On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Mark Wallace <[email protected]> wrote: > We need to remind ourselves that we are the open source people and we > only deal with proprietary software and politics to the degree that it > facilitates helping open source people use their systems. > > Sorry for the rant, but the group is at a crossroads. Open source > computing is changing so quickly that we need to remember our roots and > objectives. >
I don't know. I consider myself a computer pragmatist and have no qualms or hard feelings about using proprietary software when there aren't any reasonable Open Source options or when the proprietary product is superior enough to the Open Source alternatives to make it worth paying or subscribing as necessary to gain access to it. But while I enjoy poking fun as Microsoft and often dislike the manner in which they wield the influence they have over the computing world, I have no real venom toward the company and would be inclined to argue that my life is ultimately better in a world where they exist as they do than if there never was such a company. I just don't share the venom toward them that I see expressed sometimes. I accept that I'm in the minority here, but I don't believe that I'm the only person with this view. For myself, this list is primarily a resource for handling problems with Linux, even when said problems revolve around getting Linux and Windows (or some other proprietary system) to play nice. As a result, I tend to take more of a larger tent view of what this group is than what you've expressed here. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I figured I ought to speak up in case others felt the same way. -- John D. Mort http://john.mort.net _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Aug 4 - Samba Sep 1 - BOINC Oct 6 - Creating Firefox Extensions
