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I will never again talk about the benefits of Free Software

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  I will never again talk about the benefits of Free Software Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-21 18:51 +0000
    Re: I will never again talk about the benefits of Free Software Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-21 21:36 +0200
      Re: I will never again talk about the benefits of Free Software RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-22 09:11 +0000

#5018 — I will never again talk about the benefits of Free Software

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog/I-will-never-again-talk-about-the-benefits-of-Free-Software#ContentLeft

   I have been talking about using "Free Software" for the past twenty
   years, and the equivalent of "Open Source" even longer. Many times I
   have had people ask me, "Why do you use Free Software?"

   So I patiently tell them all the reasons why I use Free Software. The
   ability to see exactly what the code does and how it works. The ability
   to apply patches right away and not have to wait for "Patch Tuesday", or
   "Critical Fix Wednesday" or any of the other "days" that some
   closed-source company has decided to put out all their bug fixes.

   I (for the 10 thousandth time) explain how I do not have to abandon
   perfectly good hardware because some vendor has decided not to support
   it any more, or that their bloated software no longer runs acceptably on
   my older, smaller system.

   I tell them I got tired of having to remove advertising from the
   software that I put on my disks, and (if I was in a country other than
   the United States) having to explain to people who pirate closed-source
   software how they were taking money out of the hands of the programmer.

   ...

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#5019

On 2014-09-21, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>
> http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog/I-will-never-again-talk-about-the-benefits-of-Free-Software#ContentLeft
>
>    I have been talking about using "Free Software" for the past twenty
>    years, and the equivalent of "Open Source" even longer. Many times I
>    have had people ask me, "Why do you use Free Software?"

---- quote ----
I will wait for these people to tell me that they use closed-source
software because of the software warranty (laugh) or the support they get
(bigger laugh).

What I really expect is that when I ask the question, I will get a sort of
puzzled look and they will say:

“I do not really know why I use closed source software”

and I will be most of the way to converting them.
---- quote ----

He would get different answers from me. Off the top of my head:

1. I have in the past enjoyed excellent support from closed-source software
   producers
2. Where are the open source versions of things like payroll or accounting
   systems?
3. Where can I find a decent quality open source Cobol compiler? I suspect
   there's plenty of Cobol code out there which could be "freed" if a
   decent free/low cost compiler existed to take advantage of it.

-- 
"Trustworthy Computing" is dead - one-third engineers, two-thirds PRs
                           - Caspar Bowden, Former Microsoft staffer

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#5024

On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 21:36:54 +0200
Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> wrote:

> 
> He would get different answers from me. Off the top of my head:
> 
> 1. I have in the past enjoyed excellent support from closed-source software
>    producers
> 2. Where are the open source versions of things like payroll or accounting
>    systems?
> 3. Where can I find a decent quality open source Cobol compiler? I suspect
>    there's plenty of Cobol code out there which could be "freed" if a
>    decent free/low cost compiler existed to take advantage of it.


Yeah, I agree with Paul on this one.  Let's take something simple, like
a GUI email client for my office.  There's Sylpheed/Claws, which
doesn't work with Caldav.  There's Thunderbird, which is quite nice but
dangerously close to being unmaintained, and it prefers LDAP, not
Caldav.  Then there's Kmail, which is so close to being a great
program, except for its wonky dependencies on akonadi and nepomuk,
which render the damn thing somewhat unusable (and I'm a KDE fan saying
it).  There's evolution - not bad, but annoying in important ways and
unconfigurable in ways that matter.  It's just so darn frustrating.

I use free software because the stuff I choose to use is generally of
higher quality than closed source stuff.  But my preferred apps are
usually console/CLI apps, and date from a different generation of
programmer - mutt, SLRN, alpine, etc.  The GUI stuff just isn't
necessarily better than the closed-source stuff.  That's not
universally true, but it's true enough that almost everyone will have a
use-scenario for which the necessary FOSS app is lacking in some
important way that matters to them.

I often think about my dream set-up if I were running my own business
requiring no other employees: a shell account on some FreeBSD VPS,
using taskjuggler for scheduling, mutt for email, and LaTeX for report
writing.  I could do it all over an ssh session, no worries if my
laptop is stolen, access everything from a netbook on the road, etc.
But the moment I hire a non-techie and especially someone who's afraid
of the command line, I'm forced to get 'friendlier' software, which
isn't easy and brings in all sorts of other complications.  Conclusion:
planning on working for myself :)

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