On Thu, May 21, 1998 at 01:35:37PM -0500, Brett Lorenzen wrote:
> Important is putting it lightly. This is something, that if it slips
> through, will have horrible effects for consumers.
Brett's point is well-taken: this would codify what is already an
unfortunate practice among many software vendors. So I would agree
his (and others') call-to-arms.
I'd also suggest another approach: stop buying commercial software,
or at least buying as much of it. There are freeware equivalents to
a great many products; and work-alike solutions to many others.
(In other words, if you take a different look at solving the problem,
then instead of trying to find freeware tool X' to replace commercial
tool X, you may find out that you can accomplish the same task with
freeware tools Y and Z in combination.)
My main Sun workstation at home
ran SunOS; being replaced with Linux
used Netscape to browse; being replaced with Openscape
used Adobe Acrobat to view PDF, replaced with ghostview
used Transcript to format troff to Postscript, replaced with groff
That's it. When I'm done, the entire machine will run freeware. And
I do a *lot* with this machine: design web pages, manipulate graphics,
write Perl, C, shell, run mailing lists, and on and on. In fact, I've
yet to encounter something that I needed to do that I *can't* do with
this setup.
Yes, it took considerable finagling to get this all set up. But bundled
Linux collections like Red Hat will get you 90% of the way there very
cheaply (the advantage of buying these, BTW, is the installation tools
and the savings in download time).
To be sure, I'll put my two cents worth in on this legislation -- already
have, in fact. But I'm voting with my wallet, too, and doing so by
keeping it (mostly) in my pocket.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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