Being Thankful for Free Software Developers

Interestingly, free software development often pays off in the best interest of the developers. In terms of networking with other developers and building a resume which leads to real jobs with real pay. Not to mention the value of real world developer experience.

Be thankful, yep - but as someone with a background in OSS, I'm quite happy with the intangible dividends it's already paid.

Re: Being Thankful for Free Software Developers

#6

Post by jordigh » Mon, Aug 14, 2017, 2:44 AM UTC

This is a starry-eyed blog post. I like it, and I miss not having more of these. We need more starry-eyed dreamers because they get good things done.

I just spent some time with the Debian crew at the last Debconf here in Mtl. I've always liked their attitude and I love their operating system -- and so does everyone else who has ever created a Debian derivative. Others at Debconf felt the same. Bradley Kuhn even said something like what a breath of fresh air it was to not have to apologise for being a free software supporter. I love how organic Debian is and how the conference was perfectly run with livestreaming and IRC bots keeping us abreast of the next event. These polychromatically-haired dreamers know how to get things done.

So, it's good to see that the starry-eyed blog posts haven't stopped.

Re: Being Thankful for Free Software Developers

#7

Post by Clubber » Mon, Aug 14, 2017, 3:07 AM UTC

Just to put it out there, Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made.

There are a few asterisks though, most notably support life for the OS. My 2009 MacPro won't run the latest OS for no other reason than Apple decided it couldn't (end of life). The 2010 model is allowed to run it and there is no discernible difference in the hardware.

Having said that FOSS was truly paradigm changing. I lived in a world before Linux and everything was prohibitively expensive on the PC. There was a lot of freeware and public domain software available, but most of it wasn't very good or niche stuff. It's quite amazing that the FOSS movement it was able to happen, let alone gain so much traction with such great software. I mean today, you don't have to buy a damn thing except the hardware.

Re: Being Thankful for Free Software Developers

#8

Post by azrazalea » Mon, Aug 14, 2017, 3:16 AM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #7

Just to put it out there, Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made. There are a few asterisks though, most notably support life for the OS. My 2009 MacPro won't run the latest OS for no other reason than Apple decided it couldn't (end of life)…

> Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made.

Most of that is not "free software" in the way this blog post is talking about (FOSS). XCode has FOSS components, parts of the OS are FOSS, etc. However, much of it is not.

Re: Being Thankful for Free Software Developers

#9

Post by Clubber » Mon, Aug 14, 2017, 3:18 AM UTC

azrazalea wrote: post #8

Clubber wrote: post #7

Just to put it out there, Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made. There are a few asterisks though, most notably support life for the OS. My 2009 MacPro won't run the latest OS for no other reason than Apple decided it couldn't (end of life)…

> Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made. Most of that is not "free software" in the way this blog post is talking about (FOSS). XCode has FOSS components, parts of the OS are FOSS, etc. However, much of it is not.

Yes, I was mainly talking about the free as in beer. Not as much free as in freedom regarding Apple's stuff.

Apple used to charge for all their software. I give FOSS credit for changing that. I think Lion was the first free OS upgrade. I credit FOSS for Microsoft giving a real copy of Visual Studio away for free. They've done it in the past, IIRC, but it was so hobbled, it was useless.

Re: Being Thankful for Free Software Developers

#10

Post by simonh » Mon, Aug 14, 2017, 3:51 AM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #9

azrazalea wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple offers quite a bit of free software when you purchase their hardware. This includes OS upgrades and their office suite as well as Xcode and Garage Band, among other things. It's quite nice and they are well made. Most of that is not "free software" in the way this blog post is talking about (FOSS). XCode has FOSS components, parts of the OS are FOSS, etc. However, much of it is not.

Yes, I was mainly talking about the free as in beer. Not as much free as in freedom regarding Apple's stuff. Apple used to charge for all their software. I give FOSS credit for changing that. I think Lion was the first free OS upgrade. I credit FOSS for Microsoft giving a real copy of Visual Studio away for free. They've done it in the past, IIRC, but it was so hobbled, it was useless.

>Apple used to charge for all their software. I give FOSS credit for changing that.

I give the credit to Microsoft's market share. The fact is ~99% of Mac switchers like me previously owned Windows boxes and ran mostly proprietary Windows software. The free applications you get with a Mac are a way to cushion the blow of giving those up and in some cases offer features you just can't get direct equivalents for on Windows. Offering Time Machine, Photos, iMovie, Pages, etc for free has nothing to do with the existence of Libre software and everything to do with marketing the platform to switchers from Windows.

Clearly Libre software has had a huge effect on OSX, in fact the OS itself is based on free software and large swathes of its base components, tools and services are free software of one sort or another to this day. But none of those are name check features marketable to consumers other than just as MacOS.

In the dev tool arena yes, free software has had a huge effect. Specifically I think making very capable versions of VS available free was a response to the existence of high quality free .NET development tools. MS want people to develop on Windows using their own tool chains and if roughly equivalent free tools exist and become popular, there's really no cost to offering an equivalent for free any more given VS has to exist anyway.