymer based carbon capture. I believe he was using kaolinite as the starting point with alkali activation. A second approach was using fly ash and silica flume/slag, byproducts of power plants and steel production.
I'm trying to understand your meaning. You went on to say:
> You can keep long-term goals in mind while also working towards smaller short-term goals. Almost every political party and lobby organisation in the world is doing exactly that.
But every example of such political parties/organizations I can think of (in my experience) has 'puritanical' wings that serve to establish the key direction.
> It's not explaining the message very well, it's actively turning people off, and it's preventing some free software from being as useful as it could be.
I was unable to follow your logic. Perhaps actual example of this happening would be useful.
> By focusing only on the endpoint you're actually doing more short-term thinking rather than playing the long game.
Forgive me, but it appears like you're focusing on practically achievable goals rather than having a long term plan. If Ubuntu continued along its current path of just partnering with vendors, only "they" being able to build the signed boot images that machines boot, then it is not unreasonable to suspect that at some point users will lose all ability to build their own kernel for their machine.