On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:06:04 +0100 alan c wrote: > On 24/03/12 11:08, Chris Penston wrote: > > [snip of really good stuff] > > > People tend to be impressed by the novelty > > that they have a choice. Almost always, the reaction is > > astonishment that something can be so good without costing anything > > 'so there must be a catch'. > > Yes I find that a lot, also. It is difficult explaining that although > there is no such thing as a free lunch (probably true), that there > *is* Libre software.
I think I've posted on here before with my 2 principle examples. In no particular order: 1) "Doing in their spare time? It can't be any good then": Just because somebody does it for free (possibly in their spare time) does not mean that it is of a lower quality than paid-for software. Indeed many people who contribute to Free Software projects maintain paid-for jobs doing the same thing - many Free Software programmers have paid-for jobs writing software; many Free Software designers have paid-for jobs doing design work. Just because they also do so for free does not mean their Free work is of a lesser quality. A professional footballer playing a charity match won't play any worse because they're not getting paid for it. 2) "But they're highly-paid professionals. The average Jo(e) couldn't do that". Yes they can. St. John's Ambulance. Average people putting their knowledge and skills to use helping their community. Grant. -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
