Andrei Slavoiu wrote:
--- Bob Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
That's a very shallow definition of the "essence of
freedom," from the
perspective of most end users, your scenario doesn't
really change anything.
From the end users perspective s/he is still
dependent on someone else to
make the changes. I wouldn't say having a choice of
who to be dependent upon
actually qualifies as "freedom."
Nobody needs to depend on anybody for their coding!
Programmers are not a secret society that hold their
ways secret! If you don't find anybody to do it for
you, or if you don't want to pay for that, then you
can buy a copy of "Programming for Dummies" or "Teach
yourself C++ in 10 minutes" (note that if any of this
books really exist, it is a simple coincidence).
So everybody HAS the freedom. If somebody is too lazy
to learn how to use it, it's their own fault.
You're absolutely correct, everybody and anybody in the entire world
*may* if they want to, modify an OSS app/utility/driver, I've stipulated
that over and over again.
What I'm pointing out is, the vast majority of people who have this
choice (the people using OSS), don't exercise it in any way. They have
absolutely no interest in doing so, and they are never ever going to be
interested in doing so, and that is as it should be. I'm not suggesting
that OSS should be abolished, or anything like that, I'm just saying
that in comparison to CSS this supposed "freedom" that OSS provides,
isn't really all that valuable from the perspective of most end users. I
will grant that it is a more important issue for people who can
read/write code or have interest in doing so, but that's a pretty small
percentage of the population.
--
Regards
Bob Young
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