On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
*snip*
> Obviously this argument comes down to the pragmatic use of 'the best tool
> for the job' or sticking to what many of us feel are the community's ideals.
> Sticking to Free Software (or open source), and as many developers say,
> "Eating what you serve."
I happened to come across this article
<http://www.linuxvideo.org/news/commercial_drivers.phtml> just yesterday,
playing with DVD support for Linux (it's getting pretty close to being as
usable as Windows DVD players BTW - skipping sound and lack of full screen
seem to be the major problems). The bloke's making the pragmatic argument
that at the moment there's closed source software that will do the job,
and that eventually there will be open source software, but just now the
open source software lacks features, reliabilty, whatever. So you use
Netscape instead of Mozilla until Mozilla becomes as easy to support. And
don't flame companies releasing closed source stuff for Linux - at least
they're trying. Quite an interesting perspective I thought, particularly
coming from a Debian developer, with the Debian strictness about open
source and all.
> Is this a failure of the companies involved? A lack of support for the
> community? Should we expect more from the companies who are taking Linux to
> the rest of the world?
Putting what I said above aside, I think that in the case of Linux
companies sending email from AOL ?!?!?!? That's just dodgy IMHO, because
far better solutions for sending email exist on Linux. And on Windows for
that matter... ;-) So - no problem with Linux companies using closed
source stuff when they have no alternative/works best. But in the case of
sending email I can see no reason they wouldn't be using Linux unless they
didn't believe in their own product.
Tom
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