David Lowe wrote:
This is a fascinating debate, especially in light of Stallman's speech.
David I agree with you.
Stallman has caused me to question my views on this whole issue and
consider more about what we're not paying enough attention to at present.
MS (and many other commercial software houses) also follow the Pragmatic
methodology. They go the extra mile for usability because they know that
for the mass market, usability is everything, even at the expense of
functionality or technical purity.
I always thought that those two things should go hand in hand.
If gold is not totally pure then it's not the best gold - most expensive.
If gold is completely pure then it's still not the best gold because for
many uses it becomes unusable (to soft).
But that's gold. It's 'matter', software is not.
How can you call a program that is unusable 'pure'?
I dont know where I'm ending up here except to defend developers that we
think dont care about users. The big question is whether free(dom)
software can ever compete with those that don't care about standards.
I'ts going to be a big ask.
The other way of looking at it might also be to ask if standards writer
are ever going to get the message that to be 'pure' a standard has to
deliver results to every user.
I'm with Vik - if we knew/know HOW Skype makes it easy, it should be
doable - but only if enough people see it as being worth the effort.
I also wonder if SIP clients are really just 'not as finished as the
current Skype client'.
Cheers Don
