201–210 of 247 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I was pretty clear in the article - I absolutely support FOSS. The point of the article was to debunk some of the perceived "evils" of proprietary software. It's not a zero sum game - FOSS vs Proprietary. Rather they can support each other.
Obviously FOSS supports proprietary software, but I'm curious how you think proprietary supports FOSS. Seems like a pretty one-sided relationship to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don’t be silly, no. But the chance that they would quit this job and go work on open source code for a living is about 0%. Would you rather they go make proprietary code for a megacorp instead? Nobody seems to single out Google engineers for abuse when it comes to FOSS vs proprietary, it’s always the little guys who get all the abuse.
He did not get abuse. He got one or two responses two years ago that said that they'd prefer this to be FOSS, I'd prefer Google's tools to be FOSS too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw the Reddit thread and couldn't find any particularly 'fundamentalist' views in it, not to say that a fundamentalist belief in user freedom is wrong.
By which you are admitting to being a fundamentalist. There's other people who do that. They often explode. Not a label I'd want to give myself.
Thanks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux would never had taken off without the contributions of companies like IBM, Intel, Oracle, SGI, Cray,.... Which aren't properly any FOSS angels, when we examine their product portfolio. Actually IBM is the king of patent submissions.
Sure, but it probably also wouldn't have taken off without its license either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> This was two years ago and I think I'd be over it by now. The more I think about it, this was written for marketing purposes. He doesn't really make a point. It just draws more attention to the product.
I'm founder of the company and I wrote the post. I wrote it because despite a lot of negative comments our experience going to Linux has been a good one. Yet the 'fundamentalists' I mention tend to make proprietary vendors feel unwelcome. I believe this is bad for Linux. IMO a vocal minority are actively preventing Linux from expanding.
As for non-free I find it awkward since most of the time one would have to bend over backwards to support it (e.g NixOS with steam) or adopt external package management systems (Snap, etc) which only add complexity. It also reduces trust as we can't verify builds are in fact not tampered with and so on. If we avoid snap, nix, and guix for packaging then we must rely on upstream updating to ensure it won't break upon the next upgrade where we could have just compiled otherwise. This is inconvenient.
So, in my view I find it positive that there is a push for companies to open source when supporting GNU/Linux as it creates a much better experience for package maintainers, users, and the company involved while increasing the general reach of FLOSS software to other platforms (BSD, Plan9, ..).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The HN crowd tends to stay outside of these kinds of business circles, but I have a friend who doesn't, and he would ping me from time to time about "cloning a site and building a business around it." It took me awhile to understand the mentality. But "Uber for X" is very much a thing. We just don't pay attention to them because those companies never reach Uber growth. But you don't get to be Uber by just acquiescing…
>I don't think you'd have to read many business books to find an account of this happening, albeit with non-software products. So it's a general problem with businesses and not a valid argument against FOSS alone then. That being said I don't see "uber for x" companies to be a danger for legit businesses. To me it seems more of a way to milk investors, and not a viable way to steal markets. Most systems have a potent…
Here's another old argument from Stallman against using nonfree software, not addressed in the blog post: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html > As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A pers…
Copyright is not a form of cooperation. It is a threat. If you copy something without permission, you risk retaliation that is, ultimately, backed by violent force. It is hardly honest to call something "cooperation" under these circumstances.
The bigger problem with FOSS is that FOSS isn't actually user-editable at all. It's developer-editable - which is not even remotely close to being the same thing, except for that tiny subset of projects where end-users are developers. It's basically open blueprints, not open systems - with predictable results. There's never been a truly open system, although Hypercard, Excel, VBS, and Smalltalk have all tried (and fa…
There are plenty of FOSS software where one could do meaningful changes that improve your user experience without being a developer. This includes customizing the theme for your desktop, translating the software into another language etc
What do you even mean by open system?
There are plenty of regular (non-dev) people that propose great ideas for changes to FOSS programs that later get implemented, you don't get this kind of interactions with your users with proprietary sw because that your "intellectual property" and who the hell are you to dictate how to do things with my property attitude (which is, if not implied then anticipated by most users).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you fail to see the usefulness of fundamentalists. They help keep some kind of balance in the overall system, by pulling some of the practices towards one end. If no FOSS fundamentalists existed, we may be living in a very different software world right now. A number of extremely useful POSIX tools were the products of such ideologies. I think one of the "better" approaches if you cannot survive with a "suppo…
Interesting point, but I think it's a fallacy. Taking this line of argument and applying it to the social sphere - you would be arguing that there is a place for nazi's in this world (I'm just making a point - not saying you support nazis!) Totally agree with your "good citizen" argument though. Something we should consider.
No one is entitled to a business model. If your userbase has a culture of being (rightfully, in my opinion) defiant toward proprietary products, that's for you to remedy. If you can't make any money from ancilliary uses of your product (support, hosting, whatever) maybe you should question why you're monetizing in the first place. Free software is strictly more ethical than nonfree software. Any attempt at arguing ot…
I'm certainly not trying to deride open source. For the record, we have plenty of Linux users paying for the product (see previous article), but I simply don't understand why some people won't buy the product because it's not open source. I mean it's their choice - fine. But it's also our choice on whether we open source or not. No need to abuse us for this choice. I am trying to remedy the issue - I'm writing about…
Because Microsoft is putting ads into its email application.
The software people pay for.
Used to be, you could say "If you didn't pay for it, you're the one being sold."
Well, their users damned well did pay for it, and they're still being sold.
You can say you'd never do that.
I'm sure Microsoft would have said they'd never do it five years ago, too.