Justin Findlay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On AD 2008 January 21 Monday 05:05:40 AM -0700, Levi Pearson wrote:
>> No religion here, folks. Nope, just pure reasoned principles!
>
> No religion to me, though I know I've been guilty of 'religion' before.
> I don't use windows because I hate it, but that's the subject of another
> email message. I don't use OS X because I don't like it and it's out of
> my price range.
Now you're singing a different tune, and I have nothing to disagree
with here, except that I may question your taste. That's purely
subjective, though, and irrelevant to our conversation.
> I think you're right here. Of course not all ISV's are out to lock
> their customers into their products. I use Linux and a Free Software
> stack because that's my preference. I agree that the religious mindset
> is harmful but so is so much of proprietary software. It's hard to not
> be passionate when comparing the relative benefits, and it's easy to
> advocate with such passion beyond the bounds of reason. I think,
> however, that if you're looking for a fair debate, FLOSS vs Proprietary,
> you'd have to cleanse the latter of its FUD and anticompetitive
> corruption as much the former's religion. Apple, I think, appears to
> have done this admirably whether or not it is to the credit of their
> marketing department in efforts to not turn off people like you and me.
I'm not looking for a 'FLOSS' vs 'Proprietary' debate. I don't think
there's any purpose to such a thing except to draw zealots out of the
woodwork to make noise. When it comes down to it, we're talking about
a software market. If something useful is offered at a price that's
reasonable to you, go for it. If you enjoy running a bunch of Free
Software programs, by all means run them. But don't pretend that
there's a moral high ground to doing so. It's okay to run, and even
like, Microsoft products. It's also okay to run and like, or not
like, Apple products.
I simply find it absurd that people state such things as, "I'm looking
forward to finally ridding myself of all commercial software!" If you
already *have* the software, there's no cost in continuing to use it
(with a few exceptions, of course) and there's no real reason to
inconvenience yourself by deleting all of it. If you really don't
like it, that's fine, but then it's "software I don't like" rather
than "evil commercial software", and who goes around bragging about
deleting software they don't like?
--Levi
/*
PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net
Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug
Don't fear the penguin.
*/
