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Re: I will never again talk about the benefits of Free Software

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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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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

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