> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Richard Fish > Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 3:18 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How To Play WMV (thread drift > -slaveryware) > > > On 9/29/06, Bob Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > But they *do* accurately reflect the relationship between vendors and > > > users from Duncan's viewpoint. Your viewpoint is obviously different, > > > but doesn't mean yours is the only "true" one. > > > > Oh please, spare me the relative truth crap. You can argue all > you want that > > it's true from Duncan's perspective because that's the way it *feels* to > > him. In the end that's just feel good rationalization and total > bullshit. > > Ok, so now you are saying that Duncan's opinion is wrong. You don't > respect Duncan's opinion, but you expect us to respect yours? I call > hypocrite.
Nice strawman, I've never said, or implied that I didn't respect Duncan's opinion. In fact just the opposite, I've specifically told him that I believe he has thought a lot about this, and that I believe he is sincere. Thinking that someone is wrong, or believing that they are using unjustified terms to express their opinion is not disrespect. > > conveniently avoids the confrontational point, namely that > there isn't any > > hard concrete logic and reason to support or justify the usage > of words such > > as slaveryware and freedomware. > > Hard concrete logic: *everybody* has the right to modify and > distribute open source software. How is that *not* freedom? As far as *modification* goes I've already admitted that technically you're correct that *is* a freedom, however to equate it with the freedoms that people have given their life to protect is to do a great disservice to the word freedom. As to distribution, I can show you literally thousands of examples of freeware and shareware that I can distribute legally, and they don't have source code available, so that's not an advantage of OSS. > Oh, wait, I can hear you now: "but that is no different than with > closed source". You already know the counter argument: with closed > source, the only people who can provide the patch are those who own > the source. The point is that even when someone has the "freedom" to have someone else fix a bug in an OSS app, %99.999 of the time, people wait until it's done by the original developer/maintainer. Since that's the case, %99.999 of the time there is no difference between the way bugs are handled under OSS and the way they are handled under CSS. Given that, are CSS users really "enslaved"...No they are not. When was the last time that you personally submitted a *patch* for some open source app/utility/driver? > With open source, anybody can produce and send a patch to > the user. No, No, NO! *anybody* can't! and that's the point. You're scenario is nice in theory, but it doesn't actually work in the real world. I'm a software engineer, and I have enough trouble debugging and fixing code that I'm familiar with and have written my self. In the past, I use to write graphics drivers for a living, how successful and efficient do you think I would be at troubleshooting a problem with a database application? Answer: I would totally suck at it. Another example: It would take me a very long time to fix a problem with a SCSI driver, compared to someone who works on SCSI drivers regularly. Would *you* want to pay for the many extra hours of troubleshooting due to my inexperience with <fill in blank> type of code? All code is not the same, and software engineers are not all interchangeable. That's one reason why this "users are *free* to have anyone modify/fix an open source app/utility/driver" is ssuch total crap. -- Regards Bob Young -- [email protected] mailing list
