What about all the jobs that people have when they develop software that
is paid for and licensed? If the switch to free software were to
suddenly happen, would these people find themselves out of work?
This isn't a stab at anybody, it's just an observation that I'd like to
put in there. And I'm genuinely interested in the response from
enthusiasts to the idea.
Also, I am a fan of both closed, and open software, using Microsoft and
Mozilla products, enjoying and consuming DRM-Free media content. I don't
often enjoy getting involved in open/closed/free/however discussions
because I find they are very one sided a lot of the time.
Speaking of Linux in schools - I do find that out of the many Linux
distributions that I have used, Ubuntu included, none were up to scratch
to use in either a production or play environment for me. Flaky support
- annoying buggy features that waste time instead of saving time, just
unusual ways of working. That's my 'used to XP' side shining through. XP
does what I want now - and to be frank, is reliable and fast. At least
how I have it set up.
I do see the fun in being able to tweak the OS, and really get to grips
with it's operation - if kids in computer science / computing / IT
classes were taught to think that way then we would have a better IT
society. But we must consider that first, we need a good platform to
work from.
Where I work, we are able to choose whichever platform works best for
us, as long as it doesn't affect productivity. Trouble is, schools are
more important than the workplace in my opinion - and the kids might not
know what they want just yet. Maybe that's the point this thread is
trying to prove?
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