-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Yet, without knowing what the agenda of the company producing Open Office is, > I hesitate to embrace it. Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics, do not understand religion. (Ghandi) Every Action is a Political Action. >Something for nothing is a rare event which defies the laws of physics, let alone human behaviour. "Something for nothing' is at the heart of human behaviour, and has been for time immemorial. The major difference here, is that instead of forcing others to give away something. something is being freely given away. ( All codes of ethical conduct are based upon the premise that one gives something for nothing to others.) >I'm sure that there is a very obvious and benign reason for the existence of this product, which is not obvious to me; > but I would love to know what it is? Please could some one tell me? Which lesson are you wanting: * The economics of FLOSS; * The ethical principles of FLOSS; * The practicality of using FLOSS; * The history of FLOSS; * The history of OOo; * Something else? >if it was made clear and obvious on your first web-page (and believe me, I have been looking) The simple answer is "because we can". Would you be willing to read a one hundred thousand word essay on the first page of the site, before downloading and installing OOo? An essay, that due to its _conciseness_, is both misleading, and oversimplified? An essay that will be described as being "flat out wrong", because it makes invalid assumptions about the socio-economic-political-religious basis of the reader? An essay that would not convert a non-FLOSS user. > why free, high quality software, which rivals that of the top companies, is being distributed on the net, Intellectual discussion/explanation does not convince people to use a product. If the issue is "why gratis", then the vendor that charges US$5,000 per copy totally demolishes their case. [I am assuming that that vendor is still in business. I don't remember their URL, otherwise I would list it here. US$5,000 is substantially more than the majority (?all) of Microsoft products, at a single seat licence pricing plan.] There are other vendors who charge considerably less --- typically under US$50.00, including shipping and handling. Those vendors also demolish the "why gratis" argument. > people would be less suspicious of the motives for the actions of people whom I feel sure are nice altruistic individuals really. Are these individuals equally suspicious of the motives of other organizations that offer products that appear to be gratis? Are these individuals equally suspicious of the motives of other organizations that offer products that appear to be non-gratis? Or is this simply an example of an individual who believes that there is a correlation between quality and price? If so, then a look at the published research indicates that such a correlation does not hold water. > In short; Why not tell people, up front, why it is free? An organization will release FLOSS for any number of reasons. These reasons can range from the purely ethical, to the purely selfish, and back to the purely practical. As to which of the innumerable, conflicting, and self-contradicting reasons for using, and releasing software under a FLOSS licence that any specific organization chose, you'll have to go to that organization. For OOo that would be Sun. Whether or not you'll get a coherently intelligible, accurate answer from them is a different question. xan jonathon -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGxOMJ2o2GPyX/pG0RAjyLAJ0VfnbYdPjj8uGmq307dfpJQHulcQCdGLNR WwEpJN66B6t0aVCkZTOQG1E= =44IW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
