[consolidating replies] On Mar 3, 2010, at 11:31 AM, James E. LaBarre wrote: > My thought regarding Linux vs Windows is that I really don't care what others > decide to do, just so long as their decisions don't prevent me from doing > what *I* want. If the majority of the lemmings want to run Windows, vote for > the Demopublicans/Republicrats, watch American Idle, etc, then that's their > choice, questionable or not. But their choices had *better* not be > preventing me from making mine. That's the problem I have with Windows > bundling, closed-minded dependencies on MSIE & MSoffice, etc.
How does their bundling Office and IE affect you in any way? You can argue that "the majority of people USING IE and Office" affects you, but Microsoft isn't "bad/evil/whatever" because they have products which "the masses" like to use. (And by "like" here we'll define that as, worst-case, "do not hate it so much that they want to change"). > Linux works great for me. Far better than Windows ever has. If Windows > works for someone else (especially if they have explicit need for a > Windows-only app), then go for it. But just as I respect their choice, they > had best be respecting mine. If it suits your needs, absolutely. More power to ya. To some extent, I'm with you on the "not Microsoft" thing, using a Mac for my desktop environment. It's what I use because it's what works for me, and frankly I've made "getting a mac desktop" a condition of employment at a couple places in the past. (Admittedly, some of those places were much easier-going about it than others). Because, again, that's what works best for me. But I'm not going to sit here and say "Microsoft is evil because they have this piece of software that everyone else uses and I can't" for something like IE, nor am I going to fault the IE users for causing hell and damnation to the web with their damned-fool browser that sucks, or anything like that. "Respecting" someone else's decision doesn't mean agreeing with it, nor does it mean "doing something different so that you can also do something". ... and then on Mar 3, 2010, at 11:57 AM, Joseph Apuzzo wrote: > Sorry, NO, you should care, everyone needs to care, apathy like yours is a > cancer, which threatens my freedoms, our collective freedoms, once lost, we > will not get it back easy or at all. No, sorry, I completely disagree. We are a free society, and Windows-lovers are absolutely free to make those choices for themselves. Your "right" to open source software doesn't trump their right to have software that does what they want and that they are happy with. What the Stallmanites tend to think is "Freedom is great, and everyone should have exactly the freedoms I say they should have". Except there are other freedoms as well, such as the freedom to choose to use the software you like, regardless of what piece of boilerplate legalese is included with it. As is the freedom to say "Hey, I invested this time, money, and effort making something, not you, and *I'M* going to dictate how it may be distributed." The Stallman camp is quick to espouse "freedom", but always very wishy-washy when you talk about other flavors of freedom that they don't like. > All technology, operating systems, even programs have advantages and > disadvantages. It comes down to a trade off of license vs benefits. The equation is MUCH more complicated than a simple "license vs. benefits". > If the majority people abandon lebra terms, then choice is limited to which > license has the least impact to me, a compromise that 'some' are not willing > to make. Not at all. You can always learn a programming language and write your own word processing software, or accounting software, or e-mail client, and distribute the fruits of your labor under whatever rules or license you see fit. That's how the GNU project started in the first place. And when it started, it started out with 0% market-share, so let's not pretend that any market-share lead is insurmountable. :-) > It would not be fair to impose hardship on your fellow users, because of your > apathy to what you use, thus someone who benefits from lebra should support > it. There's a difference between "supporting" and "requiring". I certainly support open source products, goals, and often agendas. But, at the end of the day, my primary goal isn't about fulfilling some utopic world-view of how all software everywhere should be, but about living my life and having my computer do what I want it to do. If there were open source solutions that worked better than closed source solutions? Sure, I'd consider them. But I've yet to find a sweet open source iTunes complete with digital music downloads. And supporters of Gimp can say what you want, but Photoshop still owns in that market sector. And there's nothing I've found that can organize photos as effortlessly and painlessly as iPhoto. For me, it's about the code, not the license. You want to tell me "open source code is better". Prove it. Make it do what I use my closed-source code to do, and do it better. Because for a lot of things out there which regular people use their computers for every day, that's just not happenin'. D _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Mar 3 - Sahana and 7 Years of MHVLUG Celebration Apr 7 - Nagios May 5 - Android
