The Free Software Foundation has been heavily promoting their list of high priority free software projects. Given that the list comes from the Free Software Foundation, I understand why the projects that were chosen are on the list, but if I was making a list of high-priority projects, mine would not look like the FSF’s.

The FSF list includes a number of places where good proprietary software exists for Linux, but there are no good free software alternatives. These free software replacements are important, but I consider it more important to improve free software in cases where there are no good alternatives for Linux, even if those applications are not as commonly used.

The key difference here is that the goal should be trying to get more people to run a free operating system, possibly while using some proprietary software on top of the OS, rather than trying to get existing Linux users to use more free software.

So given this view, what would be on the high priority list? Linux still lacks good video editing software, despite a number of projects already existing. People argue about how good the professional photography software is, but I think there is widespread agreement that it needs improvement. Just improving compatibility between Open Office and Office would be a big deal, too. These are things where there is no great alternative on the Linux desktop, free or propriatary. In the end, I would rather see these things worked on.