Kelly Miller wrote:
Most of the contributions to open source software have come from
people who use it in one way or another, or from commercial companies
who have decided for their own reasons to add open licenses to the
code they own. Anything that increases the user base will almost
certainly increase the contributor base. And making it easy to obtain
all needed software would help increase the user base.
See, this is the problem with the whole free vs. open source thing. By
suggesting that open source works better, while ignoring the whole idea
of being FREE behind it, you bring in users who wonder why distros
simply don't include -- insert name of closed-source component du-jour
here -- and then you get distros that include that particular component
in the name of "making things easy for users". However, the REAL
backlash from that decision is what most FLOSS programmers are seeing
from Nvidia and Adobe now; "We don't need to produce open source
software, you can use the closed source stuff instead. After all, isn't
closed source better than nothing?"
No, it's not.
People should be free to make that decision for themselves separately
for every component. That's what standard interfaces are about, to give
you that freedom. There is nothing free about things that take that
choice away by restrictions or refusal to provide usable interfaces for
interoperability.
I have to agree with RMS' statements on that respect; it isn't worth
having GNU/Linux replace Windows if it turns into a closed system
equivalent to Windows itself. What kind of "victory" is that?
First of all, if any virus-spewing Microsoft box can be converted to
run stable, well-tested, standards-conforming software instead, it is
a victory for everyone on the internet. But open source can never
'turn into' a closed system. The only scenario that might even come
close to that would be if some system were so much better that
everyone would choose it instead - which would also be a victory for
everyone having that choice.
Until you realize that such a system is actually no better than Windows
itself. You're still locked in, you still can't see what's really going
on, and since it's closed, there will likely be hidden hooks designed to
make it hard to use anything else. This is the sort of thing that
occurs when you use non-free software.
No, you are never locked in when components interface properly, there
are choices for each, and they do not include restrictions that affect
each other.
And uh, for all your posts about the stability of the system, I have
to wonder why you're not running Debian stable. AFAIK, that is the
only distro line that is guaranteed to work without any bugs of any
kind, mainly because it's years behind the others...
There are 2 kinds of stability - one is unchanging and can be good for
interfaces. The other is reliability. Fedora has neither.
You know, I do find it interesting that for a supposedly unreliable
distro, I haven't changed my install procedure on Fedora in 4 versions.
Are you sure it's not just because you're hitting stuff that most people
don't run into that's causing this supposed unreliability?
Yes, of course I want to do different things. Why shouldn't I? Stable
interfaces give you the freedom to do something different instead of
being locked into what comes from a single provider that likes to make
it difficult for you to change or use other components.
Asking why 3rd party stuff doesn't work when they're considered
outside the system is a little odd, wouldn't you say?
No, I wouldn't say that. As with any other operating systems, I
expect to be able to run other programs on it.
So do I. I note that I have no problems running 3rd party programs on
Fedora. I generally just choose not to. However, things like VMWare work.
Yes, after you track down the extra patches that someone has had to
write for each new fedora version. So it's just difficult, not
completely impossible. How many times have you had to locate those
patches so far?
It isn't Fedora's fault that VMWare's sytem doesn't work with it; ask
VMWare why, since the stuff is set up by them.
When the same program works on one version of an operating system but
not on another, there's nothing to ask. The operating system has
clearly failed to provide a usable interface.
Did you mention things like this about Windows? Every version suffers
from this problem. Just ask the people trying to switch to Vista.
Security updates are still being provided to XP so existing users aren't
being forced to switch yet as they are continuously in fedora, and
there's a chance they will have it mostly fixed by SP2 time. In any
case I can deal with a change once a decade or so. But yes, I will
complain if any of my current programs don't continue to run or else
have push-button updates to fix them.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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