Hi Shaun, Oh, I wouldn't go that far to say we wouldn't need open source and NVDA wouldn't exist if the cost of Jaws, Window-Eyes, etc were less expensive because there are different goals being supplied by each model of software distribution. With Jaws and Window-Eyes even if they were $200 instead of $1000 there would still be commercial restrictions on the software such as you can only install it on no more than three PCs which some people like myself would find too restrictive. NVDA is not only free in terms of money, but there is no restriction on how many PCs it can be installed on at one time which is obviously better for someone like myself who currently has five computers in his household shared among my wife, son, and I. Since I want to walk up to any of them press a command and have instant speech something like Jaws is just too restrictive and doesn't give me enough licenses for my needs and I would have to pay for more licenses which I don't have to do since NVDA supplies my needs.
As for open source in general I think the same argument can be made. While my son's laptop and my newer laptop came with Windows 7 my old desktop was running Windows Vista and my old laptop was running Vista as well. Rather than upgrade them to Windows 7 I chose to put Ubuntu Linux on them and that has saved us money since we don't need five separate licenses for Windows 7. Ubuntu 12.04 is quite accessible with Orca and since I am not paying for Firefox, LibreOffice, and a majority of the other software I am using on Linux it is a very affordable and economic option for someone with a very tight budget. While it is true if commercial software wasn't overly expensive I would certainly be more willing to pay for it, but cost is actually half the story here. There are things a person can do with open source that can't be done with commercial software if a person is inclined to do so. One of them is to take the source code for a program, modify it, and relese the changes back into the community. For example, on Linux there is a free game called Vectoroids. Its open source, and is a decent clone of the Asteroids game for Atari. If I wanted to I could grab the source code for the game, update it, add TTS support and other accessibility features and release my changes to the game back to the open source community just like that. No special licensing, no arguing over who did what, no fighting with big companies over adding accessibility, etc because the GPL is all about mutual cooperation between developers. Accessibility is an area where we have a foot in the door with open source because no one can deny us the right to modify the code if it is under the GPL or LGPL. If a corporation like Nintendo, Sony, EA Games, releases a game under a commercial license if you ask them to add access they can tell you to stick your suggestion where the sun doesn't shine. GPL software is much more user friendly. If you want to add access to an open source game like Flight Gear, Freeciv, Lin City, etc you are welcome to do it yourself. No one is going to complain provided the original author gets credit for writing his portion of the game and you release your modifications as open source. So I would argue that there is sometimes a need for open source. Cheers! On 4/25/13, shaun everiss <[email protected]> wrote: > well in a way much that its a pain that all the agencys want you to > use expensive jaws and everyone that uses the agency wants jaws for > everyone because its what you use in a job, if we didn't have overly > expensive software ever we wouldn't need opensource and nvda would not > exist. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
