On Monday 19 July 2004 03:37, Rob S wrote: > Why are we struggling to provide joe average something that he has no > interest in?
we are and we aren't. first off, there is the whole issue of freedoms. these are under near constant attack these days by corporate and government interests. between misguided and disingenuous attempts to ram DRM schemes down our throats, the dangerous folly of lock-in through vendor-controlled (and usually secret) formats, the high price tag western corporations would like to put on our ability to process information (such a basic human concept!) and enforced privacy intrusions by various arms of the status quos, a lot is at stake both here and abroad. Free software is an important tool in the struggle against such interests. then there's the issue of open market capatalism, something that has been nearly killed in the software market due to a limited number of overly dominant corporations who have shown complete disregard for a healthy economy that consists of broad innovation and competition. Free software is changing (has changed?) the rules in this arena in a way that helps level the playing field into a much more equitable scenario. or we could look at the issue of security on the shared global resource we call the Internet. with today's popular yet shoddy excuses for personal computing operating systems the most advanced communications and collaberation platform on the globe is awash with the noise, annoyance and criminality of all sorts of network abuses ranging from spam to bandwidth abuse (DDOS) to online B'n'Es and extortion. Free software would (and is) hardenning the face of this increasingly important and vital network. but it doesn't work if only 1-2% of the world is running Free operating systems and software. it DOES work if that number is much higher, however. if half of the Internet, servers and desktops included, ran Free software things would not be perfect but they'd be a hell of a lot better for EACH of the issues above. achieving that goal means deploying it for the average person. i'd also posit that the average joe DOES want a world that is more Free than not (witness online music sharing, for all it's warts), that is more corporately responsible and an internet that delivers less spam and viruses. perhaps they don't want a new OS for the sake of having a new OS, but they probably want some if not many of the other things it brings. and finally, here's a shocker: even power users like friendly, easy-to-use software. some have been led to believe by the like of MS and even certain Open Source projects that "friendly and easy to use" means "crappy in most other ways". this is simply not true. by creating a system that, while powerful, is also enjoyable and low in the headache department we make something WE enjoy and desire. the average Joe's just get to come along for the ride as well =) -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
