Actually, I'm proving by my actions that, far from being "very easily willing
to go back to proprietary software when difficulty is faced", I am in favour
of both free software and open source software, and against the ownership and
control of information technology by an elite few. Otherwise, unlike almost
everyone else, I wouldn't have spent the last six years using GNU linux
operating systems, but you wouldn't know anything about that.
Regarding philosophy and social change, having been an activist in the Green
Party when most Trisquel users were still playing with their He-Man dolls,
I've met plenty of very rich people whose idea of radicality is demanding
that everyone chills out in tipis in the countryside, hugging one another and
talking about how the world should look. They almost universally failed to
recognise that the people who are most in need of both a hug and change were
living in such dire social and financial circumstances that leaving the slum
for more than an afternoon is something they only did when they were kids.
The best such "un-Green" people could hope for was a soul-destroying shift
job in the local factory making consumer products for rich people. What they
needed wasn 't some jumper-clad goon talk down to them about morality and
philosophy. What they needed was some very practical message about how to get
out of their shit-hole.
More than two decades on, most of those rich people now have cool jobs in the
city working for the very monster they claimed to have morally transcended
back in the 1980's. They still chill out occasionally, but more often than
not they do it at a pop festival with drugs grown by a third world peasant
farmer, and as often as not they get to the countryside in their Toyota
Pious, or some other "cool" artifact of global capitalism. In the mean time,
those left behind have kids who are lucky if they're working in the same
exploitative factory environment.
It's rather the same situation nowadays in the "free" software movement. The
ones who have the most money are those who can best afford to be free,
because they can pick and choose their hardware to fit their favourite
operating systems. The rest either have to slum it with what's on offer for
less than a few hundred pounds on ebay, or they can't even afford a computer.
If they can, chances are that they've spent out so much on hardware that a
telephone line and internet connection - and hence downloadable/updateable
operating systems - are out of the question.
Regarding the "technical hiccups" that you mentioned, I recently got into
deep financial do-dos by buying a load of second-hand hardware from which I
managed to build a "new" computer. The biggest expense was on a rather nice
(second-hand) Antec Sonata case, renowned for being fairly quiet (I have
tinnitus from using substandard computer equipment for so long). It also has
a graphics card that cost me £40 - all I could afford, but a real advance on
my stone age model from several years back. One thing, though, is that
graphics cards tend to come with rather nioisy fans...
So, after having spent my ever-shrinking money supply on hardware, on
telephone line, and on internet connection in order to follow my principles
by downloading an operating system that I'd hoped would be more ethically
based than most, I really wasn't too happy at having to sit there listening
to the tinnitus-inducing sound of fans all day.
And now, despite all your high ideals, I notice that you haven't any
PRACTICAL suggestions about how to solve this problem. So, if all you can do
is lecture people who want a solution that allows them to use open source
software (call it what you will), you can hardly complain when they give up
and go back to what has at least worked for them in the past.
P.S. I favour copyleft. Anychance Trisquel will go down that route. Thought
not!
