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Converting Users to Open Source- Why Do You Care?
mack knife asks: "Here's a question for Slashdot readers: Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use? What do you care if Firefox catches on or not? Why do some people feel the need to convert others to their pet applications? Personally, I am a convert to Firefox/Thunderbird, but I understand that many users are happy with their Microsoft products; I'll mention what I use and why, but I won't harangue them on their apps' shortcomings, nor will I try to push an unfamiliar open source app on someone who is more comfortable with a 'mainstream' product. Some open-source proponents can be quite obnoxious about this, and I'm interested to hear why it is taken so seriously."
- Firefox -- remove the windows spyware problem. Extensions! Tabs
- Linux server -- better able to manage stuff
- Thunderbird/Evolution -- removes the email spam problem
- Openoffice - Adequate. Free.
Whichever way you look at it, it just makes sense for most individual users and some business users.Putting all the above stuff together for the typical corp so that it can be locked down and administered properly is not up to par with similar Microsoft offerings (Exchange, Domain controller, Active Directory) though.
That's what Microsoft just works better in the corp environment at this time. And no matter what you say, its not easy to convince others otherwise right now.
Newsfollow.com
Why do we care? We care because what software other people use does indeed affect all of us. Not only do many of us work in the IT field and have to deal with all this poorly written software but it often makes things harder on everyone even if you don't have to deal with it directly. Take Internet Explorer for example... Thanks to things like broken CSS support web developers are forced to go to great trouble in order to create websites that display properly across different browsers and platforms. And what about the Word document format? Wouldn't it be nice if you weren't forced to use MS Office just to read the text file your coworker just sent you? You see... It's all about interoperability. All this technology is supposed to help us communicate, not lock us into one product or another.
In short: It isn't so much that we really care what software you use, it's that we care about your software playing nice with our software. If everyone in the world used software that supported truly open standards then we would all be more free to choose what software we want for ourselves.
Nothing says Romeo like a guy who knows the ins and outs of an open source email program. Line forms to the left ladies.
The more people we convert, the more support for our projects and the better they will become sooner.
Why do people try to get other people on their side in an argument instead of just arguing alone?
I don't recommend Open Source software unless I think it's good software. That said, Open Source has an impressive track record for quality software when compared head to head with commercial software. (I couldn't IMAGINE using any of the standalone IM clients when I look at what gaim offers both in functionality and in ease of use.)
Especially in the last few years Open Source software has made great strides (Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, Gaim). Still, while I'm a great fan and advocate of linux, I keep my Open Source recommendations safely in the Windows realm... not what I'd like, but people are definitely reluctant to learn a new "system", and I do enough support without having to be the ONLY linux person they know to go to. (While I still have to field LOTS of Windows questions from friends and family, at least they have other people they go to when they can't find me.)
But, finally, in the Windows world there are many great Open Source options and I've found people quite receptive. For example, again and again I get thanks from converted Firefox users -- which is nice (though I cringe at the thought of Microsoft finally responding with IE7 and features stolen to match Firefox).
Bottom line: having learned from experience I only recommend Open Source alternatives when I'm completely confident the alternative will be:
For myself, I try to use Open Source alternatives whenever possible, but for the unwashed masses the above criteria apply.
When people ask me for professional advice, I recommend that they use the right tool for the right job. In some cases, for some people, that's Open Source and in other cases, it isn't.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
It's simple.
Because Microsoft's E-mail client and web browser are unsafe and insecure products. People using software with default security profiles that ensure arbitrary code does not run is in everybody's best interest.
If you go back to the mid-70's at the time of the Altair, you'll find the
Homebrew club, people that got together for fun but also for finding
solutions to many problems the early PC had.
They were a bunch of hippies of the 70's, sharing everything, every ideas,
every solutions, every new concept together. It was so creative, so
powerful that it generated one of the biggest industry on the planet.
When enough problems were solved this way some (especially one that called all
the others "thieves") stopped sharing and start keeping for themselves. They
started companies and thrived on them.
Today those same guys are still ruling the business, they keep so much a big
share of the market that it is indecent. They use strategies so cruel and
inhuman to keep this share and they leave crumbles for the rest of the world.
Open Source brings us back to that sharing, we go back to that very
innovative time where so much new is invented and shared.
So for me it's not so much important to be comfortable with one browser or
another but it is important to contribute to the knowledge of mankind and
to promote the use of open source solution and to discourage the use of
closed source ones. It's a simple formula:
Open Source solution = Can be a good solution.
Closed Source Solution = Cannot be a good solution.
Bring back the sharing of ideas and stop contributing to the technologies lockdown of the shrews.
Some do it for moral reasons (they believe X company 's practices are immoral or, in some cases, that proprietary software itself is), some do it for an ego trip, and some are just pained by seeing what they regard as inefficiency.
I generally do it for a mix of the three.
I don't care. I just hate Microsoft.
I fail to see how that article relates to what your trying to say. Your talking about going from one free default to another free alternative. In that past /. article you linked to, he was trying to save the school system some money, which actually has a purpose other then "cuz I like open source"....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
For the same reason hippies push their beliefs on others. They are self-important assholes for the most part.
If I get everyone in the world to switch from MSIE to Firefox, then web developers will stop developing webpages for MSIE and only make ones that work (and work well) in Firefox. Similarly, if everyone uses OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Word, I'll stop getting documents via email that break in my word processor.
(And then there's all that other stuff about improving the products I use more as a result of a broader user base.)
I care because I like to support who I see as "the good guy" (or at least the better guy) by using their software. IMO, open-source is just a better idea, and helping it become popular is a good thing.
Also, it's usually free.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Security in numbers. Even if you're wrong, as long as a lot of people are wrong with you it's okay.
-- sometimes AND gates turn me on.
The more people that use something, the more support for it there will be, so the more features, bug-fixing, plugins and updates there will be.
Plus, as a working programmer, I'd much rather work on a sane system like a Unix variant than the damn Windows API I am forced to deal with. The more popular Linux (and/or OS/X) becomes, the more likely I can get a job doing so.
In other words, simple self-interest.
The cake is a pie
I'm interested to hear why it is taken so seriously.
Because I'm the one that has to clean up the mess that's been made, and I'm lazy.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
I don't try to push anything on anyone. But I do alwasy try to suggest an opensource app. Most developers of open source apps(at least the ones I know) do there work for free and just like to see that people use it. And some apps are just downright great programs. I won't belittle someone for using a closed source program. In fact I advicate a few. But I also always suggest that they try out firefox if for no other reason than the better virus protection it will give them with out IE's holes.
I try to "convert" my friends to open-source projects because I want them to be using the best and most secure software. However I don't really care about advertising to the masses.
Philosophy.
In the long run, friends of mine using Internet Explorer affects me in the sense that I'll have to be the one to clean the spyware off their computer and repair whatever damage it caused. Apathy is a problem with software just as it is with politics. People accept what they are given
Fetch Text URL - Firefox Extension
I'd rather they go with non-Microsoft products so they don't become hosts to spammers and malware. Those things affect my computing experience.
Whether they go 100% open source or not doesn't really matter to me.
Mind your own fucking business hippies.
People getting infected with virii and spyware and clogging up their system gives all us IT folk jobs. Fact.
I like Microsoft; buggy code everywhere, Microsoft indirectly gets me loads of business. I'll always use Linux as my primary desktop, with firefox, and my hardware router/firewall, but I'm glad Microsoft is the dominant force. Personally, I hate the thought of Linux being the primary Desktop OS, thankfully I don't think it'll ever become a reality.
I need the money.
...then I would still be using windows. Isn't that enough reason for me to do the same?
I think the main reason is competition. When only one browser controls most of the market then new features (and bug fixes) dry up. More importantly people like choice. I hate IE, although I don't think it deserves the vitriol it sometimes get. But for a long time many sites didn't work well with my alternative browsers. (Firefox at work, Safari at home) But those other browsers having more marketshare then more people will pay attention to testing their sites better so that I can use my browser.
But I fully admit to not understanding the "hate Microsoft at any price." I think there is just a drive among some people to hate the leader. In computing that's been Microsoft. In MP3 players it's now Apple, and you hear a lot of that there. People ought just be able to pick the solution they like. So long as that's possible, who cares?
I don't always recommend Open Source. Lets say someone is on windows and uses MS Office. They paid for Windows and Office, so they should just leave it on there and use it. Open Source just saves people lots of money!
mysql>SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 Rows Returned
Because people who dont use open source apps suck cock by choice
mostly, i tell friends to go IE -> FFox, Hotmail -> Gmail, Win -> Mac because i know it'll be a better experience for them. it's also a general thing to improve the computing of all: reducing the load of viruses and other security problems is in everyone's interest. and i KNOW most of the technologies i preach, so i can better train friends and coworkers on how to use them. plus, yes, eff MS. - emilio
- emilio
neurostyle dot net - it's all in your head
Have you ever spent 6 hours or more removing spyware from a Windows computer?
:P
Ever done it multiple times in one week?
I describe the above as a 'repetitive stress injury on the brain'.
Sure, the time's billable, but still. I hate MS as much as the next guy, but when it comes right down to it, I recommend more useable solutions, and useability includes not being infected to the gills.
By the way, nice troll for clickthroughs. Amazon would be impressed.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
At least part of the reason is that everyone needs to feel important in life. If someone isn't academically or socially accomplished, they need to identify with a group on some scale. For lots of people, this means sports teams. For others, religion. For people here, it's the 'open source group'. Many people here who are trying to convert aren't the ones who are actually coding the apps or doing research in computer science areas. They are the ones who use it to feel like they belong to a group, and what better way to justify that than by trying to convince others that their group is somehow elite or desirable?
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Helps with spam? Yes. "removes the email spam problem"? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!
The cake is a pie
I am going to push firefox and something non outlook on my friends and family because when their system is all borK3n from the software they're "happy with" they call me!
Is it wrong on the fourth visit to say "either switch to firefox, or I won't help you anymore"?
Who cares if IE is their pet application, it impacts MY LIFE, and that is why I try and change them.
"Here's a question for Slashdot readers: Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use? What do you care if Firefox catches on or not?" The illuminati fear that you may not be able to handle the truth.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
I care about the world avoiding vendor lock-in because I have to live and work in the world that results from everybody's choices.
it makes me feel leet
I really like Unix. Linux was a cheap and easy way to get into unix for a decade or so. Plenty of Open Source packages exist for Windows, but the total user experience just is not there.
Fundamentally, free (libre) software is a civil rights issue that grows in importance as our dependence on software tools grows.
Complexity Happens
1) in this market, unless you have a dominant share, people don't care that you can't work with their webpages/applications/etc. if you can't make them follow the standards, you need a larger piece of the pie.
2) i hate paying for software. if it's REALLY good, I will buy the occasional piece, but I'm not gonna drop a grand or two on software after dropping a grand or two on hardware/OS
3) proprietary software is insecure more often that OS software. See MS. I'm sick of fixing my parents computers because they bought some POS, that doesn't work right.
1) I do not have to worry about licensing and other issues when I install it for them.
2) I can get the program myself and test it without violating any license agreement.
3a) I can report bugs on their behalf, get answeres and get it fixed faster than commercial software. I use mailing lists and IRC, and sometimes real email.
3b) I can look at/fix the code myself if need be. Though this is rare, but it it realyl useful on detecting why it failed.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
2. More users = bigger market = better hardware / software / web support. I want to see hardware, software, and web sites advertising compliance with OSS systems.
3. Microsoft is evil. :)
... I like to alert folks out there, who might not normally have a clue, that there are open source (and generally superior) products that can replace the ones that they've been using. Starting with Firefox, of course. :-)
I believe it's about enabling them to choose what they want to use.
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
So in other words, *ANY* picture of her?
When you've spent 4 hours trying to clean a friends computer 'cuz IE infected it with viruses, then you'll care that they use firefox
Because dummy, the fewer webapps written to IE and M$ crap the better. And the more likely they will WORK with ANY web browser.
Prime example: PVCS web interface. It ONLY works with IE or Netscape 4.7(in linux). Period. Doesn't work with anything else, and is not OPEN so we can fix it.
THATS the problem with M$ popularity!
They Live, We Sleep
I like (open source product), but find that it is an utterly useless peice of crap because of (flaw which has existed since the begining of time and the developers seem completely uninterested in correcting). I could learn (the language it is written in), and read through the code until I understand everything that's going on, and may some day. But for now, my best bet is to find other (poor saps) to use (the open source product) and hope that the developers will be flooded with so many complaints that they (correct the flaw and/or kill themselves)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'm not sure if I'm annoying my cow orkers, but if so, the pumpkin pie I brought in today went a long way to make up for it. Several have adopted Firefox or Mozilla at home and at work, so maybe I've done a little bit of good.
See what I've been reading.
I think a lot of OSS activism is caused by almost a religious fervor. When I think about it, its just like reccommending any other product/service that has really had an effect on you. I feel about GNU/Linux like I have "seen the light", when I compare it to even modern Windows operating systems. When I see people using windows, completely oblivious to the fact that any alternative is there, its like a punch in the gut. "Why are they paying for such vile software when such a magnificent alternative is available for free?". It is this that drives me.
Plus, I am a cheap bastard and I know that most people are also, so if they had to choose between buying an expensive peice of software and cracking it, the people that I know would have the BSA on their A-S-S. I have also seen many cracks that contain viruses, so by having them use Open Source software, I don't get a call at 4 AM in a panic saying that they have an F'ing paper due, but their system won't work since they got that new version of WORD... OH, and Can you possible recover the F'ing Document, i can't seem to find it since the computer started making the dings...
For those who don't realize, windows has the stupidest setup for data, namely on one damn partition with the operating system, so when it has to be reinstalled, the lusers who don't do backups are screwed (97% or so by my estimate),
Joe User might be perfectly comfortable designing his webpage with FrontPage, but when it looks completely wonky in my Firefox browser, I'll happily recommend that he switch to something a little more standards-compliant, ala Nvu.
A lot of Open Source software adheres to standards better than products from Redmond.
...to get laid of cause!!
I've been a pc tech for too many years now :/ can't seem to get my foot in the door to a decent IT job / NOC even with certs, anyway here is my opinion:
I see around 50-70 spyware -infested- computers per
month, and though at first I did install all the good free apps that helped prevent spyware before it installed itself, it really killed return business (like the people that would go pr0n browsing the day they got their computer back, and we'd see it back in the shop after the weekend). so my boss made me stop installing the good shit (firefox/spybot/hijackthis/cwshredder/etc). anyway I think that as long as most apps are released mainly for MS OS's the problem will never be solved. and i doubt we will be seeing a huge shift toward linux (thank god) or unix anytime soon.
for the most part I don't care what people use, and with the morons that come in here that call their computers a 'modem', im kinda glad MS is around. imagine explaning editing a Makefile to an applebees manager. anyway, my -2cents. (matches my karma, eh?)
I don't care if linux ever really makes it to the desktop. To me, linux making it to the desktop just means more newbs asking stupid questions.
Maybe I sound a bit bitter but I just really would rather linux be for nerds by nerds kind of thing. This might prevent it from ever getting mass support from proprietary software/hardware makers but WHO CARES? I'd rather be using open source software (or standards atleast) anyway. And I know perfectly well that any linux box can be set up with some super easy interface with big desktop icons and font size 14, that's fine as long as someone takes care of that box for that person, but if not, it's basically useless trying to get some people to catch on. Keyword some, I've had people catch on quick, but not everyone is going to.
So in the end, I don't really care. Let people suffer the cruel fate of microsoft windows. I probably should make a comment about apple as well but I'd rather not see money going to either of these giant corporations.
This reminds me of one of my favorite fortunes:
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
When asked which software would be best for a certain situation, I reach for the tool that works best. Sometimes that tool is open source, sometimes it is closed source.
I try to help people minimize the cost of running their computers, so open source is often the best route for up-front costs (purchase price). I also recommend shareware and freeware. If the app that provides the best performance is a closed source, for fee package, I will recommend it.
No software evangelism ever single-handedly converted anyone to open source. People who convert usually do so for price; they stay if it works well enough to do their work.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I do some free software development, and to be honest, I don't care much.
Having 10,000 or 10 'ordinary' users makes very little difference to my projects, if those users are not contributing code or at least bug reports. On the contrary, they might beg for support or make nagging requests for features.
Now I do try to give support to an extent (just being a nice person), but hey, I can't teach the whole world the basics of computers, can I?
There's nothing wrong with someone asking for a feature either, but if you get 200 emails asking for a feature, you're just annoying me and wasting time I could've spent implementing it.
So there are upsides and downsides to popularity.
Apart from that; I expect people to use whatever is the best tool for the job. It might be free software, but it might not be either. I'm not on any personal crusade to save the world or crush Microsoft.
But hey, that's just me.
"Converting Users to Open Source- Why Do You Care?"
Because I want to look good in my fellow Slashdotter's eyes.
"Derp de derp."
I can't speak for anyone else, but for myself I encourage others to use some open source products (like firefox) not because they are open source, but because they play well with others and conform to open standards. I could not care less whether the web browser someone else uses is open sourced or whether it is made by Microsoft. I do care when the vast majority of people use a web browser that does not properly support the published HTML specifications and uses proprietary extensions to markup (active X) because that encourages HTML authors to break with standards and create non-conforming code that does not work properly for me.
Additionally with IE and MS there is the issue of a monopoly. MS has bundled IE effectively leveraging it's desktop OS monopoly to control the world wide web (to some degree). This means a single company can (and does) impede the technological progress of the web. If each user chose their browser from amongst competing offerings they would probably choose one with support for the latest CSS simply because everyone likes to have the newest cool technology. As it is now, however, users just use the one bundled with their computer (IE) and no one can write pages that take advantage of new technology.
The short answer is, I don't encourage others to use applications because they are open source, but the applications I encourage others to use are often open source.
There are very good reasons for people to use Free software, no matter who we're talking about: adherence to standards, the ability of the community to improve the software (and vouch for its security), knowing that it won't just disappear because a company goes out of business, or become obnoxious because of a licensing change. You know the arguments as well as anyone here, I suppose.
But my zeal is harder to explain. Those are important things to me, but I really feel sometimes like I've got religion. It's great: black-and-white boundaries (well, sort of), good guys (Saint Linus, Saint RMS) and bad (Bill Gates, SCO), a nice sense of everything-has-been-building-up-to-THIS-MINUTE!, apocalypse (in the original sense of the word: a revealing that behind the petty, mundane battles of day-to-day life are huge, cosmic battles between Good and Evil)...everything a closet drama queen could want. (I'm serious about that; anyone who likes Sisters of Mercy songs for the lyrics would looooooove discussing Free Software.)
I try to keep it in check; I'm a sysadmin, and in my job it's most important to make sure people can do their job. But it pains me -- O! How it pains me! -- to see the growing number of Windows desktops here, and it's not just because I miss a decent command line.
Carousel is a lie!
...it's all about freedom baby! Yeah!
And if you are not interested in freedom then you could continue to use your non-free app, what do I care. I am quite certain that the open source model will rule the planet soon enough anyway.
MS Windows will be a layer on top of free software in 2010.. or 2020 maybe?
Just an thought.
The new religion for the new millennium will be OSS. With Linus as the new "Pope" I see it coming.
Most closed source applications that people have been using have been resource hogging, unstable, pieces of crap which lack features that I really like to see. I tried converting my girlfriend to Linux and it failed miserably, but as a result she started using open source applications on her Desktop like Firefox and gAIM to communicate. The end result is that I barely ever have to go over and look at her machine because it got exploited by some malicious IE code or because AIM froze and she can't figure out why. It matters because developed and tested open-source applications may require less tech support than closed source alternatives.
In some perverse way, they think that they are fighting for some social cause such as civil rights....pathetic really....
1) A larger user base makes it more likely that the program will get maintained and improved by the community.
2) In the case of Firefox vs. IE, I feel that people using IE are demonstrably at great risk of infecting their computers with viruses, and I think it is a public service to inform people of safer alternatives.
3) Free software is better for humanity.
It never stays dead. What some build and let die, others resurrect. Example: Armagetron. ;)
It's not just open source products but products that work well. I recently went over and fixed a friends computer and reclaimed it from spyware and crud. The first thing I installed was Firefox and disabled access to IE... but then installed MS Spyware checker. One screwdriver does not fit every screw...
I don't evangelize software, but when someone asks me why their computer-using experience is so sucky, I am happy to provide them with information about non-sucky alternatives.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Wouldn't it be nice if you weren't forced to use MS Office just to read the text file your coworker just sent you?
Your coworker hasn't heard of Notepad?
I agree with the writer of this post. We shouldn't force people to use open source. When we do things like this, it reminds me of a Mormon knocking at my door telling me that their religion is better than mine. I use open source software side by side with commercial software. I use firefox as my browser and outlook as my email client. It all comes down to whats best to fit your certain needs. If ease of use is priority and cost is not a huge factor, who are we to critisize those who buy Microsoft products. ~~If Linux was the main OS in this world, controling as much as Windows does, then you all would be advocating Microsofts windows.
"Holy rusted metal, Batman!"
Put simply, people are sick and tired of their Microsoft Applications failing regularly or the viri/worms out there (the two biggest complaints I hear). They come to me for help with a variety of problems and would like my opinion.
:-)
Sure Open Source has it's own set of issues. The thing I usually end up telling is to create a list of what they expect from their computer. Next write a list of what Microsoft provides (good and bad) along with a list for Open Source products. Whichever one reduces your annoyance level wins
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Is this even a real question or just a troll setting people up? The resaons seem numerous and obvious.
Certainly high in the list is a desire for a large base of users of the project, which tends to equate to continued use and delevopment of the OS Ssoftware. Does anyone think that Firefox and Thunderbird would continue to be developed if there were a couple of hundred users of the software?
A larger base of users also helps insure that the software is well supported. I'm sick and tired of seeing websites that only work with Microsoft products. The more users out there using an alternative product, the more likely that websites and other resources will not make themselves Microdsoft only and in fact will even test their content against other popular tools.
The less users there out there using MS IE and other highly vulnerable products, the less systems are likely to get "owned" and thus there should be relatively less spam in my inbox and attempts to break into my system (at least less than there would be in an only Microsoft world). So I want to see as many IS browsers and outlook mail readers retired as posiable. If I can help even a few of those happen, great.
And, of course, there is that deep rooted hatred of Bill Gates ....
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This may have already been said, but:
If another user is using an insecure product, say MicroSoft Outlook [Express], and that system becomes compromised as a direct result of said vulnerability, it then becomes a public issue. At that point, as a member of the public, it becomes my problem.
If I can secure one not-mine box by having the user switch to a more secure solution (doesn't have to be open source, that just usually tends to be the most viable solution), thus preventing it from becoming compromised and Yet-Another-Net-Zombie, then I have done a great public service by reducing the number of potential zombie systems by one. Do that many times by OSS-thumping and I reduce the number of potential zomies by that many systems.
User L over there may be happy using Outlook or IE, but I'm not happy that his||her system is also silently running attempts to crack my system and generating excessive network traffic looking for others to infect. Insecure systems affect everyone.
My Apache logs re filled with IIS exploit attempts, from infected IIS servers, and that makes me unhappy.
Xiphos
I provides a convienent excuse to look down on people. That's one reason, there are others. And some are better than that one, but in the slashdot realm, ego is king.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Lack of anything better to do with their time. Honestly, I don't have time to care what software somebody else uses, unless I'm getting paid to do so. There's too much to do in this world and not nearly enough time to do it all.
It's that it doesn't suck. First of all, the parent post is a complete troll. But it's not, first and foremost, that FireFox is Free Software that makes me "harangue" my family members to use it -- although that kind of is the reason: The FOSS development process and licensing paradigm has, in this case and many others, produced a piece of software that minimizes end-user hassle to a much greater extent than the proprietary offerings of vendors who claim to be driven by the needs of their customers. And when you're in a position in which you face spending literal hours of your personal time overhauling a machine that's become bogged down in software that not only is non-Free but makes everyone's life more difficult because the company that makes it just Doesn't Get It, then it's worth it to put the screws to people to get them to use something else.
Except the holder of the monopoly. In a monopoly, network effects stifle commercial competition so the only software which can break into a monopoly market is Free software.
Deleted
For many people it can be reduced to political reasons. It's not Microsoft and it still runs on their hardware and does what they need is what's said. Variations of it not being Microsoft are what you will hear most of the time. Open file formats, immediate access to security problems, meets the needs of developers and techs (web sites, database, server, research), just to name a few.
Personally, I've never understood why the GPL and more dinstinctly Linux is talked about the most when the BSDs often work better for a specific task (if I'm running a server, openbsd, secure by default has it's benifits). Which is why I think it's mostly political reasons (notions of "free" and how the GPL takes care to make sure that OSS is always OSS). In that respect, it's not about quality or needs, but a notion of "freeness".
To me a computer is nothing more than a tool, pick the right one for the job, and you'll be okay. If you want to store files for decades (photos, emails, etc), use open formats. Microsoft has become to represent the embodiment of the prevention of the use of open tools. Hence reducing choice.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Seems more like a "rant to slashdot" then an ask slashdot.
I have seen it with everything from movies, to music, to car tires, to driving routes. (if you want to get into an annoying, long conversation, ask someone from the Chicago suburbs how to get from point A to point B)
If someone asks me, I'll tell them. Sometimes I want to help them. My friend wanted to go out and buy a copy of MS Office. I asked him why he needed it, and he said his wife uses it for basic things. After a few more questions, I said "You should really try out OpenOffice. It is free, and I think it will fit all your needs." He downloaded it, tried it, and is still using it a year later. I helped my friend save a few bucks, and maybe he will recommend it to someone else.
In another example, someone I worked with was showing me something on the internet. However, she had to first close the 4 or 5 popups that came up. I mentioned firefox, and how it blocks popups. She seemed interested, I downloaded it for her and installed it. She tried it out, and said it was cool. The next week, she was showing me something else, and was back on IE. I asked her why, and she said it was what she was used to using. Yet I could hear her compaining about the popups. Shortly after that, her machine was exploited. When I ran Ad-aware on it, it was riddled with garbage. She asked how that happened, and I calmly said "probably because you use IE". She still didn't switch.
I will advocate Open Source to a certain degree if it fits the situation. But in a way, I don't want the general public to use OSS, I don't want Linux to take over the desktop. Somehow, I get the feeling that the general public would bring Linux down to their level.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Somehow I end up having to deal with the blue screens,spyware,virus infections,etc. at work and at home. Being the lazy American I am, it is to my benefit to get people to use better programs, in return I get less calls. It just so happens that those better programs are open source.
Its simple realy, the more people that use open source solutions, the less of a monopaly microsoft can force on us. If everyone used OpenOffice or Linux the world would be a better place. Companys would be more motivated to develop for it, and open source projects truely have the interest of the consumer in mind. More firefox converts = power to open source.
* other people's spyware ridden computers are spamming me. And DDOSSing people I may care about.
* those that keep hanging on to internet explorer because they're too lazy to learn how to use a program that only works slightly differently than IE are also too lazy to install a firewall, or to apply windows updates (which ironically demands IE). Those people should either learn to deal with a universe that has more than one application, or stop using computers altogether.
* I wince when I see people using IE.. How can they live without tabs?
* If more people use firefox, perhaps some clueless webmasters will catch on and make their sites more accesible towards standards-oriented browsers (and in doing so, perhaps even better accesible for blind people for instance).
* I used to do some sysadmining when I was a student. I used to support people using IE. I know how much work it is to secure it, to keep it secure, and to keep it from fucking up its preferences, helper applications, zones, all that bullshit.
Supporting IE took so much time, I finally resorted to blocking as much I could, hiding the IE icon, and placing an IE icon that started firefox on desktops. No-one noticed.
So, would I recommend a home user to hone his mad spyware-blocking security-zone-tweaking registry-editing skilzz and keep on using IE, even though keeping up with all that stuff kept me occupied for hours a week? Or would I recommend switching to firefox?
As for thunderbird - ANY e-mail client is better than Outlook Express - especially from a not-spreading-worms-thank-you-perspective. And if you're stuck using Outlook for calendaring etc. That just sucks.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Without Open Source, we really are stuck in a monopoly. By having open source deployed around the world, we can essentially continue the fight. Without open source. Microsoft owns the Internet.
Not to mention I can start a business at a very low cost thanks to open source. If it were up to Microsoft, I'd need thousands of dollars worth of their "small business edition" products. Which I have free equivilants of that work just as well.
It's good for our economy. Competition is good. Monopolies are bad. Allowing startups to have a cheap source of computing is good. Crippling them in software licensing fees are bad.
Open Source allows for innovation, not patent locking.
Speaking as a campus PC tech, it would make my life a lot easier if students couldn't install bonzi-crap on their machines. Ideally, I'd like to just hand them a Mepis CD and have them install that - better still, I'd like to have some "temporary" techs install it at the start of the year, and set up the root account without giving the machine owner the password. That'd be sweet.
A man can dream, can't he?
I'm the stranger...posting to
- because it keeps the prices low
- it keeps the companies innovative
- it makes shure that the product quality is high
It looks like that Open Source Software is the only competition left to Microsoft in many markets.So to keep the market functioning we need to support the only competitor left.
That way, Open Source Software is a must have for capitalists today!
People cannot use software that they don't know exists. By introducing others to open source software, they can get the benefits of it (freedom, cool features, a future free of vendor lock-in, etc.) and the community gets more people to (perhaps unknowingly) test the software. If open source/free software is to continue improving and reach the point of being usable by everyone, everyday people must use it and provide feedback so that bugs are corrected and cool new features are added and improved.
42
I care because my wife and my son insist on using Microsoft products creating tons of extra work for hapless system administrator (that would be me) which effectively fills up my copious spare time. I have 4 Linux boxes at home in all sorts of roles which I spend almost no time on. But there is a Windows problem waiting for me when I get home just about every day.
I'm lazy. Yeah, that's right. So I install Firefox on every of my relative's/friends computers. Since then, I'm getting less calls about some computers that are actually faster than mine but running slower than a dead snail... I actually carry around on me a 256megs USB keychain that contains a few anti-spyware tools, some Sysinternal utilities, and the latest copy of Firefox. Ever since, less problems.
It's a religion as any other... and people with one religion for some reason usually can't stand other people having another religion, and thus want to convert them. I never understood it myself really...
which means the software i prefer, for technical and philosophical reasons, is safer.
who is she? leave a comment!
...of cleaning IE-facilitated spyware/malware/viruses off of the PC's of my family and friends. I have often just installed FireFox and said, "Don't use Internet Explorer unless you have to."
Because competition pomotes a better product!
(This sig has been removed at the request of the patent holder for Sigs.)
I'm not such an idiot (although someone out there will argue that point, I'm sure) to assume that Open Source software is the end-all. But the fact is that most of it really rocks, and when you have the control that you, the end-user SHOULD have, that is a good thing. Why do I care? Because my friends / family / clients deverve the best. Fact...Firefox is faster, more secure, more configurable and more user-friendly than Internet Exploder. Fact...Thunderbird is a clean, non-intrusive application that exceeds Outlook in nearly every category, with the exception of the lack of a calendar. When my wife was running outlook on her machine it took nearly 45 seconds to start up. Once I switched her to Thunderbird that time went to 7 seconds...no kidding. It also comes down to cost. The Redmond Mafia wants to charge you top-dollar for products that require more patches and hot-fixes than any other product on the market. The technical support you get while good, can take FOREVER to actually get. The fact is that once I have moved people over to Open Source applications I have NEVER had one person switch back to what they were using before. Don't take my word for it...listen to those who have made the switch.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
What's wrong with word of mouth advertising... especially when the products you believe in have no other method to promote their use. I think the only reason anyone promotes their open-source favorites is because a feeling of obligation and respect for the software's developers. Unless people like me push awareness and acceptance of the software it won't continue to exist... unlike big name products that can simply force the product down our throats or at least make sure we see it everywhere we turn around. I don't think anyone is stupid for chosing not to use open source software... but I make it my responsibility to ensure that they are CHOOSING not to use it rather that being simply ignorant of the wonderful open source alternatives and their advantages.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Everyone needs to download Media Player Classic from sourceforge, and replace all the file content resolves on their Windows XP system to use this Windows Media Player replacement; it is smaller, less bloated UI, faster to launch and load and play; and because it is downright fun to be alternatively non-Microsoft yet unpermissively and authoritatively hacking an original Microsoft crap product into a fixture that has some better use than when it was released in Windows 3.x.
Oh, here's the FREE P-P-P-Power Lesbian Strapon Porno that you've all be waiting for!
Not bad
Could be better
Dirty little bitch! (This is why we need to segregate sausage from plastics. It just doesn't mix well!)
Christine Young (She is the new Tracy Lords, and I for one welcome this Young ontop-n-overlord)
Does she look like she had a sign on her poop-chute that says "exit only"? (I don't think so...)
I welcome additions, not stileproject links please. My last porn post was modded insightful, so lets not haste Slashdot discussion into any technologies people realy don't want to discuss. Har!
I work in the public school system, and I feel that open source software would save my school district a significant amount of money.
One of the reasons open source has become what it has is because of users. Users are an integral part of any open source project... without them the project will remain buggy and stove-piped.... with them bugs will be found and features will be added.
I am constantly trying to move friends and family to open source products... not only for their benifit but also for the benefit of the projects themselves. Whether or not this is "the right thing to do" is up for grabs... but it makes me happy to see my wife using Firefox and (on the odd occasion that it crashes) clicking the "Submit" button on the crash reporting screen. That is enough reason for me to evangelize.
Friedmud
This is the main reason why I recommend Open Source Alternatives. Now keep in mind that I only offer them to the people that I feel can handle to difference, and thusly will not be asking me for help every 5 minutes. If we, as developers, do not even stand up for the standards compliant software, then how can we possible hope to write "good" software ourselves. Non-standard apps cause all kinds of integration problems and this means that we have to spend more time writing a Software X to Software Y translator so that the two pieces of software can communicate correctly.
This sums up my feeling's about microsoft windows, it is a quote from an unknown professor somewhere on the web: Microsoft Windows: A thirty-two bit extension and graphical shell to a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit operating system originally coded for a four-bit microprocessor which was written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition
And now my own.
Microsoft = good marketing, sub-par software.
Open Source = no marketing money, on/above-par software. made by many non-paid developers for the love of creating something.
-Nightbird
1 We are altruistic. We like to see other little guys succeed.
2 The better the more people immunized the less likely unimmunized people are to get polio etc etc
see herd immunity
It transfers well to bad software. The less vulnerable systems out there the lest hosts to pass on malicious *. The more people using something with open standards the easier it is to use open standards.
I care because for the last 10+ years, people have said "XYZ broke, can you fix it for me". I got tired of putting my head in my hands and saying "re-install" after tweaking around for hours on and, and then dealing with that horrified look of the realization of what that means to the poor sucker.
Now, if I start from the beginning and recommend things that I know I can support (for instance, linux isn't entirely about a platform - its an environment where you can actually, if you look carefully, back up an entire application without having to wonder what its done to the registry).
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
I try not to put down the other products as much as I try to show people that there are alternatives out there. I do alot of consulting, and many of my clients have stolen almost all their software. I show them that they can use other products to accomplish the same task while being completely legal. Most people like that more than any other feature.
I care about switching people to open source alternatives mostly because they support open standards. Closed standards are bad for all of us because closed standards only benefit the company producing the products that can interact with the closed standards. Look at Microsoft, for example. One of the reasons why *.doc is so entrenced is because since "everybody" (as in 95% of the population uses it) uses Word, most of them don't even consider the possibility that somebody could be using (gasp) a different word processor, so they just save their documents in Word's native format. Look at the amount of work OpenOffice had to do in order to reverse-engineer the Word format, and OpenOffice still doesn't open Word documents perfectly (although IMO it does a great job for most documents). In many cases, getting perfect formatting with sharing Word documents require having to purchase Word (and sometimes the correct version), which in turn requires that you have a current version of Windows or Mac OS.
Plus, what happens if that company goes away? I don't think that Microsoft is going away anytime soon, but what about the Mac and DOS/Windows users who were using word processors such as MacWrite, WriteNow, AmiPro, and other now-dead word processors? They would need to save their documents in RTF format, or find converters to another popular format, but what if converters were unavailable for some reason? All of those years of documents are now lost in case you want to upgrade/switch, since the specifications of the file formats of those word processors are either closed off in company storage boxes, or worse, lost to history.
If everybody switched to an open document format, such as RTF or the new OpenDocument format that OpenOffice and KOffice seems to be pushing, then we can all be sharing documents throught a vast array of operating systems and platforms. The Windows-using department could give their documents to the *nix-using department, which can give those documents to the Mac-using department, all with no problems. Now, they may be using different applications; the Windows people might be using Word, the *nix people might be using OpenOffice/KOffice/Abiword, and the Mac people might be using Apple Pages, but they would be able to share their documents without any problems.
Now, the hard part is making the OpenDocument format more popular, and Microsoft accepting it.
If you've ever made a homepage or had to develop a web-based frontend for some application you'll quickly discover how bad IE is:
This is why I care for FireFox gaining momentum. Either FireFox will replace IE as the default browser (unlikely) or it will at least put some pressure on MicroSoft to try to improve IE (likely, it already happens).
It's simple really. For the same reason people support 3rd party politics. The louder the voice of the minority supporting change, the better the chances of the big players implementing that change.
It's why we have seat belts in our cars. Nader petitioned through his green party to get them mandated. The public heard him and agreed and were then able to pressure those in power to do something. Appeal to the masses or be replaced. It's that simple.
The reason why I prefer Firefox can be summed up in one word: CSS. In particular, I would like to make a web page that uses 100% CSS for layout, but, right now, I can't because of MSIE's broken css.
In more detail, I want a web page that is usable (doesn't require scrolling) at all screen resolutions and on all browsers, while still having a sidebar defined via CSS. The way to do this is with the max-width CSS attribute; this way, when the content becomes smaller than the screen size, the elements sized with max-width become smaller while the fixed sized elements stay the same size.
However, I can't do this because MSIE 6.x, which is about 90% of the web surfing public and about 30-40% of the people who go my web site, doesn't support it. I don't want to use the non-standard expression hack bacause that may break in MSIE 7. Ditto with all the hacks that hide CSS from MSIE while keeping the CSS visible to other browsers (the one hack I do use, the include(file.css) hack to make the CSS invisible to Netscape 4, causes the Wayback machine to not render the CSS when looking at older versions of my web page in Firefox)
The only way I can make variable-width elements which are (pretty much) guaranteed to not break with future browsers is to use a table, since the 1990s table rendering algorithm does make the table narrower when the browser screen becomes narrower than the table.
This, however, breaks in Dillo, which has broken table layout. Since Dillo is, like, 0.1% of the browsing public, I just have to make the page look a little worse in Dillo (it's still usable, but one has to scroll between the navigation bar and the content of the web page when viewing in Dillo at 640x480)
If MSIE had working CSS, I wouldn't have to do this; I would put all of the layout in CSS, which will make the web page look better in Dillo, Netscape 4, and look better if someone prints out the web page.
This is why I want more people to use Firefox (or Opera): So that I can more comfortably set up CSS without breaking legacy browsers.
As a user of Linux/Firefox, and such, the more people that use the platform/applications, the more software publishers and web developers are willing to acknowledge and make efforts to support such paltforms and applications.
Easy example is the web. As more and more people use Firefox, fewer sites rely on proprietary ActiveX controls, etc, which improves the web experience with firefox.
Same with linux, particularly with commercial games. I'm not that interested in them, but some people are very motivated to have a larger group so that they will receive better support.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Here's a question for Slashdot readers: Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use?
Because around 1997, maybe a bit earlier, I realised that what MS was doing to Windows was really dangerous, and managed to convince management to ban IE and Outlook and other apps that used the HTML control to display potentially untrusted objects. I didn't know exactly what the failure mode would be, but I was absolutely sure that there would be one.
Shortly thereafter the first of the big email viruses hit. We were the only division of the company that didn't get slammed by them. For the next several years the vast majority of the times I had to go in and clean up an infected computer the user had been using Outlook or IE. I had one person argue with me that the should be allowed to be an exception to the "no Outlook" rule while I was sitting there tracking down an infection that they'd got through Outlook. And of course IE is quite happy to let down its hair for any malware with a good jawline.
At this point I don't care if the browser you use is Open Source or not, so long as it, or its email software, doesn't go anywhere near the HTML control. In practice, that means the options are buy Opera or install a Mozilla browser.
This isn't exactly an answer to "why Open Source", but it's sure an answer to "Why do I care what browser or mail software you use".
I predict his Eminence RMS the first
*I'm* the one who has to fix my friends' and relatives' spyware- and virus-infested computers. *I'm* the one who has to hand-hold them through backing up their files, reinstalling Windows and reinstalling all their software. *I'm* the one who gets the late-night phonecalls - "Please can you help me, something's gone wrong with my computer and I have an assignment due tomorrow." *I'm* the one who helps them to install a personal firewall, and teaches them not to just click "OK" without reading on the little red messages that pop up.
Understand, I'm not unwilling to help people with their computer problems. But I know that *their* computing experience would be less stressful if they'd just use Linux/Firefox/Thunderbird; and my life would be a little easier.
Basically I'm sick of.....
* my parents, my friends, my coworkers, my dog and my clients sending me documents that have viruses.
* them calling me about their horrible little problems with the miserable Windows operating system and it's foibles. Why anyone thinks it's a good idea to saddle their organization or lives with this kind of bear on their back is beyond me.
* windows crashing when I need it the most.
For all those reasons I encourage people to abandon Windows and endorse operating systems that make some sense and do far less damage. That means Linux and Macintosh, with as much open source and well written shareware as can be reasonable used to get on with life. Life is too short and Windows is far too stupid to suffer for long.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
cost/quality ratio.
Why steel from your own wallet?
All personal preferences/arguments aside, when there is competition all products improve, or die. Imagine if Firefox never existed... Would IE be getting it's overhaul? It takes popularity to make a competitive threat and at some point those threatened need to evolve.
Including me.
So call me selfless, or selfish, but it's in my own best interest to have more bandwidth from less trojan, spam, and virus traffic, and it benefits me to have websites render identical in Safari as Firefox.
It all comes down to my wants and needs. If others get a bonus from it, I guess that's ok, just as long as my needs are served first and foremost.
It's the same attitude that drives our current Administration, except I don't get paid money.
I don't need to buy a license for open source code that my customers use.
I can maintain systems that are at least compatible with with my customers' systems, if not downright identical, without concern for "licensing issues", "right to use", or any of that other stuff.
If the customer wants to set up a few extra systems for their internal delivery/test processes, then No Problem.
Open source products have been, in my experience, at least as reliable as proprietary equivalents.
Open source products give control to my customers: If they have a problem, but cannot get support "out there", then a competent developer can help. Just *try* getting help with proprietary stuff: It's a big fingerpointing nightmare.
The bottom line for me is that all that thinking about licensing, and proving that I have a right to work just isn't a problem in the open source world.
It really depends on the scenario. My default position is that I don't really care. Exceptions to that include:
Epidemic control - I want people to use more secure software on network connected machines for the same reason that I support mass immunization programs. Such steps reduce the number of vectors and, therefore, the rate at which harmful data can spread.
Support - I'm a geek, and my friends know it. they call me for help. I urge them to use free software (or Macs) to cut down on the number of support calls I get. (Or at least to make the support calls a bit more interesting.)
Politics of Open Societies - I want all information produced by my tax dollars to be made publically available. (I'm willing to accept some reasonalble limits on militarily and diplomatically sensitive data, but eventually everything should come into the public domain... even if it's 100 years later.) When it does, that data should be in formats that are not proprietary.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
What do you care if Firefox catches on or not?
I'm a web developer. Every website I create needs a few hours of massaging to make it work in Internet Explorer. Some things I simply cannot accomplish because of Internet Explorer.
Personally, I'm not bothered whether I get people to switch to Firefox, Opera, Safari, whatever, just as long as it's not Internet Explorer. If everybody in the world switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox overnight, my job would be far easier, even though I'd still have to support Opera, Safari, etc.
The same goes for other software, like operating systems. I've lost count of the number of times somebody's phoned me up asking for help because Windows or Outlook has screwed things up for them. Nowadays I just tell people I don't know anything about Windows any more, and tell newbies to buy a Mac instead.
I realise that this is more a case of Microsoft vs everybody else, rather than closed-source software vs open-source software, but you have to pick the battles you can win. Most of the people I talk to really don't give a shit about freedom, they will copy regardless of the law. Trying to talk to them about the relative quality is impossible; they ignore abstract reasoning, see the learning curve is not a flat line, and don't bother putting any effort into learning a better system.
im a OSS zelotte naw becuz I waz brained washed by two mush reding off slashdot comments. ( some peeple says its afected my gramar to.)
Asside from the fact that I care about other people and don't want them to suffer without need, I advocate OSS for two main reasons. One, what other people use affects me. When they send me MS Word and MS Excel documents, I suffer. Two, I want them to be aware that not everyone out there uses Word. If you MUST use Word, at least be kind enough to send me documents in plain text or RTF.
Slashdot's audience is pretty much techies or admins.
Who gets called when some new IE bug pops up? Who get to try to clean out spyware installed by buggy closed source application? We do.
Why tell everyone we know to stay away from IE and MS products? It's easy. We're just trying to help them from having computer problems and in turn help ourselves from having to deal with those problems.
Many of us are also the first tech support contact for many of our family and friends. It is super frustrating to get problem reports for things like:
I don't have any of these problems on linux/firefox. Its hard for me to figure out what is wrong with software that I don't use and don't care about. Usually my solution is to upgrade them to the stuff I'm using.
--
Currency Exchange Calculator
There is nothing to keep you from homebrew computer hacking or even breaking open a NSLU2 or WTR54G and writing your own custom busybox firmware.
MS, Intel, AMD, Compaq, IBM, Dell, HP all are significantly responsible for the fact that you can buy a fully functional computer for $200 at Wal-Mart.
Individual hobbyists could not have caused the econmies of scale needed to drive hardware prices down to 1/1000 of what they were in the 1970s.
Corporations are a necessary evil.
How many actual slashdotter are actual devs? Who write code out there? And I dont mean PHP or HTML, I mean real man's code, like C++ and Java. OUt of all the slashdotters who are not true developers, why do you care so much about how open a program is if you cant friggin read the code to understand what it does!!!!
"Holy rusted metal, Batman!"
I got tired of fixing my family's computer from spyware and trogans and whatever seeped through from using IE and Outlook.
Even my girlfriend's family's computers were completely toasted. I cleaned upi their system and taught them why they were catching all these bad things from the internet. i installed Firefox and taught them how to use it properly and how to regularly run spyware removal programs.
If I spend this amount of time teaching them this, it saves me many hours later from having to re-clean their systems.
If Microsoft released applications that protected users from all these intrusions, then I wouldn't care which programs they used.
I believe she's the tubgirl. Just go there.
If you want to send someone some confidential information (credit card numbers, passwords, business info, personal things) it does not matter how much security you have at your end if the receiver is using an old version of Windows and it is filled with spyware. The information is effectively compromised as soon as it leaves your machine.
Most people do not even know when their machine is compromised and continue using it while it is under someone else's control.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Because I'm sick and fed up with removing spyware, trojans and viruses from my relatives' computers?
I'm not a rabid open source proponent - I'm actually rather pragmatic about it. I'll use what gets the job done for the right price, and what gives me the power to do what I need to do. I admire RMS's goal of freedom, but I acknowledge that part of a user's freedom is being able to selectively trade those freedoms for what they perceive as a worthwhile exchange. Sometimes closed source, commercial software allows me to do the job faster/easier/better.
Simple fact: My parents have managed to pick up spyware and an email worm or two using Outlook/IE. I installed Firefox and Eudora (running in lite/free-as-in-beer edition) on their machine, and in the last two years they haven't had a problem, and claim that both are "easier to use" than their previous counterparts. One is open source, the other closed source but still free-as-in-beer. Since then, they've been more productive and have had exactly no spyware/worm/virus problems.
Would I switch them to OO? Not likely, even I can't make it do some of the things I want, and the training to convert them from MSO to OO would outweigh the gain (none?).
In a business environment, though, I will often advocate using open source. I'm a firm proponent in not relying on vendors, but being able to open up the code when something goes wrong and fix it quickly. I've just seem too many cases where my own company was worried about having a vendor to blame rather than concentrating on making things work.
If somebody wants to choose Mac over Linux I have no problem with it since Mac's barely need support anyway. But I waste tons of time trying to solve stupid virus issues that I shouldn't have to deal with in the first place!
Well... mostly I don't care, but when I care it's because I want freedom to run the software I like and that freedom is threatened by proprietary document formats and protocols. I need open standards to be able to run the software I like.
One way to promote open standards is by encouraging people to resist the mono-culture of Windows.
You don't see many people trying to convert people from Mac OS X, do you? It's about the fact that Microsoft dominates the industry and ruins it. Like take IE: it is a huge security problem, it has many properitary features, and it makes the rest of the Internet suck when people code to it or try to work around its limitations.
...and when they switch to Firefox/Thunderbird, they stop bugging me to fix their spyware problems.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
...is that people love nothing more than looking down on other people from what they perceive is the moral high ground. This force has driven humans since they invented morals. Just be thankful that the people pushing for open source aren't burning people at the stake for worshipping the wrong god or stoning women to death because they were unfortunate enough to get raped. In the grand scheme of things the zealots of the open source community are fairly harmless and the ones that put their money where their mouth is by actually producing usable open source are providing a valuable service for the rest of us. I hope this isn't perceived as a troll, I think it's a pretty accurate description of OSS zealots and fits pretty well with the kinds of behaviors we seen on Slashdot. It's not for nothing that these things are called 'religious wars'.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Microsoft is destroying any chance I have at a future.
Before Windows 95, we had choices, computers were different with maany different applications and configurations and although most of them were Dos, the whole world did not revolve around Win 3.1.
Microsoft destroyed everything. Now, Linux is the only remaining x86 Holdout
Macs don't count. They have always had a closed proprietary architecture.
If the computer industry, and I am to have the future I wanted since I was in 7th grade is to happen, this M$ Dominance must end.
I think it boils down to the fact that most people I recommend products to are friends. I want them to get more out of their lives/computers. I am happy when a friend tells me about a new application that is faster/better/cheaper than something I already use. Similarly, I hope they are happy when I point out that a piece of software can make their lives better (by eliminating popups or whatever).
Secondly, since these people are my friends, and their computers have copies of my email address, I'd rather their machine not get taken-over and turned into a spamming zombie or whatever! So that's why I encourage them to switch to more secure software (which is usually open source).
In the end, there are so many compelling reasons to switch to open-source software (security, support the little guy, freedom of information, low-cost, transparent implementation, avoidance or vendor lock-in, etc. etc.) and so few reasons not to switch (complacency...), that it makes sense to encourage others to look into the advantages of OSS. It's not a situation where there is just one or two small advantages... it's a case where in addition to the product being better for the user,[1] it's also ideologically "the right thing to do." Rare when that happens.
[1] Note that I'm implicitly talking about "good" OSS... there's lots of crappy open-source and non-open-source software... so I'm implicitly comparing the "best OSS" to the "best closed-source software"
Globally, the more people use the same tools that I use, the better the tools I use get. Conversely, if fewer and fewer people use the same tools I use, the more they are going to deteriorate.
That's not theoretical: I have been through the death of several platforms that I had invested lots of time and energy in, and it's not a good experience (the fact that they were commercial platforms only made it worse, because when those are gone, they are really gone, no matter how many users there may have been). And people intuitively know that: zealotry grows with how threatened a platform is, and shrinks the larger its user community becomes.
Locally, if people send me Microsoft Word attachments or create IE-only web pages, that's a hassle for me, so convincing them to use the same tools I use makes my life easier (and, hopefully, theirs as well).
try to religiously convert anybody - the conversation usually starts with me telling them what I do for a living and then they complain about windows and spyware etc.
then I explain what I use and what their options are
then I offer to get them a knoppix, ubuntu, cd and have them take it for a spin and I would be glad to help out any way I can.
This has worked numerous times and they have stayed with Linux. They now say they don't have to buy all the extra crap they need and they just get their work done.
Other than that I just let it go - I am not going to try to religously convert anybody - that won't help open source or them - they have to want to do it.
Do you grow all your own open pollenation based food? Load your own Ammo? Refine your own gas?
Open source is great for people with time on their hands. The rest of us have a life, as pitiful as it may seem...
because i care!
if i know somebody who wears an uncomfortable pair of shoes that gives them slight (or severe) problems, i will say: "Hey, i think you want to try this. TRY IT!!! I Insist!" if i happen to know a great, comfortable, affordable pair of shoes that i KNOW will satisfy them.
its' exactly the same with the big OSS products. mainly, firefox and other good apps that truly are superior to IE.
other than that i don't want people to support bloated, overpriced, poory made software that treats them like dirt and they don't even know it.
it's not like i go around forcing people to use OSS if they really really like whatever it is they use.
The same reason people bring gifts on chrismas day, give a dollar to a begging homeless, help other vehicle drivers if their car is stuck in the snow and whatever else I can imagine. And why people try to convince others of their religion, political opinion - sharing of ideals. People want to bring others the same good things they experienced and that's one reason. Some open source projects are head and shoulders above their commercial counterparts, especially the Gecko-based browsers come to mind, but also the VideoLAN client and some more. I just feel pity for people I know and value if they creep around the web with their default installed IE, fighting popups and blinking banners, always in danger of malware and security holes while navigating with clumsily with one window to Google and back.
As a more savvy user, I just have and urge and a duty to help people I know and like. And as most friends, even the most technically unsavvy, ignorant and technologically careless people use their Mozilla or Firefox and *never* switch back and even install that thing on their own on the next machine or at the office, I feel I helped them. Most are thankful the popups are gone, the tabbed browsing is easy, Google is fast to reach and their computer breaks down less often - I don't have that much support issues for my friends, there's less malware to bust and less systems to reinstall for them. And to be honest, it was quite a burden sometimes when another PC was infected *again* and they'd called me in panic to make that thing usable *again*.
And then, it's ideological. Fight monopolies, for the betterment of society as a whole and my own cheaper and better software environment in the future. And then you see people thanking you for showing them alternatives. Not all people are happy using an infringed copy of Office XP and even less are ready to shell out 300 bucks for a legal one. So give them OpenOffice, they are happy, society is a small bit better and it doesn't cost more than a few cents.
So in short: I've seen my friends and colleagues quite happy with their Mozilla enough times to know I've got to convert some more to that browser. And I know exactly the internet and document world would look like hell and be useless when open standards and free-as-in-speech software weren't there. I hate it when people are exploited or hindered and that's why I try to make open and free standard software popular among my friends and relatives.
Because the win or lose of Open Source is more than just win or lose of some apps. It's the win or lose of a certain way of life, certain values, certain FUTURE. What may be more important than what kind of future our kids will live in?
Early 21st century will be regarded as a crucial period, a period of sweeping changes. Our actions or inactions will directly affect the way people live for a long time into the future. So why ask? Our desire that the Good Things win over the bad ones is about as basic as the desire to continue ourselves in our kids.
The sooner we can retire those millions of boxes that spread the malware via broken applications, the safer we all will be. It's the same reason the public health authorities want to do something about open sewers: they host very efficient disease vectors.
The linkt ot the old /. article about a school is an interesting example because I think schools are one of the best candidates for switching. I think MS realises that too because their academic pricing continues to be severely discounted (for that reason plus indoctrination into MS culture is easiest with students).
Here are some potential advantages:
1. Look at the time and money involved in ensuring you are compliant/legal. Schools are notoriously bad at making sure all their software installs are legal. The MS "software assurance" contracts might reduce the effort needed but you pay through the nose. School board trustees and the like care about dollars, so push that argument strongly.
2. Less vulnerability to viruses and other malware. Given that the users are mostly students, unless you lock down access very tightly the school environment is more prone than most to getting crap like spyware-infested P2P clients, chatroom smiley icons and comet cursors on them. Students can be quite persistent in working around roadblocks to get their toys.
3. No vendor lock-in--you are at the whim of Microsoft for your critical systems. Remember the misery school districts in Oregon went through? MS mya not go bankrupt and leave you in the lurch, but they might some day decide you have to pay 100% more to renew your contract just because--and no-one holds them to their promise to regularly update their software--look at how long it has been for Longhorn--the release cycle slowed to 1/2 speed.
4. No corporate domination of the learning environment. Everyone puts up a big sting when Coca-Cola pays for a new scoreboard in the gym with a big Coke logo on it and having educational programming piped into the classroom with commercials, so why is it OK for Microsoft to be in your face all over the school?
5. You can custom tailor software without reprucussions--make a custom Linux distro for the servers and workstations, implement a specially modified content management system for the school's course catalogue, etc.
6. If you teach programming and you are ambitious, you can use the actual software that makes your systems run as programming examples. The really good programming students could contribute to those projects
7. There is much better community support for Free software--at least overall. A few years ago I emailed one of the coders for PostgreSQL about a problem I was having and he replied within hours with a patch...with MS SQL server that would NEVER happen--you'd have to wait for a service pack or hotfix. True, Free software isn't always fixed that fast, but in the case of Microsoft, NOTHING is EVER fixed that fast, even if the problem is fixed by a small patch.
8. Standards. Apache is the standard--not IIS. The folks that bring you BIND, sendmail, postfix, etc do not play hanky-panky with important standards like DNS, SMTP, POP, IMAP, HTTP and so on. Microsoft has screwed with all of the above in the past.
There are many more arguments for--hopefully these provide inspiration.
The question is phrased in such a way to suggest that this is merely a matter of pushing one's will upon others. Well, there is no doubt that certainly may happen. However, this leaves out the enormous issue about the use of taxpayer money to subsidize closed source corporate interests.
I don't give a flying fish about what Acme Co. wants to use for their web server. That's their business, but when my kids are going to a school that is paying for Microsoft servers and refuses to allow any Linux distros on their net because of "security concerns" I damn well get pissed off and for a good reason. That's my fucking tax dollars being spent on something I totally disagree with. Well, it's one thing for me to disagree with how my tax dollars are spent, but when the alternative is plainly superior in so many ways and wouldn't cost me further taxes I have a right to be livid pissed that I am being fleeced by a greedy fucked up situation.
The same it true in government offices and open for formats where government data is concerned. Those are the cases where people get animated about what OS is being used.
Attempting to re-focus on the issue as though it were all about pushing one's preferences on others is commonly referred to as spin.
So, allow me to borrow a phrase from Fox News and please listen while I tell you to
SHUT UP!
For example, shockwave. Active X. Microsoft's Outlook used to default to a RTF attachment standard which Netscape couldn't read.
MS Access files are useless. As are Photoshop files. Quicktime & Windows Media videos are often not usable.
People need to design their documents and content in a way that they can be used on any computer.
I promote the stuff I use simply because if people DONT use it, the developers arent going to fix stuff and put new features forward.
It doesnt matter if I find application is XYZ and its 100% perfect, if there are only 12 users worldwide, and theres only 1 guy whose working on fixes/developement of it.
Why do /.ers try to convert "normals" to OSS? Why do missionaries go to foreign countries to "save souls"? Why is the U.S. engaging in a new wave of militaristic imperialism? Because it makes them feel good. If I hold opinions that I can convince other people to believe, then I am right and I have demonstrated that I was smarter than the converts (i.e. I was doing it first, I was able to change their minds, etc.) It's about power, it's about authority, it's about ego. I suspect that there is an element of geeks trying to set trends, too, sort of the geek equivalent of being the first kid in school to be into 60's revival, being laughed at, and then having the rest of the country do it.
As for me, personally? I'm lazy. I only mention what I use if I am asked or actively convert if I'm expected to support the activity. For example, my father now uses Firefox, and I converted him because I was sick of all of the IE-specific questions I was having to research. My brothers both use IE, and I don't try to convert them because it isn't my problem. Frankly, I don't give a damn what everyone else does, but I'm libertarian, so I don't even advocate my style :-)
Many of the people I provide tech support for insist on using software such as Internet Explorer and MSN Messenger, but don't know how to actively watch for malicious code. Because of this, I have to go back and clean up the same garbage over and over again. If people would switch to better software (often open source) this would be much less of a problem.
One example is browsers and spyware. Using Internet Explorer, you'll probably get TONS of spyware just by browsing around. With Firefox however, 99% of that is blocked.
I guess it doesn't really matter what people choose to do, but there would be a lot less tech support needed if more people used open source.
A related question to ask would be: why do people who debate open vs closed source draw the line between desktop software and web-hosted kind? Take any popular webmail, for example. Every one is completely proprietary and closed source. Yet there are lots of happy slashdotters using (and raving about) GMail. You don't have any of the freedoms with GMail that RMS is talking about. You even have fewer freedoms with GMail that you have with Outlook (at least noone can stop you from using Outlook if Microsoft dies). You don't even have your own data (unless you religiously maintain a local mirror, which almost nobody using webmail does). The answer is, of course, convenience. Convenience! Are you the same person taking hours downloading music from p2p who would not be caught dead buying DRM's music from iTunes because it's convenient?
Btw, to be completely fair, I just described myself. But you have to admit there is a cognitive disonnance in there somewhere.
I care because I'm the person most of my friends are going to call when their computer gets a virus. I'm also the person they're going to call when someone they know has computer problems.
If they can afford to buy a Mac, I tell them that's what they need. Once they get one, I never hear from them again regarding computer problems. Switching various family members and local business owners to a Mac has tremendously cut down on the annonying "my computer is broken" phone calls I receive.
If they can't afford a Mac, I switch them to Firefox and Thunderbird, setup PC-Cillin for virus scanning/firewall and scan their system with Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D.
Common sense is not so common.
As long as the browser they use supports open standards so that when I choose to visit a website it works with my browser of choice. The more users of non-standards browsers the more websites do not work with my browsers of choice. (Firefox/Opera)
For the home environment, things are slightly different. There's a much lower risk of cross-contamination. It exists, but it is lower. The main problem is with the side-effects of contamination, rather than their direct consequences.
So far this year, literally millions of people have had bank accounts and SSNs put at risk. Banks and insurance companies are likely to respond by increasing fees, because it would be madness not to. They have to cover the costs of these risks somehow. That means that business is going to be more expensive, because people have been careless with private information.
When you consider that this is just the impact on crackers targetting businesses in one State, you can see the potential scale of the problem and the potential reaction that might occur.
There are a lot more users than businesses, and users are a lot more prone to viruses and spyware which could put that data at risk. As businesses become more aware of the risks, they may well respond by inflating prices, to mitigate the impact.
In other words, insecure software is an inflation risk which (ultimately) hurts everyone, even if they don't use that software.
To use the dreaded car example, insecure software is like using a car that has a high risk of exploding in an accident. Sure, it hurts the people inside the most, but it hurts those in the general area too! Sometimes, what you do really does affect others, and if that happens, those who are at greatest risk have the greatest responsibility to ensure that risky behaviour is changed.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My dad often downloads stuff from the web and well... :-/ his box often gets filled with spyware.
I often recommend him Open Source because I know there's no spyware in them.
I suppose if you have no concern about how underhanded dealings has ensured the company who has stranglehold on over 90% of the market retains their monopoly then by all means, keep them on Windows.
The Slashbomb has been set! Run away before the deluge of comments drown you! Oh, the humanity!
"All mod points hath been given unto me in cyberspace and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make GNU-agers of all the nerds, bash-shelling them in the gname of Linus and of Stallman and of the Holy Slashdot."
They "care" so much because they are typical liberals. They want to tell me how to run my life, if the aspect of my life their interested in is computers, they want to tell me I should run Firefox and not IE. If their interest is in the car I drive, they'll tell me what kind of car, etc.
Basically what it comes down to is rediculing me for making a choice of what to run. If I don't run the "geek approved" software, then I'm considered a lamer.
I've personally never understood this phenominon. I've also told people I believe they should use something, but if they say "oh well i dont like it because of X, Y and Z" I say OK and drop it. However, I still encourage people to try new things.
I've used many open source and closed source software, and honestly I believe good software comes from both categories. For instance, I like Mac OS X... some may not because it only runs on a Mac.. or because it's not entirely open source. However, *I* prefer it over windows and linux. I also prefer Photoshop over Gimp. However, I prefer Firefox over IE... and I also prefer using im over notepad.
It's funny... if this was a Christian group proselytizing Christianity, this same group of people would be screaming outrage of how Christianity is being forced down their throats. But when it comes to technology, they prove themselves hypocrits.
Because the masses are ignorant and need to be lead down the path of righteousness.
When reading these questions I found my mind wandering about religion, a lot of the questions being asked could be placed with religion and odds are if you asked some religious people--not all of them do this--why they feel the need to push their beliefs on people, you might find the answer to your questions at hand.
I mean, this is probably the oldest form of trying to "convert" people there is, so why not go to the source.
When I recommend open source platforms and solutions to school districts my hope is that if they choose those options it will save taxpayers money OR it will allow the school to spend money it would have spent on licensing in other areas.
If I convert parents of students to open source solutions they will have no problems if their kids are using them in school.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Having followed the evolution of Free software over the last 20 years, I'm quite pleased with the progress so far. We're a force.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
that I try to convince people to eat their veggies instead of beef. Better for them, better for society as a whole.
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Stallman and of the Torvalds and of the Holy GNU, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
i'm the jedidiahmarkfoster your parents warned you about
Ultiimately, it's an ego thing, a way to move up in the pack. It's the same reason people say things like:
"You've got to read this new author I've discovered, she's the greatest."
"Have you listened to X? They're this new band and they're terrific."
"I found the best little bistro that has sandwiches to die for."
In each case, the recommender a) gets to show off knowledge; b) gets to feel superior for "discovering" something; and c) gets to cloak a and b under the guise of helping out someone. If the thing (browser, author, band, restaraunt) becomes a success or is well received by the other person, the recommender gains social status and points.
Doesn't matter what the "thing" is, the motivations are the same.
The largest reason I push open source applications like Mozilla, Samba and Apache in my group (B2B and B2B sales for a major toy company) is that they perform better than the Microsoft equivalents, they're less costly to deploy and they result in fewer support requests sent to myself.
I can't count the number of times I've had people claim that Internet Explorer is reporting a server error. IE reports all problems as "server errors", not just upon receiving a HTTP response code of 500. As a result, I have to stop what I'm doing and look into the issue which is usually due to a timed out request or a DNS lookup failur, not a problem with the HTTP server.
I recommend people the applications I am using because I know them and when they ask me some more about them I'll be able to help them. E.g. I tell my parents to use Firefox because it has many features and some annoyances that I'm aware of and when they ask me about something I know what they are speaking about. I hate it when they come to me and expect me to be able to help them with a program I've never used before myself.
Personally, I haven't found Thunderbird to be lightyears beyond Outlook, so I don't emphatically recommend it (I'm sure others do.)
However, Firefox is a masterpiece, and it's free - plenty reason to encourage friends and co-workers who don't generally like change to try something new. And in almost all cases, they have agreed Firefox is better and they can't imagine going back to IE.
Firefox is so good, in fact, that Microsoft has been forced to improve their own product. Competition (and encouraging competition) is always a good thing.
Why haven't I encouraged people to try Opera, etc? Because those other products either aren't free or aren't as functional. IE is preferable to those products in many ways.
Bottom line: I like sharing good things with people I know, and, frankly, I like the thought of Microsoft getting scared and having to actually compete.
I like it, I want it to spread. As it has bigger number of users, bugs are revealed faster and I benefit
Last year the university I attend had a brilliant network, great ping and a thick pipe. But so many students were infected windows computers that the IT dept. here integrated what could by any standards be called a draconian firewall to isolate infected computers. Only five ports are open. I can't play WoW, use FTPs that use passive socket, send files via IM, connect to any IM service that doesn't have an http option. What I have had to do is use my mates pc in the states as a ssh proxy to do anything that isn't web browsing or email. So, I try to convince people to use FF (no activex) or alternate OSes (I tend to not tell many people to use linux for fear that I become their manual) but anyone who is in the market for a new computer I do recommend getting a mac. As one of the few people in my halls that "gets" computers, I get someone asking me weekly at least to look at their spyware/virus bloated systems. I don't have sympathy anymore, and usually say "Adaware then PandaSoft, if the PC still isn't working try a format and reload" Simply, the ignorance and lethargy of others has directly impacted my enjoyment of my own computer.
http://www.mample.net
I've been one of two people in an office who didn't have computers down due to a virus simply because we were using Mozilla's Messenger and Thunderbird. When asked how we weren't stricken, we praised the email clients. Watching everyone else standing around waiting for someone to come out and fix the problem made me appreciate the productivity side.
I've recently helped a few people obtain new computers. MS Office Small Business (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) adds $279 to a computer that costs less than $400 without it. I've been able to introduce OpenOffice.org to these people because it makes financial sense, and because it is interoperable with documents created on or transferred to their MS Office systems on the job.
I currently work for a US government agency that is dealing with layoffs and cutting of entire areas of research due to funding. Idealistically, I like to think that a shift to more free/open source solutions would allow us to shift the money that goes to new software and maintenance licenses would free up funds to keep the intellectual resources we have, or at the very least allow those of us left to have more funds available to attempt to carry out out research. I try not to be a zealot, but whenever I hear complaints about proprietary software or formats or when it comes time that we are looking to renew maintenance licenses or get new software, I make sure to point out that there are other solutions available, and that I have been using them since I started.
One shouldn't be obnoxious about these things. As these products improve over time, and as we are able to point out sensible adoption strategies for them at the right time, I think the shift will occur naturally. I've noticed more and more coworkers using the software or coming to ask me questions about it over the last 6 months or so, and those I've gotten to use OpenOffice.org on their new computers have been ecstatic. Switching to new software without a directly observable financial or productivity gain can be hard to sell. Deciding to spend the time to learn a few small changes in office software instead of doubling the price of a new computer is easy.
Because some people feel they are superior and or hold great power in their knowledge and, well intention as it may be, are compelled to "help" out all of the poor schlubs who just can't "see."
It's part power trip, and part need to be helpful in their eyes. I have used Linux since 1995, I have told people about it when asked or suggested its use in certain instances, but never have I pushed it or stood on moutaintops to proclaim its greatness... because it is not remotely perfect nor is it for everyone. Same reason I don't push my religious beliefs, Firefox, whatever... none are perfect or fit everyones needs.
Realizing that however takes wisdom, and a comfort with your own situation/life to not need to bend others to your will.
When I worked for an ISP and the same people would continually be infected with spyware I would tell them about Firefox, its benefits to them, and even offer to burn it to a CD if they requested it, never once did I force it on anyone or evangelize about its dominance over IE. No one wants to hear it, most don't care. There is a fine line between being passionate about something and forcing it on others.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
The reasons are the same as why we might be interested in removing dictators from power, in maintaining human rights and in the developement and protection of democracy. That is... freedom.
While I take issues with some of the ways some countries have decided to "protect democracy" I also take issues with the way some people have decided to "spread opensource". That is, Zeolots of any nature are to be discouraged.
I don't think people should be yelled at shouted out or otherwise badgered about their choices of software. I do however think that there is a lack of education about opensource alternatives, and a great deal of FUD (dis/mis information) that's spread out and about and that fighting that is important.
But how do we fight FUD? but through the continuing open of discource between people about the alternatives and the freedoms (and the consequences of that freedom) that are available to them.
--Anders
I have only one reason for supporting Open Source software and trying to convert other people-
Advertising
When I use open source software (especially if I am not charged for it), I tend to feel obligated to market it to other people. Open source developers do not have even a fraction of the marketing budget of other software companies, and it is the user's responsibility to get the word out. If we come across as being a bit too pushy, then I guess that is just another testament to the quality of the software.
I, for one, welcome our new karma-whore sig writing overlords
Would you buy a car with a locked hood that the dealer refused to give you the combination for?
I like open source software and Linux just for the simple reason that if it breaks I know I can find and fix the problem given enough time. I've gone thru the code on lots of projects, from Pine to ArgoUML to JBoss. Do I always have the time? No, but someone else might have. Most open source projects are fairly good about taking bug reports, applying fixes you've written, or even giving you cvs access. This is my only complaint with Sun's open source Java implementation. Yeah, it's open source but it doesn't really matter if I fix their code for them, I still have to go and vote on which bugs I want fixed( top 25 Java bugs by vote rank).
Do I care if my Mom uses FireFox? Only from a support(spyware/popup tech call) perspective. To many people treat open source as a religion/political aggenda. I believe the best approach is to treat it like a club/group of people sharing ideas and working together to fix problems.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
...because the Windoze users keep asking me to help solve their problems! E.g. I can't print, why can't I upload, my app doesn't work anymore, blah, blah, blah.
In case you haven't tried, actually FIXING a Windows problem (as opposed to merely re-installing Windows and praying) is VERY difficult compared to Linux. Proprietary code, the insane world of the registry, DLL version hell, etc, etc.
It's gotten to the point that when someone asks me for help with their Windows box (including family members!), I tell them to install Linux and just walk away...
It's all quite simple really...
Unless viable alternatives to monopoly lockin not only continue to exist, but to flourish, the monopolist will use their financial and other resources to persuade application vendors, service providers and agencies to "cut off the air supply" (to use a favorite microsoft term) to those using other than approved microsoft products, thus killing off any alternative user community that is small enough that they feel they can get away with it.
It's not about making everybody use what I use - No, that's the microsoft way, and that's not what we're into - it's about preserving the CHOICE - both mine and yours - to use what works best for us, choosing from apps which we feel best implements officially defined STANDARDS.
It's about a level playing field, based not on monopolies designed to keep one company in power while killing off any potential choice, but an environment in which creativity can flourish, unimpeded by the certain dread that an unchecked and lawless monopolist will smash and smother those deemed creative enough to present a potential threat to the monopoly.
While Firefox renders according to standards, people don't write to standard. .NET applciations are a big example of things that won't work in Firefox.
OpenOffice is something I installed for my dad at home when he got his new computer. It didn't cut it. He had to move his spreadsheet graphs into his slide shows and it was too much hassle with OO.
Really, the decision belongs to the end user. If it saves them money or time and accomplishes the task, I say switches are fine, but not all the applications that are open source take care of it.
Someone told me one, "No one gets fired for choosing Microsoft." It's true, unless you're at Apple. =)
It saves me time. I know that when I wipe a machine for a friend or family member, if I install Windows on that machine it will be so bogged down with virii and spyware that it will need to be wiped again in a few months.
Linux normally has a more involved setup initially but once I get all of their hardware working, it usually stays working. People that I switch to Linux rarely need to call me for anything. If the person is even a little bit computer savvy, the decision is a no brainer. I try to only free a mind when its ready.
This article sounded like the typical:
"Why do you persist even if you know you can't win, you can't win..."
"We will prevail, truth will always win, etc..."
Honestly I couldn't care less about other users. The reason I try to clue people in to better systems is that increased usage translates into increased support. The more people using Firefox, the more interest there is in the project and therefore more and better developers. This translates into fewer bugs and more features for me.
Compatability is the other thing, keeping with the Firefox example. As a result of increased Firefox adoption, many formerly "Best viewed with IE" sites are being made standards compliant.
Essentially, my reasons are purely selfish. But since software is virtually infinately copiable for virtually no cost, everyone can enjoy those same benefits I selfishly seek.
Some call open source communism and others viciously contest the claim. Personally I do not. Communism is an IDEAL principle that has nothing to do with vicious dictators. The reason it does not work in practice is because there aren't enough resources to go around, in reality people are lazy and greedy. They try to aquire as much as they can with as little effort as possible and are willing to do so at the expense of everyone else. Capitalism is a system that recognizes and condones this behavior and therefore is much more effective. With software however, if even one person works, EVERY person reaps an equal benefit no matter how many people there are.
In the practical world if I bake a loaf of bread, that loaf must be divided into ever smaller pieces to be shared a among the group. In a group of 5, it is not so bad. In a group of 10 those portions are getting small and so forth. In the digital world, if I produce a loaf (program) I can share the entire loaf with 5, 10, or 1 billion people and still keep an entire loaf for myself. Suddenly a very tiny portion of people being altruistic and a very tiny portion having interests that coincide with the public good can scale to enough benefit to cover the other 99.999% of lazy and greedy users (actually even their complaints are feedback that is useful in its own manner).
Everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute and in so doing they EARN an increased voice (this coincides with the IDEALS of capitalism) but nobody goes without (thus meeting the ideals of communism).
beats the heart of a Jehovah's Witness. We're all,
"Have you heard that the end days are approaching? That soon, all M$ users will be sucked into the maw of eternal torment?"
"Get the f$ck out, idiot. I'm trying to watch 'Kids WB'! Leave me the f$ck alone, before I rip out your Firefox and shove it up your ass! Besides, I'm an OS X user, didn't you see the statue of Steve Jobs on my front lawn?"
Sigh, some people!
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
I care because I'm tired of being asked to "fix" computers where the only thing that is wrong is that they've been running IE and having exploit after exploit violated and crap installed.
If it was only one or two people it wouldn't be that big a deal... but it's enough that I get bugged almost daily.
I have people wondering why thier browser stopped working... and wanting me to fix it.
I have people wondering why thier computer is too slow to use... and wanting me to fix it.
I have people wondering why thier system crashes... and wanting me to fix it.
Now, if IE actually was the best browser out there, then I'd clean thier system, educate them, and have them keep using IE.
But IE is most definately not the best browser out there (almost) regardless of how you look at it.
So... I'll fix thier system once. Tell them that IE is why things got like they did. Educate them a bit. Then let them know about the wonder that is Opera (or to a lesser extent FireFox) explain some of the features... get them to try mouse gestures and tabbed browsing out.
If they're one of the adamantly anti-anything not IE people, then I just tell them that this is the one and only time that I'll fix thier computer and let it go.
As to the other reason that I care... it's because I'm a nice person. When I find something wonderful I want to share it with others.
It's like people that are newly in love, they want to hook all thier single friends up too.
I've never had a problem with spyware/adware/malware running emacs. If only people would listen to me .... sheesh.
We provide our sometimes less than humble opinions and recommendations because we know that 95% (being generous) of the computer users on this planet are brain dead monkeys. They do what they're told (by MS), and follow without question.
Those of us that live in the world of IT, and have dealt with horribly-coded, proprietary, and over-priced apps for so many years are tired of it, we want quality. Since I've never had Adolf Gates come to my door asking for product recommendations, my only recourse is to push those around me into the correct mindset.
I admit to being one of the fanatics, but outside of occasionally being called a dick, I don't see a downside to being one.
just speaking from my own experience. No matter where you are or what you are doing, if you mention that you work in the computer business you will shortly be flooded with questions on how to fix some odd problem they are seeing. I tend not to deal with M$ products all that much (other than to play games) and its easier for me to tell someone to go use xxx freeware or opensource application that I know will do what they need rather than to try and figure out what might be wrong with whatever crappy M$ application they might like to use.
I know that this might not be exactly what they are looking for, but at the same time they aren't paying me and if they want help they get it on my terms.
Because:
- Standards. I want a web/internet where you aren't forced to use one specific browser on one specific OS. I want to be able to access the web from my PDA, cell phone, etc. Neither runs an OS that can run IE (nor does my desktop). By increasing the number of people using a non-IE browser we are forcing websites back into the original spirit of the internet: standards and interoperability.
- Cost. Most open-source projects are free and this value is a good-thing to the end-user, who can then spend that money on more-important things. If they WANT to blow tons of money certainly that's their option, but most people feel up against the wall and with no choice but to shell out the $100s for MS Office just so they can write the occasional letter/paper.
- Security. Open-source projects such as Firefox lack the inherantly-insecure technologies of many closed source equivalents (such as IE and ActiveX) because the open-source projects are aimed at and empower the END USER, while all too often the closed-source projects are vehicles for revenue, empowering the corporations and hearding end-users into whatever direction earns the supplying company the most profit. ActiveX is not for end-user best-interest... it is a mechanism that gives WEBSITES (aka companies who are customers of MS who pay MS big $$$) more control over end-user computers, wrapped-up in the sheep's clothing of being some sort of "benefit" to the end-user. In many cases, IE is nothing more than a ad-pumping machine.
- Support and general well-being. The more people using safe, reliable software that doesn't trash their system (due to bugs or being susceptible to viruses, spyware, adware, etc) the more happy computer users there will be. I'd rather earn consulting dollars showing someone how to do cool and useful things in OpenOffice than cleaning spyware off their computer for the umpteenth time.
Windows Server, rebooted atleast once a month for security patches.
Linux server, whenever a major security hole is found in the kernel that I HAVE to patch (rare, very rare indeed) or a new feature I gotta have!
Oh the joys of installing new software packages (or upgrading them) without the need to have down time on my application servers.
Oh how I really do miss sleeping in on Sunday mornings, life as a Windows Admin does suck at times...
Tes
A) The abysmal security of Microsoft software has led, first to the development of a host of malware, then to multibillion dollar business models built on it.
When it was just malicious it created internet storms that affected traffic even for non-Microsoft users - something akin to allergy season, as a host of plants try to pollenate your nose. Now that it's a lucrative business model it's more akin to the evolution of peredators on the herds of computer users.
In both forms it's also analogous to the evolution of plagues. Microsoftware is the software equivalent of a third-world pesthole where the likes of dengue fever, ebola, and bubonic plague are endemic, just waiting for some mutation to let them spread to those currently immune.
Had it not been for Microsoft's low security the development of this bane would have been much slower and might have been nipped in the bud, or stamped out as it emerged. But because of the persistence of Microsoft's vulnerabilities and its ubiquity, malware has become an industry. And industrial malware has been modularized and had functionality combined, until quite complex and powerful systems have evolved. The bulk of the function of these can now be ported to even our more protected environments, if even a single vulnerability remains to let the malware take hold.
Spam (sent through an army of Microsoft zombies) has made email virtually useless except for large organizations (where it's merely much more expensive). Spyware threatens personal information wherever it might be entered - including at institutions (such as banks and hospitals) which are not under control of the persons whose information is at risk. Vulnerabilities open the possiblity of a low-budget infowar against developed countries' infrastructure - a war that is easily within reach of the means of even the current crop of terrorists. I could go on.
From this standpoint I really don't care whether Microsoft suddenly fixed its security or everybody abandoned it: Either would reduce the overall threat - and suck the non-Microsoft community into the war with the malware authors on a much bigger scale than now, possibly leading to their decimation.
B) One of the boons of modern times is the proliferation of a small number of languages among a large part of the world population. The downside is a reduction of cultural diversity. The upside is greatly enhanced communication. The benefits of the latter, IMHO, far outweigh the problems of the former.
Microsoft's policy of carefully ignoring (or deliberatly sabotaging) compatibility standards (in order to lock users into their products) leads to a "language barrier" among computer users. This is exactly the reverse of that beneficial trend.
It also puts information itself at risk - as when governments and/or other institutions standardize on Microsoft solutions and end up with their data locked in and locked away from users of other systems.
(But point B) is covered in more detail by other posters so I'll stop now.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I weigh the benefits of open source products to the benefits of commercial products. If I need features that the commercial product has, I will buy it. Otherwise, I use open source.
Firefox -- nicer looking, not as succeptible to viruses.
Thunderbird - same as above. I don't need all the features outlook offers.
OpenOffice - I don't need the extra stuff that MS Office offers. Not for $400, anyway.
On the other hand, I use photoshop over gimp.
Photoshop has more usable features that gimp lacks.
I have worked tech support for a few years now while I attend school. Having been on the wrong side of too many "My computer crashed and what do you mean you can't fix it sight unseen over the phone for free?" conversations, I can easily answer why some people are adamant about switching.
Simply because we are tired of hearing about all the problems people have out of something. We have suggested to our customers for a long time that they switch to various applications. Why do we suggest Firefox? Because people who use Firefox don't call every week when it is jampacked full of spyware to the point where they can't get anyway. We only get those calls from IE uses. Why do we suggest Mac or Linux? Because those users don't call every week with another computer crash. Why do we suggest any switch? Because the switch will make our problems less.
You may be happy with what you have, and in that case carry on. But for those who call every day with some sort of problem, please switch.
*See RMS's recent ramblings, his word, not mine.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
The people that are the most obnoxious their point of view are the ones that are the least secure with their point of view.
Why do people try get their friends to see a movie that the like? Why do people try to convince you that the corner deli has better food than McDonald's.. Hell remember the ol' "whose fries are better? McDonald's or Burger King" argument?
This is not specific to software, it's in just about all aspects of life. People enjoy something so throughly that they want to share with everyone else. Or they just think they're so elite that everyone else should be doing what they do.
I care what clients people use because I end up supporting them. I run a smallish hosting service, and about 50% of the issues that I end up dealing with are caused somehow by microsoft products ( either an issue with their outlook client, or an issue caused because they used word to create their web page ).
:)
In the case of customers, i can get around the pain that microsoft causes me by charging them if their problem is somehow caused by using a microsoft ( although I just use the word 'unsupported' ) product.
In the case of friends, I don't get to tell them that their program is unsupported
Sitting Walrus Blog
I want to support web standards. If more and more people start using firefox, webmasters are forced to create websites that work in all browsers.
It's my job to keep open source 31337.
Properly typing in a 50+ character alphanumeric key is stressful. Managing a collection of dozens or hundreds of these keys is also very stressful. With BSD/GPL software, I can throw the keys away.
I have lots of Oracle 7/8 databases. Oracle would like me to upgrade right now (and send them a big check). If I was on an old release of Postgres or MySQL, I would have the option of contracting out maintenance of the code to a 3rd party. I have no options for code updates to Oracle 7 (apart from writing a potentially much bigger check to Oracle).
For these reasons (and others), I'm beginning to believe that friends don't let friends use proprietary software.
By creating more competition amongst developers, they are all forced to put more thought into their code and pay more attention to what their user's want/need. That is why microsoft has sucked for so long...for years there was no adequate competition so many of their programs were just thrown out there without adequate testing or full regard to user needs.
:).
The end result of spreading software use across the board is that all of the vendors start having developing better programs to sway users away from their competitors and they often become more innovative, careful, etc. This means that users of proprietary software are more likely to get their money's worth and that users of opensource software get even better software, comparable to proprietary solutions, for free
This also has the added advantage of encouraging the commercial software developers to lower the prices for their software, which is often very expensive. Not to mention it drives user's towards opensource projects which are need more users because their software is free and often are only supported via user donations. Because they're opensource and contribute to the knowledge of the community, it is generally more of a public service to get them more users in hopes that some of them will donate something to help sustain the opensource project(s) as long as possible.
...if the other solutions out there worked worth a damn. I'm sorry, but when a clueless user clicks a bad link in IE, they get about 10,000 pieces of spyware loaded on their machine, stuff you *can't* get rid of. This is the point at which the 'knowledgable' user (i.e. me) has to go reformat said machine. That's why I push other solutions, cause the defaults are worthless and harmful.
and someone needs to take a stand. If not me, then who?
"Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use?"
In some cases, because we care about these people?
And hearing what trouble they have using closed-source apps we try to find something they
1 has less problems and is up to date
2 won't have to pay for again
3 we can support
When did political-correctness descend to user land? Sure, I might not harangue people over their software of choice (well, I will, but it's not abuse, really) but I will knock an app for every sloppy meathead shortcut it has.
Let's call a well-designed app a well-designed app. If not, you're just hastening the day when they spell crap with a Capital C.
Personally, I DON'T care what someone else uses for an OS or an Office Suite or Web-Browser.. I do care if they "standardize" me out of my choices though!
Currently, too many people are Lemmings and just follow what they are told. However, if they see that other options exist (and many of them are BETTER), then they will be happier.
Of course, if we just sit back, Microsoft WILL continue to push it's products down the Lemmings throats (via Monopoly, Advertising and whatever other technique is needed). If one company "wins", then capitalism, freedom, competition and innovation lose. When was the last time Microsoft came up with a technology of it's own? (Microsoft Bob!?)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
When I was just starting out, Miller Genuine Draft and BudLite seemed pretty good. I knew they were the best because everyone else was drinking them too, and they had the best commercials.
Over time, I learned to appreciate craft-brewed beers. While a total-cost-of-ownership argument could still be made in favor of MGD, for most purposes I'm more interested in a total quality experience rather than the quickest and cheapest buzz.
For many of us, the exact same logic applies to IE v. Firefox.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
In all honesty... if you found that jose's mexican restaurant down the street has the bext mexican food on the planet wouldn't you tell a friend to check them out?
I see a lot of these exploits being used to "zombie" systems, allowing these exploited systems to participate in distributed denial of service attacks. This clogs up internet routers which in turn slows everyone down.
I'm not going to say that open source is completely free of these vulnerabilities, however, it seems to me that open source software has a better model of fixing these problems.
On the other side of the coin, there is the argument that ubiquity of software allows for more exploits. I've been in debates where people claim, "Firefox is just as vulnerable, it's just not as ubiquitous as IE, therefore you don't hear/read about exploits under Firefox." While there may be some truth to that, I still argue that with an open source model, vulnerabilities are spotted, patched, and released faster than closed source software (which makes sense since open source allows for a lot more brains to look at the problem, as opposed to a closed source model where only a limited number of brains can deal with the problem).
On a completely different coin, it seems to me that people who use open source software today are more computer saavy anyway, or at least knowledgable enough to know what an exploit is and how best to deal with them.
And on the other side of the different coin, GNU/Linux (probably the most ubiqitous open source OS) is not standardized. If I were writing an exploit, I would definitely not target GNU/Linux because they are not homogenized. An exploit that works on one distro, probably will not work on another. However, since the registry works the same on every windows machine, as well as all Windows machines having the same file structure (Everything you need to exploit is in C:\System32 - or something like that), this make Windows a more attractive platform for me to hack.
Of course, this is mostly speculation, or I could be full of crap, or both.
1. People ask me to help them clean up all the crap they could avoid if they quit using IE.
2. MS has no incentive to fix their product unless there is pressure from the market. More users that discover the alternatives and benefits the more pressure on MS to make a better product for lower cost.
If you had a friend that said he needed a car to get him back and forth to work, but the only one he could find was $60,000. Wouldn't you tell him about some other alternatives.
There are affordable (to the common person) alternatives to PageMaker, Office, and Illustrator. You CAN edit videos and create music, freely use a digital media player without a credit card. And I know a lot of people who have a hard enough time just affording a PC and its peripherals much less any software to run on them.
Also, technically speaking, many of us nerds aren't all that adept at utilizing the programs we create to thier potential, I do OK with Scribus and Inkscape, but an adept graphic artitist will make them shine. With them into the mix Linux based apps will show thier poential and improve, as people will give thier informed feedback (fictional example: "Um, the color quality dosen't match quite right here.. here... and here...")
Having a larger community will help it gain commercial interest, and they (proprietary niche developors) eventually will fill in many of the gaps, but to make a profit they will have to code up stuff better than that's out there free (and/or) they be able to code up something even better than on proprietary platforms due to the solid foundation that Linux and its associated tools provide.
So to sum it up in just a few words, "Becuause Linux is 'A Good Thing'"
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
More options = better experience for end users.
Example:
Firefox* + IE = Improvements for both Firefox AND IE = Users win.
The importance of open source software in this is that certain companies that control large shares of the market tend to just buy out any competitors that come along. OSS projects don't tend to be for sale.
Another reason I try to preach open source is that most open source projects avoid the "Swiss Army Knife" mentality. This makes sense, because it is easier to code something that performs one task well rather than one that does a dozen decently, and because when you're not trying to sell it you don't need to have dozens of features to attract customers. When I want to perform a specific task, I like to have a tool designed for that task. You can use a Swiss Army Knife, or you can use a screwdriver...both will work, but one is likely to work better. The open source community tends to put out a lot of screwdrivers. I like seeing them recognized for that. I love the look on a friend's faced when I hand them a (legally) free app that does exactly what they are trying to do, and better than what they were using before.
*Note: I tend to always use Firefox (or Thunderbird) as examples because of all the open source software, especially that released for Windows and for desktop users, those are by far the most "ready for prime time." They are currently in the process of proving that if you develop a quality alternative, people will use it. This was proven long ago in the server market. Now it's being tested in the desktop arena. I hope they succeed.
Because it's easier than convincing a person to spend $130 on Word 2003 just so they can write letters to friends. And I refuse to pirate MS software for people; once they see just how much they have to pay to get this stuff legitimately, they're suddenly MUCH more interested in Free software.
Thats about it. My friends/family expect to be supported. When they call me 4000 times because they use IE and have tons of popups and spyware... I get sick of fixing it. I tell them, use firefox. Because I do. They don't have to, but then again I don't have to fix their problem either.
Does anyone else get that? "Please help me with my computer!"... then you do, and make a suggestion. "Oh, I don't want to use that, I want to use IE". Isn't it sort of rude? You ask for my help, then criticize my choice. I feel like saying "Oh, you use IE, then I can't help you."
If someone uses IE and has no problems, then I don't care what they use. By that token, those people probably don't need my help. I love to quote the Matrix, when people start whining about phising, spam, popups, spyware, overheating, dust, old computers, upgrades, windows, anything:
"Welcome to the real world, Neo."
FLR
Bye, slashdot. I'm sick of your 'tude. Hello
I am a web application developer and MSIE is a nightmare for me. That's all when it comes to the browsers.
:/
When it comes to OSes, I wouldn't care who uses what, but MS cares..., spreads FUD, pushes patents, and wishes death to Linux - the OS I've chosen. So, I'm happy to see some new users in OSS world because, it means long live to this world.
Cheers!
ps. sorry for my poor english...
Most people are OK with their software, because they don't know anything else.
:)
My uncle was IE/Messenger/hotmail, because that is what he knew. i show him firefox and gmail, he still uses msnMessenger
Most people will just use what microsoft gives them, and we all know that isn;t the best around.
I'm very much an idealist and I realize that open source is not just about the software product, but the development model behind it.
We always read about how more secure, transparent and free open source software is. But as a development model, it's sole concern is the software itself and it isn't politically involved with money making concerns.
I am a software engineer and I know I'm doing myself out of a job with these ideals, but I can't help but think the world would be a better place wthout selfish capitalism.
I don't care if it is open source as long as it is better, and that includes better price and performance. Open source is only valuable to programmers. Non-programmers do not know the difference. The real reason for open source is that the support worldwide allows it to be better, and since most packages are free or relatively low cost compared to Windows, it allows people to have a good system without paying the company whose main goal is to make more money with a forced upgrade computer system.
While reading through the comments on this article, I had a revelation. There was a group of people a few hundred years ago that were so pissed off with getting shafted by "The Man" that they decided dignity was more important than tea, and tossed all the tea into Boston Harbor. Eventually, this whole thing led to "The Man" getting his 4$$ kicked on out of the colonies, where people could buy and sell tea any damn way they wanted.
Now, consider the state of software, and compare to the American Revolution. Surely there existed people who said, "Man, this Tea Tax sucks! We ought to do something about it!" I find it my ethical responsibility to be that person in the present day.
Of course, before you all start swaying and humming "Battle Hymn of the Republic," remember, there were some unpleasant things about the American Revolution, just as there will be unpleasant things about any sort of Software Revolution. First, there was fighting, war, death, cold winters, and cable TV outages. Furthermore, those poor colonials had to do without their tea!
Likewise, we must do without some of our well-deserved conveniences if we wish to liberate such things for the rest of society. We must also realize that there were colonials that really didn't mind getting bent over a chair every time they bought tea, and said to the "Man, this sucks" crowd, "Hey, I really don't care, getting the shaft is easier than fighting." Similarly, we will have the people that will let Microsoft/SCO/Adobe/Novell/etc. rape their privacy, pocketbooks, and intellects because it's "easier." However, the "rape me" colonists, along with the feather-wearing tea-into-harbor-dumping red-coat-shooting zealots, all became Americans at the end of the war (either that, or they bought a ticket back to England). Similarly, when our war is won, the "rape me" software users will have the "easy" software that protects them as well. However, that war won't be won unless someone does the fighting.
*bracing for the "I'm British, you insensitive clod!" replies*
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
"Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use?"
Because, if I see that a friend, is doing something wrong, I tell him "it's wrong".
If I see a friend trying to buy a shirt that doesn't look good, I tell him "that's not for you".
If I see a friend, that is using a program because it's what came with his computer, I tell him "Try that, it's better, if you don't like it, you can still use the other program".
Besides, I like to give people other options, normal users doesn't know what software options are available, they just see microsoft, and that's bad.
ajf
Companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Macromedia(now owned by Adobe), and more, naturally want you to BUY their product. That's the entire focus of their companies. If they would focus on quality, compatibility, intuitiveness and distribution, then the products would improve exponentially and prices would drop. That's why Open Source is important. The focus is on the product, not on the sales. Obsession for money stifles imagination and creativity. So, do you care about profits or productivity?
I'll make a recomendation if the user complains.
I mean if they complain they are obviously unhappy.
If they are looking for a new application I will tell them about both the open source ones and the commercial ones. I explain features and differences.
Basically I make judgement calls on what I think the user is looking for and would meet thier needs regardless if software is open source or commercial.
Some people ignore my advice and others are very happy, it depends on the circumstances.
I do IT Support at a nearly 99% Microsoft site, so OSS isn't used there, but at home I run http://www.watsky.net/
w b/cswb.html so I don't worry about spyware or viruses there either :)
I have 2 sisters with old PII class computers which they just use for surfing/email/WP. They ran Win98 and at least twice a month I would have to call out and fix their systems due to spyware or them accidentally deleting things or odd DLL problems. I moved the more tech savvy sister to http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ and the "I refuse to use anything but Windows" sister to http://www.linspire.com/ about 3 months ago, and apart from some minor problems with a Lexmark printer I haven't heard a peep since from either of them and they are delighted with the computers.
At work I actually browse the net using a http://h71000.www7.hp.com/pathworks32/ link from my XP machine to an OpenVMS box and surf with http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/ips/cs
Jonathan
http://www.justgofaster.com/
I am a proponent of open systems. I generally don't care if the source is open. I prefer software platforms that allow me to develop software, interact with the system, and solve problems without mussing around with licensing issues and buying expensive development kits.
The platforms that enable these choices are the ones I prefer to suggest to my friends. The "open source" world of software isn't attractive to me because of the source code being open, it's attractive to me because I can file a bug report or join a mailing list and actually influence the development of the product. Of course, I am a programmer and have in several instances modified an application to suit my needs but, that's not what I usually leverage in this community.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
That should be "GNU/Pope", thank you very much.
It takes some time for people to make the transition to open source. Many users know barely enough to use MS products, much less an alternative. Those who are happy enough "in the Matrix" are best left there until they desire to get out.
When people ask any of the following questions, a prescription for OSS may be indicated:
(1) Why am I getting popups even when I am not online?
(2) How do I stop the machine from crashing 5 times aday?
(3) How do I get the functionality of <insert product name here> without paying <insert price here> ?
(4) My anti-virus software is crashing my machine -- what can I do?
When people discover what OSS does and how the community works, there some who refuse to believe. However, most of the people I have unplugged are quite happy in the OSS world. They rarely go back voluntarily.
I don't want firefox to dominate the market, I want STANDARDS COMPLIANT browsers to... why? because as a web developer and consumer, it makes my life easier and less risky.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
The two main reasons would be:
If someone is considering pirating proprietary software, I will suggest they try an open-source alternative first because, well, I actually *do* care about software piracy.
Second, I will suggest things like firefox and thunderbird to people, because if my suggestion means that one random user *might* install said software, that user will have a *slightly* better chance of not becoming part of some evil hacker's vast zombie network, and that makes *my* network more secure. It's a very slight gain, which is why I don't put a lot of effort into it, but a successful suggestion to a random user *will* perk up my day for this reason. Kinda like finding a penny on the street.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
For web browsers, I prefer people use browsers with the least idosycrancies and that are complient to standards. Nothing is more aggravating than having to design web sites with a half dozen exeptions to the general code. As a Macintosh user, I have that sites and apps block Mac users - even when we are compatible! Yahoo is a good example of a site designing only for WIN OS. Their multinmedia services just block Macs eventhough technology exists that would allow the site to work. However, see the first paragraph :D
I share with others, because that's what communities do. Open Source is all about community. Users share experiences with each other, and point out useful things to others. Programmers share their programs and their fixes.
Heck, much of the Internet is about community. Looking for a specific program? Search Google -- it does an excellent job of telling you what others think about programs that do what you're looking for. How does Google know what's out there and what's popular? It looks at the links between web sites. Basically an ad hoc community of opinions about everything, with the link being the measure of interest.
Why be a part of a community? Because I get more than I give. I might have a web page talking about 5 programs (or other topics) that are important to me. Those pages become part of the community. But I've gotten info on dozens of programs (and other topics) from that same community. What if I didn't contribute to the community? Then the community would break down if everyone did the same.
There are other reasons I try to "push" my own choices on others. If more people use the software, more people will support it, making it better for all of us in the future. I also get to stroke my ego some when I recommend cool new things to others. I feel like I'm part of the "in crowd" or the "leading edge" or whatever.
That said, I try not to be overzealous. Pushing things on people who won't benefit from the thing being pushed is counter-productive. They'll think that I don't know what's good for them, and won't believe me next time I suggest something. And they'll think that the community is not right for them, when perhaps I just suggested the wrong portion of the community.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
When people call you up asking you to fix what is wrong, after you have just finished a hectic 8-hour shift... You tend to want them to use stuff that'll make both of your lives easier.
Because,
- People who use mainstream MS products have been a danger to the rest of us.
- We're tired of hearing all the complaints about spam and viruses.
Actually, I don't really care what other people use until they start sending me spam, or slowing down the entire goddamned internet because they are owned by the latest bug. Then I care.
That's why I've tried to convert a the few people I have.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
I only really care to convert people to open source products when they're the best choice. Firefox is obvious because IE is terrible. Whenever people come to me with a computer problem, it usually somehow connects to IE. Maybe Microsoft will make a good browser in IE 7, I don't know. I'll try it when it's ready.
As for other programs, it really depends on the person and the needs. If they can't afford Microsoft Office, I recommend OpenOffice, but I warn that there are still a few compatibility problems. I tell people that Gimp is pretty cool, nowhere near Photoshop, but about seven hundred dollars less. I mainly recommend it for people that haven't gotten around to pirating Photoshop yet.
Then, of course, there's Linux. I love Linux and have a pretty awesome setup here at home. When people see it, a lot of them end up wanting to switch. Most of the time, I tell them not to. The thing I love about Linux is how you can get into the guts of the system to configure, troubleshoot, or build on it yourself. That's also why it's not so good for most people. I love being able to dig through text files to tune it just right, or add the right code to make it do something really obscure. It's really awkward when a non-techie ends up having to do the same. For instance, I just set up Debian on my new computer and gdm isn't coming up. I don't care, I just disable gdm anyway. I'll jigger around with XF86Config later on, but X isn't a big priority for me. The normal user, when thrown back to a text console, would have no idea what to do. If they want to learn, I'd be glad to help, but I know a lot of people that don't want to spend hours editing text files and reading through man pages to be able to use their computer.
The main point is, as far as day-to-day usability is concerned, proprietary software is often still way past open source. I'm not bashing it. It's made for different purposes. But the complexity and adaptability I'm so fond of will likely keep it from being embraced by the population at large.
[insert witty quote here]
. . . use crap software
Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from all that is known.
Competition is essential to a thriving capitalist democracy, and therefore beneficial to us all. When one company has a stranglehold on a software product we all lose out.
Promoting open source products creates competition, increases quality, fosters innovation and lowers prices.
Most open source software is free. Not all, but most.
To use a program, like OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office, OpenOffice is sooo much cheaper.
I use open source programs for that purpose alone. If I can afford it, I buy commercial, as it's generally a lot nicer and most widely accepted. At home I have Microsoft Office only because I could afford it, but my family generally uses OpenOffice on the other systems..
For the purpose of this post, lets go with Dr. Leary's 8-circuit consciousness model.
1. The Biosurvival Circuit:
imprinted in infancy. Concerned with sucking, nourishment, cuddling, biosecurity.
2. The Emotional-Territorial Circuit:
imprinted in the toddling stage. Concerned with territorial demands, emotional power tactics, political domination-and-submission strategies.
3. The Semantic Circuit:
imprinted by human artifacts and symbol systems. Concerned with handling the environment, invention, calculation, prediction, building a "map" of the universe.
4. The Sociosexual Circuit:
imprinted by the first orgasm-mating experiences and tribal "morals." Concerned with sexual pleasure, local definitions of "moral" and "immoral", reproduction, nurture of the young.
One may find that the most impassioned of advocates have imprinted heavily during the development of their second circuit.
For apes, the second circuit seems the circuit where they learn to protect their territory. It appears that the 4th circuit is where they get to learn the fine art of slinging poo.
Think of your most obnoxious of Open Source geeks. Then consider the following questions:
Do they consider IT or CS as their "territory"?
Do they further consider Open Source as their "territory"?
Do they defend/promote etc in a way that may be construed as "This IS The Best", "this IS the only real option", "this IS the answer to your problems"?
As much as I respect and actually like RMS, I think that he may have some pretty serious 2nd-circuit territorial issues. (Of course, Mosbunall individuals seem to have some pretty significant issues in one of the 4 circuits.
Or not...
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
what irritates you, pays my mortgage
At one time it both irritated me AND paid my mortgage. When I was paying my mortgage by being a self-employed "professional nerd" my job started out being a consultant/developer implementing projects ranging from web-based apps running on Linux/Apache/mod-perl/etc to MS Access database and VB apps.
Then the dreaded SQL slammer worm hit...then bagle...and blaster...and sasser...etc etc etc. Then there were the clerks who were just clever enough to figure out how to put spyware-infested screensavers and Kazaa and such on their machines. "Real" project work petered out with the summer and I needed to eat and this work paid the bills. Unfortuantely that work never went away and I lost the time and drive to pursue work that I intended to do.
That sort of sh*t might pay the mortgage, but it literally contributed to a bout of depression. After three years with my own company I sought and found permanent employment with someone else doing something more intellectually rewarding. The company I set up when I was set up still exists but it is no longer paying my mortgage. I occasionally do side work under that company, but I have resolved to limit it exclusively to free software projects and services.
Windows does provide work for a lot of people, but I personally would rather put myself out of work than submit myself to that kind of misery every day on the job. Ironically, I work for a heavily Microsoft-based company. I am much happier here, however, because my employer is a big company where dealing with that crap is handled by another department. It's much easier being on the user end of the tech support call, even if it is sometimes frustrating for both parties.
For the same reasons I discuss and advocate Human Rights. Freedom.
Entertainment for Nerds. Stuff that matters,
Social constructivism contends that categories of knowledge and reality are actively created by social relationships and interactions. These interactions also alter the way in which scientific categories are created and scientific objects are perceived. Hence, I believe Open Source offers a form of social constructivism that the people and the software both benefit from in many ways.
most internet explorers think that blue E on their desktop is the 'internet'. they think the words 'internet' and 'web' describe the same thing - hence "i'm playing hl2 over the web" or "the internet is broken". as i said in another post to use techonology without an understanding of it is dangerous.
but more importantly than this, learning to use an alternative piece of software is like learning a second language. it helps you with the first, and it helps you with others. wizards with microsoft word get stumped when faced even with an older version, let alone koffice. if you learn to use openoffice on windows, you'll be able to pick up the next office suite you try quicker.
i never understood english grammar, until i learnt some french grammar - now i can use qui/que corrently in french i can use who/whom in english. now i'm familiar with fc3, i can get by in other linux distros.
I feel for RMS sometimes, he's been trying to get this message out for 25 years. I think it's important to understand, even if you dont agree with him, that the freedom to make a program do what you want is more important than how well it does it. It happens that open source and free software has created quality because of the nature of the process, but I would still rather use open source even if it's more cumbersome to do so precisely because it's there for me to examine, understand, learn, or modify as I see fit. Non programmers too benefit from this freedom, since they can request features. Anyone out there ever successfully got Microsoft to include a feature they needed?
The zeal of the converted comes sometimes from an overwhelming feeling that they have a good thing. These nice and generous people then earnestly want to share that good thing with everyone they know.
Or, it might be a process of rationalizing the decision they have made. If lots of people jump on the bandwagon with them then they must have been right.
Start Running Better Polls
If your job consists of daily calls from people needing help with Windows products and that drives you crazy, one thing you might consider in place of a "I'm so technologically surperior to you" attitude would be to go somewhere else where you weren't regularly frustrated. Linux is not a revolution, neither is Firefox or OSS altogether -- they're just options. Stop kidding yourselves and step down from the soapbox.
It comes down to one simple thing for me. I want other computer users, especially my friends, to enjoy the plethora of features that a linux distro offers-
things like: KDE's awesome desktop configurable beyond anything else, not having to worry about viruses/spyware, tons of free, high quality, software, etc.. BTW I use Suse 9.3 Pro currently.
It's quite simple: to make everything better by inciting competition.
Computers and software more than anything else has a stiff learning curve to the use of applications and operating systems.
Everyone is aware of this and every major software company knows that they can ride on the skirt-tails of this to enjoy fat revenue streams from inferior products.
Compare the level of competition and subsequent innovation in the processor market to the innovation and competition in the software market. There is almost no comparison (admitedly this will change soon). The changes in Windows since W95 and NT are less dramatic and less beneficial than in a minor release of KDE or Gnome, and they are only winodow managers not OSes. Look at os X compared to OS9! This was pushed by the desire of Mac to continue competing with M$.
But Microsoft doesn't feel this pressure yet. How many people do you know that have a mac or linux desktop at home other than choosy professionals? Look at Sun's lack of innovation clearly due to brand loyalty and sedentary system admins who will die before they accept that Linux is an actual competetor.
I use all the OSes every day. On my desk now I have Mac (PowerBook G4), BSD (Dell), Linux (Dell and Penguin Computing), and a SunBlade 2000. The really innovative and compelling things are comming from Linux and Mac right now.
Given the budgets of Microsoft and Sun I expect more, and by pushing their competetors I intend to get more for all of us.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
MSsoftware is widely accepted to be buggy, unstable, and insecure. It's also expensive, and MS as a company is thoroughly untrustworthy. Their user interface design sucks. They don't even follow their own design guidelines. They make complicated that which should be simple. Their system error messages are frequently useless or actively misleading. Their system default settings are often bloody stupid. They deliberately violate established standards. And, and this is what really has me chewing the carpet, their software patronises me! Hiding complex stuff from a clueless end-user is all very well, but when the admins are treated as being equally stupid - particularly taking into account how poor the system itself is - switching to a more professional OS is probably the only way to keep one's blood pressure at safe levels. MS's one-size-fits-all user interface is thoroughly irksome and quite inappropriate for admin-level users, and I want as little to do with it as possible. Being patronised by a bloody computer, espcially one running software as poor as Microsoft's, is not my idea of an enjoyable working environment.
Now, many of these reasons apply to me alone - if other people don't mind being treated like idiots that's not my problem - but as other have stated, MS's contempt for standards affects everyone to some degree. For example, there are websites I would like to use that I cannot access reliably because I am not using MS software myself. So therefore, the less people use MS-software and the more people use non-MS-software, the better support and service I will get, even though I am already at the point where I won't touch MS software unless someone is paying me to.
So my 'evangelism' has two motivations: 1) to screw MS as much as possible, because I believe they deserve it most of any large corporation and 2) because the more non-MS stuff is used the easier it will be for me, a non-MS user, to access the web sites I want, when I want, without unnecessary problems. 1) Ought to be really worrying for Microsoft. They are widely viewed to be just about the most evil corporation in existence. That's bad, isn't it? I mean, oil companies, chemical companies, scientific research companies are widely perceieved to be guilty of 'despoiling the environment' and 'torturing cute ickle fluffy animals' - if MS has managed to outmatch them for perceived evil, they have to have really exerted themselves.
Why tell people that they can use for free better software?
One thing that I can think of is that hardware and software vendors will take Linux into consideration if Linux marketshare would be higher.
Also, there a fundamental moral issue here: if you can do good to somebody should you or should you not act? (of course without forcing it on anyone)
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
I try to convince people to switch because sometimes it's better software, or because it's more secure. This usually applies to Firefox and Thunderbird. It has to be something I use on a daily basis and it has to be at least as good as or better than the commercial alternatives in almost every way before I go trying to sell it to someone else. There have to be good, practical reasons to switch.
I certainly don't try to convince them on the basis of social policy or politics, because those are comparable to religion in argument-starting ability. I also have my own views which do not always coincide with the various OS/FS groups and so I do not attempt to take on their rationales for using various things.
All of which explains why I haven't even tried to get my mom to switch over to Linux. It's not worth the fight. On the other hand, she is willing to switch to OS X, which has it's problems, but fewer issues than Windows.
In the end, it's all about practicality.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
You obviously have no core priciples. Either that, or you are a coward. Intellectual property is a detriment to our society, and it is complacence from cowards like you that allows this evil to continue. It's people like you that looked the other way when the trains took the Jews away. You make me sick.
That's nuts. For the average person that only wants to browse, read email and type out papers, free software is far better. Something like Mepis, which installs in minutes, is a much easier way to fix a broken Winblows box than a reinstall. Once fixed this way, it won't break. Only a tiny percentage of users NEED M$ junk. They have it by default, due to anti-competitive practices, and we all pay the price of their stuff not working, botnets and spam.
Why do I care? Because I care about me and you. Watching people fumble around jopups and BSoD on M$'s single screen desktop, no tab browser and rape me mail client without a spell checker is like watching someone eat over priced, radioactive Uncle Ben's rice with chopsticks. It's not only the wrong tool for the job, any job, it shits on everyone else.
What exactly can you do better with non free software than you can do with free? In those very few situations, you might recommend a dual boot, win4lin, crossover office or a distro like Xandros that has most of it built in.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Personally I try to get people to use Firefox/ Thunderbird because I am constantly asked to fix people's computer who've got so much spyware/ adware that their 2Ghz+ Computer can't keep up with my 700Mhz Celeron. I am always asked "How do I stop the pop-ups?" So yes I tell them to use firefox. I also recomend several Linux distributions for some people who have slower computers, but want XP. When I ask why they want XP, their common response is, "it's newer". The reasoning for this... Most of the people I talk to only want to web surf, IM, email, and write papers. (sorry, but I usually suggest Redhat/ Fedora, because of it's simplicity). I'd rather spend the time teaching someone the basics of a Linux system than to constantly remove spyware from their system.
I don't, didn't, won't convert people in the sense the "article" writer means. But I tell my opinion, always accompanied with facts and proofs about the differences among different MS products and the many available free software, about MS's policies and market behaviour, PR techniques, marketing trash, etc.
I don't really and specifically care what sw other people use. What I care about it that they should have a clear and open mind, take a step back and don't believe every hype that some - one or the other - big buck company shoves in your face. The reason why I sometimes suggest free alternatives is simply to show them that "choice", in its best meaning, is not a myth, it is and it can be truth. I'd like to make them understand, that they should not follow the lead of a huge corporation just because it has lots of money, great PR, big hype campaigns, huge ad sprees, etc., but take a small moment and think what they need, why they need it, what would be their best solution and pick the best one - not just take a company's promise or PR as granted.
Also, why would any caring person, who has any small amount of computer knowledge let willingly stay people in the dark and let them further think IE is the internet and Word is the editor and Windows is the OS. Not because you want them do drop their MS love, just simply because you want them to know.
And no, the "use this 'cause it's better" argument is mostly not working. Even showing and presentig in detail doesn't work usually. Switching is hard for most ordinary clickety people. But, and I think this is most important, no matter if they don't switch, what matters is that they gained some knowledge that hopefully will benefit them in the long term. Maybe at their next computer purchase, maybe at their next system wide data loss, whatever. If the seed is planted, it will eventually grow.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Another reason why I personally recommend it is because a lot of open projects are just that: more open, better documented, etc. Because of this, a lot of the time, more of the users understand how it works and can help to support other users. Many open software projects have forums and/or chat rooms where users can go and ask questions directly from software developers and designers who helped develop the software. This is not very often the case with commercial software from what I've seen. On top of this, I personally try to use only open software whenever possible. Therefore I don't even know how to help anyone out with most closed solutions I might have heard of and suggested. However in many cases I have had experience with an open solution for the same thing, and can be of help with it, so I recommend it rather than the closed solution because I know they will probably come to me for help with whatever I recommend them, heh.
Throughout the question, we can see that letting people do things which can be shown to be unethical, costly, and dismissive of freedoms we ought to cherish (such as freedom of speech) are considered "harangu[ing]" or "obnoxious", and yet nothing proprietors do is framed in that way.
I hope this doesn't mean that it's okay for them to deny me the freedom to share and modify. I hope this isn't yet another attempt to frame the debate so that the onus of responsibility is on me to justify myself without requiring business to justify treating me this way. Sharing and modifying is how computing worked since long before the free software community began, proprietary software is actually rather new, but that zeitgeist has been lost in large part. If it weren't for the free software community, we wouldn't have wonderful things like GNU/Linux systems.
I don't teach people about open source because that movement was built to cater primarily to business, and I'm interested in speaking to all computer users, not just businesses. I teach people about software freedom and related matters on my radio talk show (Digital Citizen, every other Wednesday on WEFT 90.1 FM from 8-10p) and I take calls. If you're in the Champaign, IL area then, I invite you to tune in and join the discussion. I don't think of open source as an enemy, I think of open source as a newer spin-off that loses a great deal of power in its argument by dropping any talk about freedom. One practical freedom that movement doesn't push for is private derivatives (making a copy of a program's source code, changing it to meet one's needs, and using it privately without telling anyone else it exists), something I've used a lot to solve my own computing problems.
I do this work for my radio show because I take threats including DRM, software patents, and so-called "trusted computing" (which the FSF refers to as "treacherous computing") seriously. The mainstream media never discusses these issues from the user's point of view, if they discuss them at all. Their focus invariably encourages the user to take the business perspective and ignore what these ideas mean for them. I think these topics deserve serious inquiry and challenge. Software freedom addresses these issues head-on and provides a viable path for us to be able to compete on the quality of the good or service provided, respecting the idea that what separates us from a dog-eat-dog jungle is working together and helping each other when we need help.
Digital Citizen
Can you say "designed-in-obsolescence?"
Some of us want to maintain our freedom, now and in the future. In order to do that, we must have hardware appliance platforms on which open source can be run. Today, you buy a PC and it will run Window or Linux or a dozen other things. In the future, that might not be the case. Today, you can buy a digital music player that isn't open, or you can buy something like an Archos that has open source software available for it (Rockbox for example). I've heard that even the iPod has had a mini-Linux ported to it, though no doubt not through any intention on Apple's part, and in fact, that "feature" is likely to go away (I think it may have already in some versions).
If consumers don't demand hardware that gives us the freedom to enhance or repurpose the hardware, that freedom will be lost, and that particular freedom is pretty tentative right now as it is. Microsoft is currently working on a scheme whereby new PCs will be useless to run anything but Longhorn. Want to run Linux? Throw away your hardware and buy something else. Some modem boards are already like that. Ignorant consumers may grab such new devices up when they're cheap, then find out that they're locked in and replacement becomes hugely expensive-- if the manufacturer goes belly up or decides not to support it anymore, time to cough up the cash for a new one. If they decide to implement "subscription" based payment to keep it working, or have other time-out features, cough up the cash, buddy. Control is lost over your computational tools, even if you don't want to hack them yourself.
The ignorance of the consumer is what allows these limits to be placed on what they can buy. Computerized tools are too important to leave their design up to market protecting tyrants like Bill Gates. Do we have to wait until it happens before the ignorant consumer learns about his mistake? Or do we try the best we can to educate them in advance in order to stem the tide if we can?
New hardware will support all kinds of draconian limits on their use, through DRM or other "features," if users don't demand better compatibility now. You can see it all over-- Nikon using an encrypted image format making them incompatible with Photoshop. Nikon couldn't have done that if customers had demanded the Nikon cameras came with user-loadable firmware. But customers were too ignorant for that. And unless at least one camera manufacturer does that sort of thing and it becomes reasonably popular, we've already lost control over what you can do with a digital camera in the future. Got an idea how to adapt it to do something new? Save images in a new compression algorithm or add in-camera image processing? You'll have to throw your old camera away and buy a new one to do that-- nice designed in obsolescence, eh?
I work as a webmaster (among other things). And Internet Explorer is a very bogus piece of software.
:hover except for links, no :before/:after, no position:fixed, etc. Other browser implement this for age.
Everything I design a web page, I do it under Firefox because the DOM inspector and the developer toolbar are very useful for developpers. Under Opera, Konqueror and Safari, the page always looks as expected. But with Internet Explorer, there are *always* unexpected behaviors. Half of my time is spent in adding IE-specific workarounds because of its bugs.
IE has also severe limitations: no alpha PNG support, no
This is why I'm dreaming of a world without such a product as a market leader. And this is why I encourage people to use Firefox.
{{.sig}}
For work.
1 FireFox and Thunderbird. Get IE and Outlook off the network. So I do not have to deal with virus and malware issues.
2. Linux server. Do not have to deal with windows as a server plus more freedom when developing Server side apps.
3. Perl, PHP, GCC, NetBeans, Postgres, MySQL... Freedom and it makes my life simpler. Since all of those are free as in beer I do not have to fight to get them funded. I can choose my own tools and not worry about if I can take a copy home. Some are just the best answer free or not. Perl and PHP are just great tools. I like NetBeans as well. I put together a remote phone que for our support staff to use during the second Hurricane that hit our office. We sent a few support people to a hotel about 200 miles away. Customers could go to the website and request a call from a support tech. I put it together in less than a day using PHP and MySQL.
Personal reasons.
I get asked by people to fix their computers all the time. They are loaded with spyware and viruses. Firefox and Thunderbird tend to cut that down. Now I tend to put people on gmail since I have a ton of invites.
Why do I use Firefox and Thunderbird? Because I LIKE IT. I think they are better than Outlook and IE. Plus I can use them on Windows and Linux.
I put people on OpenOffice because most of them do not have a ton of money and OpenOffice works well and is free so why not?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use?
I don't. My wife uses AOL. I told her why I don't use it. And every time it screws up, loses something, hangs, breaks, won't display some media, prevents her from doing something that the web site writer expected a visiting browser to be capable of, I just say, "That's why I don't use AOL." When someone tells me their machine was broken by an email virus, I tell them, "That's why I don't use Outlook." When someone tells me a web site won't display or a hacked site hijacked their computer, I tell them, "That's why I don't use Internet Explorer."
I don't push my views. I let them speak for themselves. That's not arrogance, it's experience.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
My reason: Microsoft is evil --- taking for
granted that Microsoft's business and software
!= OSS regarding its'openness to software code
and its' philosophy about how to deal with a
community.
One example as to why Microsoft's business
practices are reprehensible.
Anyone ever use real-time stock based applications
i.e. real-time quotes, charts?
Before Microsoft was banned, by court of law, from
distributing JAVA, all online stock brokers
used the Microsoft version of JAVA. Well
apparently this version broke SUN's JAVA and
therefore you had to use Microsoft's OS if you
wanted to use these real-time applications.
Forget Linux, Unix, Mac etc...
Correct me if I am wrong, but one of the benefits
of JAVA was its platform independent
properties. Now Microsoft found a way to make
JAVA platform DEPENDENT and therefore
destroying its main feature. In my humble
opinion, this is truly arrogant and completely
uncalled for even in a competitive business
environment.
So whatever I can do that has a detrimental effect
on Microsoft's monopoly, I will. I would not,
however, encourage someone to use software
that is broken as a replacement to
applications they already use.
rcr
There are 274 spams in my spam folder, I was too busy to clean it out yesterday.
I don't care so much about getting people on to Open Source as I care about getting the people the fuck off Microsoft Windows and onto applications software that's interoperable with the Linux apps I'm using.
I get tired of doing informal tech support for friends because Microsoft thinks it can substitute spin control for competent security practices and hype for good coding.
It's a hassle to have problems with perfectly workable office productivity software that has compatibility problems with MS Office because Microsoft refuses to provide full document format specifications to anybody else to force vendor lockin on users.
I want to see people and businesses using any solution that works for them, Linux, Apple, BSD, Solaris... as long as it is not one of those spambot and malware magnet hunks of shit we call the Windows operating system.
Hmmm... guess I've got more than 274 reasons to care whether people use Windows or not.
Or perhaps only one... Microsoft is the source of most of what's wrong with using a personal computer today.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I usually am more diplomatic than the OP here.
I usually charge them by the hour and when they ask what can be done, talk to them about alternatives. More to the point, I explain *why* Windows is so vulnerable. Then I let them make up their mind. Remember, they are paying me by the hour.
There are a few times I will go out of my way to switch people to Firefox, OpenOffice, or Linux. These usually exist when it is the cheapest way to solve their immediate problem. Usually with Firefox, it is because IE is broken due to some spyware and I can't find another way to fix it. Usually with the other two, it is when the alternative is buying a new copy of Office and/or Windows.
My customers who run Linux are almost entirely of the non-tech-savvy types anyway, and generally they are happy with their software. This is because say what you will about intuitive interfaces (meaning interfaces one is used to), but Linux is a whole lot more *predictable* than Windows. Explaining this whole "root" thing is not hard. "This is a multi-user system, designed so that several people can use it at once without accessing eachother's data. Root is the account for the administrator who can override system settings." Yes, most people can understand this.
"Why won't Microsoft Office install?" Because if you read the box, it requires Windows. If you really need Microsoft Office, it is still less expensive to buy crossover office or Win4Lin than a copy of Windows. And one can even try with WINE.
Now, there are a few things that Linux currently cannot do that Windows can. These include installing things like Bonzi Buddy, Gator, and other cool freeware tools which come bundled with spyware, as well as some online gaming programs, etc. However, for people who want to use their computers to actually be productive, it is far better than Windows.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I love that analogy between Microsoft products and 3rd world pestholes. I'm going to use it myself if you don't mind.
There is only one god, which is GNUsius, and RMS is his messanger!!!
I get people to use Firefox. It is usually faster and always more secure than what they use by default.
I encourage people to use something other than Outlook for the same reason.
For the rest, its less consistent. I got my cubicle neighbor doing documents in laTeX when Word kept choking over and over and over. Curiously, that's when I started using TeX as well.
For the OS kernel, I don't encourage people to change. However, I think it is self-evident that a much better kernel comes from open source development. I enter in as evidence Windows, linux kernel, and Mac's Darwin kernel. The open source kernels just catch more bugs and are easier to develop over. Here's an example.
I was developing a text editor (customizing, really) on linux. I also used DEC workstations, so I ported it to work there too. There was a problem with the POSIX function glob. It worked fine under linux. I downloaded the glibc code to look at it. Very straightforward. Then on Digital Unix it failed. I asked Dec for help. I sent them the code, explained it failed. No feedback. They coulda cared less if glob worked or not.
It was actually trickier. I later discovered glob calls ksh to execute under Digital Unix. It actually forks a process to do a glob. Ksh would either work on not depending on whether it thought it was calling glob from an interactive process.
So I talked to Dec again. Again, they coulda cared less. And, without having the underlying source code, I couldn't send them a patch - stuck with a broken system. So, I re-wrote the function glob so it would work under Digital Unix instead of using the POSIX library call.
You know, this happens all the time programming to closed systems. Little intricacies about what makes the system functions work or not are locked up, and the company could care less about your needs as a programmer. You learn to simply program around those OS and library bugs.
In an open source system, you learn to report them to the code owner and/or fix them.
I prefer the latter enormously, and it is my main reason for preferring open source systems for programming.
Just my two cents.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
i may be an isolated example, but usually in the first couple weeks of dating a young lady i fix their computer, which of course means removing all the spyware and installing as many f/oss apps as possible. and while not every relationship that includes that has been that great, my current one has been going pretty well for months. also, consider a number of comments in the recent dan savage column at hxxp://www.theonionavclub.com/savagelove/index.php ?issue=4117
Most of the open source alternatives are more secure.
The more secure people's systems are, the less zombies there are out there attacking my networks and cluttering my inbox.
What good is technology if it's locked up between a few corporations? How will that help anyone?
I know I ask more questions than I answer, but that's just me.
If I didn't support OSS, I wouldn't be true to myself and I wouldn't be true to my kids - for better or worse.
After all, how can my kids learn how something works and develop it further if the guts of that thing are locked away in a capitalist vault serving only that tiny minority who supposedly 'owns' it? A tiny minority, I hasten to add, which seeks only to improve the lot of itself at others' expense.
Ownership is a fad; knowledge, or lack, is perpetual.
That's pretty much why I subtly push my shit down other people's throats.
it's like smoking tobacco - on the face of it, your right to fuck your lungs is entirely your business. your right to fuck your internet experience by using crap like IE and Outlook is also entirely your business.
however, when i have to pick up the bill (increased taxes (in countries with universal healthcare) and/or increased insurance premiums (in the US and other third world countries)); when i have to come home from a bar reeking of smoke; or when my aunt dies of lung cancer after a lifetime not smoking but working in the casino industry, i start to see your 'private behavior' as impinging on me, and take an interest in limiting where and how you smoke, as well as how much of the resulting mess you pay for.
likewise, when my network access goes to shit because the latest melissa virus is chewing half the worl's bandwidth; whe i keep having to fend off relatives begging me to come and de-infest their windows boxes; when the 'network and IT support' indirect charge on the grants my (all linux/mac) department receives in effect subsidizes the high-support requirements of the other, windows-running departments at my research institute, i start to give a shit what other people have running on their boxes, and take an interest in sandboxing your shitboxes off frm my network, and in making sure you bear the full financial costs of your stupid IT decisions.
Why, Mr. Anderson!?
Why!?
Esoteric reference.
all must be converted to the one true open source thing
If you want to understand why users would object to switching from MS Office to OpenOffice, just imagine how you would react if someone forced you to move from VI to EMACS or from BASH to CSH. When being asked to switch products, people make the same arguments that you would and for the same reasons.
I convert people to Firefox because I think that it's a more secure browser, and I don't want people's CC numbers floating around the internet. However, I will not shove it down their throats, since it's their privacy.
Working file transfer or direct connect would be nice. Before you start flaming me, I have four seperate machines that run GAIM at home all on different operating systems. None of them can transfer files or establish a direct connect connection. Now, if I start forwarding ports, then it'll work but my friends will get bored within a few minutes and say its easier to use AOL's AIM client. In the long run its easier on me too since I don't have to act as support for them "why won't my buddy expressions show up?" "how do i do xxxx".
I do not push Open Source onto people, I push (usually free) productive software onto people. If it happens to be open source, so be it. For instance, I will tell my parents to use Microsoft Office, but would recommend Open Office to my sisters. My dad can't go to a presentation with the VP of his company with a staroffice (or staroffice-converted-to-powerpoint) presentation, but my sister can easily convert her thesis to a word format that would print at a local kinkos. So it all depends on the person.
-dk
For the most part, it's because the more computers become necessary, the more i know people are stealing software (or wanting to "borrow" others') in order so that the computer does what they want.
:)
With open source stealing isn't necessary. Want to burn a CD? You don't have to spend $30 on Nero or Roxio in order to do so. Want to superimpose your Dad's face into a scene from the Godfather? You're not going to have to go to P2P networks to get copies of Photoshop (possibly infected) to do it on.
I was tired of being so limited in what I was able to do with my computer without spending ungodly amounts of money on some software that I would only use once in a blue moon.
In comes free beer, and the party is on. So now i can point friends and relatives to The Gimp or whatever else may fit their needs, and I know I'm ultimately doing them a favor.
At least, until they fire up whatever bittorrent client to download a movie they don't feel like paying for.
I don't push Firefox because i give a damn about peoples browsing pleasure, i push Firefox because coding webpages in IE can be excruciating. security, tabs, RSS and all the cool features of Firefox put together don't give me as much satisfaction as seeing my CSS displayed properly. To be Honest, Firefox is getting on my nerves as of late: extensions that corrupt profiles, themes that break half of the browsers functionality, longer and longer start ups. the formula i use is simple: if the quality of the product is superior to the competition and i find the price reasonable and worthwhile, I buy.
Same reason... i just hope I don't get killed in the process
The less power Micro$oft has,
the freer our world will be.
Getting people to switch to FireFox is a Holy War, of course!
--LWM
Once, Nasrudin was presiding over a court case. "First," he said, "I will hear the plaintiff."
The open-source plaintiff stepped forward and said, "You cannot trust a heartless and soulless corporation to care about your needs!"
"I believe you are right!" cried Nasrudin.
The closed source defendant objected, "You haven't heard our side of the story yet!"
Nasrudin nodded. "Then let us now hear the defendant."
The defendant stepped forward and said, "You cannot trust strangers to help and support you out of the goodness of their hearts!"
"I believe you are right!" cried Nasrudin.
The bailiff coughed, and said "Your honor... we can't decide the case if they are BOTH right."
"I believe you are right!" cried Nasrudin.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
such as browsers and e-mail agents, my main concern is a "networking" one.
If I think one commercial, largely used product (such as IE) actually promotes bad behaviors, I'll try to convince people not to use it - and use better alternatives instead. IE clearly *has been* promoting some very bad behaviors, for instance by being too permissive and unsufficiently supportive of standards. It has somehow pushed a big chunk of the web-related professions to do some really nasty stuff: non-standard web sites, installing third-party ActiveX stuff that one could not get rid of, and so on.
So basically, to me, it's not a question of which is free and which is commercial - I am not religious about this stuff in the least. It's a question of which is inherently more "ethical" than the other. But I've noticed that trying to convince some people to be more ethical is often a lost cause - so I don't think I'm at all obnoxious at promoting OSS.
I run my own computer repair business and I often push open source software. Most people I talk to who want an image editing program dont need anything more then what GIMP has. Even my mother(a longtime photoshop user), who does image editing, says GIMP is fine for most people. I have yet to run into anyone who has run into any limits of OpenOffice. The biggest problem with OpenOffice is reading some Office 2003 documents, which should be fixed in the next version. I have yet to run into a site Firefox could not goto and its more secure. Thunderbird has great security and I have no problems using it as a mail client. My job is to help people solve problems in the most inexspensive way that works, open source is the only option.
... and although Microsoft says that about
Windows these days as well, they'll never be
able to back that up with statistics (unless
they pay the Yankee Group to do the study).
On the other hand, give a nicely configured
Linux workstation to an average user and as
long as their hardware stays healthy they
will never have any major problems.
Give a Linux server to a knowlegable sysadmin
and he'll be able to run a seemingly endless
number of concurrent processes on a single
system without any problems... and they'll
all be able to interoperate... and he won't
have to beg for more money every time a
problem appears (no matter how small) and a
new solution is required... and he'll be
able to sleep at night.
These things I know from years of first-hand
experience. If Open Source were considered
mainstream, we'd all be able to do a lot more
with a lot less.
As an individual user, using Linux can solve
many problems for me, but it's an uphill battle
when market forces conspire to make certain
information and services only available for
Windows users. In many cases this is
completely unnecessary.
Therefore, if Open Source were considered
mainstream, it's much more likely that I'd
be able to have my cake and eat it. And so
would Joe Average, even though right now
he wouldn't know what I'm talking about.
Which is why I see his ignorance as part of
the problem.
I personally am an open-source punk, but the only thing I push upon people is Firefox. Why? Because IE is starting to severely hold back the web. Technologies aren't on the uptake because IE doesn't support them. And if the technology isn't used because the software doesn't support it, then it won't get implemented, because it's not in widespread use! (If you get me.)
I'm so glad SVG was shipped with Opera, and that FF 1.1 will have it in. IE won't. It's a big restriction. W3C don't Recommend standards until they're widely supported by browsers. FFS, CSS2.1 is still not a Recommendation!
With Firefox, the web can advance almost as quickly as it's developed. With IE, the web stays at least 5 years behind.
Sig Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I'd be perfectly happy in a world where everyone could use whatever they prefer and all interoperate well. If that means Microsoft gets 90% of the market, Apple gets 6% and the unixes divy up the other 4%, fine - I don't care. I'd have no problem being part of that 4%. The problem is that *Microsoft* is not happy with such a world and seeks to prevent it. They want to use their position to ensure that there are only two options: 1 - run Microsft, or 2 - not communicate with others. That is their ideal and they are very good at working toward it. And in that ideal, I would not have the freedom to be in that other 4% if I choose.
So I promote open source because the more other people there are that use Microsoft instead, the less I can use open source myself.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Anyone that I speak with about "alternative" products are either
A) Friends who ask my opinion
B) Family who ask my opinion
C) Customers who are on my network
Therefor we "recommend" that certain products be used. Because we have been around since 1991 and have proven ourselves to be HONEST above all else we don't have to do too much other than recommend a product and people will atleast try it.
We will flat out tell them things like "why don't you try OpenOffice instead of Office. It's free so if you don't like it or it doesn't fit your needs you can go buy Office. If it does, that just saved you $300."
Or even things like "You may have noticed your computer slowing down lately. That's probably from spyware which several flaws in Internet Explorer allow it to be installed many times without your consent or knowledge. If you use Firefox which is just as good as IE if not better and doesn't have the flaws the IE has you won't have this kind of problem.
Of course, we don't recommend products we don't stand behind and we will also tell a customer. "I've never heard of it or used it so I can't tell you how good or bad it is". It all boils down to people trust us. As their ISP we send out announcements periodically to let people know about issues that might affect them and how to take care of themselves. We do this because we CARE about our customers.
I switched to open source software in my mid-college days for two reasons: morality and economy. In other words, I was poor and really tired of trying sleep at night knowing that I got the latest version of windows or office from a friend with a CD labelled with a magic marker.
I caught a good deal of flak from my best friend when I switched over to linux. He jokingly complained about the ugly windowing system (fvwm at the time), and how I lost sleep at night from trying learn how to install and use linux (took me a month to figure out how to get dial-up to work). I took it in stride though. At least I wasn't loosing sleep out of guilt.
Funny thing is that I would never have gotten my current job if I did not play around with linux and open source programs like samba, and rsync for 3 years. Go figure. My best friend got out of school and loafed around for 2 years before joining the navy. (Haha! He'd laugh with me about this too, so it's all good)
Anyways, I'm not saying that switching to open source is the final and only moral answer for everyone. It all depends on you. But really, look at the signs of the time and act accordingly. I suggest open source solutions to everyone who ask me to "hook" them up with a sweet rig for cheap. I tell them, "I can help you, but it's not gonna be like the windows you know and you aren't going to be able to play games you installed from a CD labelled with a magic marker, but it'll be cheap like you want." They usually say, "no thanks." Some folks do want to work with me, so I make a compromise and install windows oem, but openoffice instead of ms office, and gimp instead of photoshop for them. These folks are usually truly strapped for cash and need to be "compliant." Like I said earlier. It all depends on you and what you want to give up to get what you need.
To summarise his post, i'd advise you to see 'Revolutionary OS'. Almost all the above post is explained, and more.
If there are 15-30% marketshare of alternatives, then organizations can't assume and reinforce a monoculture. E.g. when Netscape's numbers went through the tipping point, more sites started being IE only and thus more people used IE and thus more sites ...
Alternatives mean choices and competition both of which are better for the user. And, most importantly, me.
I can't help but think that some of these people complaining that they have to deal with Microsoft problems all day long fail to see that there is the possibility that if it weren't for Microsoft causing all these problems, no one would need them around to fix them. Just a thought.
I wouldn't ever be accused of being rabid in my espousal of open- source, but I am consistent. As Sys Admin of a small company I have been able to steer the company to adopt Mozilla early on (After Netscape 4.7), and to look at, though not always adopt OSS for all our needs. We use Adobe extensively, and Windows and Mac OS X (which is only partly OSS and increasingly badly behaved), but we also run Sendmail, and open source pop and imap servers, openLDAP, etc for core network services. Everyone here knows what GIMP is - though no one uses it - yet. So. Why?
Because every time you choose one software package over another you are voting on the future of computing. Because OSS is the best future. It probably doesn't seem as important to all of the casual users ( though it does to some), people who do the Home/office, or work on spread sheets and office apps for a living, because they work in an area of relatively inexpensive applications in relatively well explored areas of software. I"ve seen the dark side. We've had a $ 350,000 equipment purchase made mind-bogglingly inefficient and painful when the software to drive it (propietary, of course) was only supported under Windows 3.11 - through 2004, when they finally stopped support for it altogether. We've just retired MS DOS for the same reason - and tossed close to $ 750,000 dollars worth of equipment ( that $350,00 machine was part of this) not because the equipment didn't work, it worked beautifully - in fact it worked even better than what replaced it - but because the software that drove all of it was languishing in the past, on old computers, old operating systems and old file formats. They became too much effort ( and hence too costly ) to keep running. OSS Solves some of these problems. Possibly all of these problems.
Software and Hardware companies want to sell you something. They use support termination and file format incompatibilities to force migration, and extra expense. It isn't evil, it's just bad business sense. It is bad business sense because it breeds user resentment. OSS allows me to keep what I want. If the software drivers were open and the file formats were open I could hire a couple of people to write new code, or recompile for a new OS, whatever. It wouldn't be free, but it would be a couple of jobs for a month. And I would have the printers. If Photoshop. or some of the closed source CAD systems we run were OSS then there would be a way ( eventually everyone would demand it, or some bright spark would add it) to load new format translators in to the app - no more lock-in, no more forced upgrades. The sheer volume of money that is WASTED on useless upgrades is phenomenal. And I don't even have it bad. Think of all the companies that each spent HUGE amounts of money on SOX compliance, and how much is locked away in proprietary solutions. Computer Science is a science. Science is open, it has to be. Eventually Open Source software will arrive at the most robust, secure and effiecient way of solving problems. Proprietary software never will. It isn't the GOAL of proprietary software.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
The fact of the matter is that I use IE. I know how badly it sucks, but I'm comfortable with the interface. So now that the full disclosure is out of the way...
I believe that people are fanatical about their technology because bad technology hurts us all. When MS allows the latest script kiddie to crash their servers at a whim the whole software community feels the pain. How much of the network is wasted with Viruses and Phising email?
Further closed systems stifle innovation. Although are government is being paid to disagree, we all know that innovation only comes when others can build on the wreckage, or shoulders of, what came before. If user x is using proprietary software y then user me can not benefit from x's input about software q. The more people we have lookin' at these things the faster they improve.
Which leaves most Open Source geeks out. :-)
I do a lot of computer support. People ask me for help. I give them advice. They ignore it. They have big problems. Then they ask me for help again.
After you repeat that scenario umpteen million times, it gets old. I spend oodles of time using computers. All flavors. I know what works for me. After a time, I no longer have the patience to explain, over and over and over and over and over why they should do this or that. When it comes right down to it, they don't understand what I'm talking about anyway.
So getting people to come around to a more sensible position is not always a rational process. How do you reason with people who don't know and frankly don't really care about computer techno-gibberish?
I've actually even stopped helping my Mom. She's got some old Windows box that's always messed up. It got to the point where she couldn't call me to talk without regaling me with some tale of computer woe. I gently tried to steer her to better applications, better ways of doing things, but she kept insisting on doing things her way. So I finally said "enough" and told her I didn't want to hear about it anymore. It's insulting to expect someone will help you when you ignore everything they are saying.
I think the bad attitude you allude to is born of this kind of frustration.
While I agree with the author that harrassing or forcing others to use OpenSource Software is a bad thing, I do feel strongly about convincing others to switch to OSS.
To summarize how I feel about things, let me draw attention to an analogy: one of the biggest problems of a nation is apathy in its citizenry to problems it faces. Whether it's out of hopelessness or the public has been brainwashed into thinking things are alright or because the nation itself has been effectively immobilized due to divisiveness (divide & conquer strategy).
I firmly believe that using Microsoft products is a problem. As any tool, their software isn't inherently "evil", but the corporation behind it certainly is.
If a nation's citizenry can't see past the mist that other more wiley and more powerful people paint in front of their eyes, then they deserve to lose whatever rights and freedoms they possess.
My theory is that communities like this started with groups of people who had written these programs, and of course, they have good reason to promote their own program. Over time, other people in these early communoties who wrote other software began to promore each other's work in a possibly informal way
As the community grew from just coders into Coders, Artists, Enthusiasts, and Wannabees, they all tried to fit into the group and began to promore each other's work.
That is problably how it started; and overtime it grew into community members avidly promoting eachother's work and the work of the community as a whole.
1. I don't really care if Joe Sixpack uses Windows or Linux.
:-)
I DO care however if he uses his Windows to send (unknowingly) massive amounts of Spam and malicious packets to my server.
2. I don't really care if Joe Sixpack uses Internet Explorer or Firefox.
I DO care however if websites must resort to 5 year old techniques to display properly in IE. This slows the development of the web itself. Things like Google-Maps or Gmail could have been possible years ago! Imagine where we would be now!
3. I don't really care if Joe Sixpack uses Office or OpenOffice.
I DO care however if I can't read documents sent to me, or if I have to clean the latest Macrovirus from my parents computer. And don't tell me to buy a virusscanner. This is only control of symptoms! I prefer prophylaxis.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
Install firefox and get less malware on your system. Less calls for me to de-spyware their slow and crashy machine.
Use linux and don't become a botnet zombie sending spam and UDP floods to hapless victims across the net.
things like that...
Firefox: Because it is the _only_ cross platform browser and one of the most standards compliant browsers. If 99% of people used IE I would be happy but since people are intent on using exotic browsers such as Safari and Mac IE web developing (in a realistic commercial context) is a nightmare. I don't have a problem with text-based browsers because they render fine if your styling with css, its just stupid bugs and differences between browsers that can make positioning a div like trying to push a drunk man onto the carefully chalk-marked spot you set under a 3 ton stack of building supplies.
OpenOffice: Because your school/uni etc shouldn't waste all that money (money which affects you) on Microsoft Office.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
See the subject line.
It's surprising how well you type with that severe level of retardation.
I bet you don't understand why the world hates Bush, either.
Look at the shiny toy. Do you want the shiny toy?
I'm honestly worried by Microsoft's grip on the world. I think they are a truly evil company, who are solely interested in money with absolutely no exception.
Generally, Microsoft's practices encourage:
Generally, their software causes:
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the use of their software has a detrimental effect on society. This is a serious problem because Microsoft have such a large influence on the world.
Microsoft's crippling of mark-up languages used on the World Wide Web is evidence of their lack of respect for even the most important accomplishments of humankind.
Fear of what the world might evolve into while soaked in Microsoft's poison is why myself and others suggest alternatives to their software.
I try to convert user to open source. NOT cause i want Microsoft to suffer NOT cause I want to help out the minority NOT because i want software to survive I don't do it because of them, i do it because I want to help the person I'm converting, I've experience Windows and the drudgery it puts some people through. but what can i say, i'm a man of the people..
About three days ago, someone in a self-publishing forum asked what programs people were using to publish their books and why they chose a particular program. I answered that I use TeX, which is free, open-source, and will produce .pdf files, and immediately was attacked for *not* choosing to use MS Word, or InDesign, which lists for around $700. I thought this was impolite, being that I did not start the discussion, but was only answering a question.
I'm sure these have already been posted but: 1. It will promote web standards which Microsoft seems to ignore. 2. It will encourage Microsoft to support webstandards, and add features and security into Internet Explorer. Hell, already it's got them to start working on IE7. 3. Closed formats aren't really good for anyone but Microsoft. I use MS Office but I rarely ever need to open it except for essays once every month or 2.
OK, just since I see so many posts about how people only like OSS because they hate miscrosoft, I felt like posting.
People who back and write open source software dont neccessarily do it because they hate microsoft, in fact a good deal of people who write OSS don't really care either way for microsoft. People who write open sourced software do it because they like to see what could be. They don't care to make a million dollars for writing some application (though it would be nice), they really jsut want to write an application (I'll use a small text editor for example), then with the ideas and help from other developers, have that turn into a new and inovative application (something revolutionizing Word for example). The problem with limiting the people who have access to the code is that you limit the chances of including any revolutionary ideas into your program.
There's also another issue which is you really do a disservice to mankind. Lets put the licensing scheme in another field, we'll use the medical field. Let's say company XYZ (equivilant to microsoft) patented the idea of heart pumps, although they never made a heart pump that was actually used. Now company ABC comes along and invents artificial hearts, but in order to artificial hearts to work, they needed to use a heart pump which they invented on their own since company XYZ wouldn't release the specs on how to create one but, now that they've created it on their own, it was still patented by company XYZ. Now company ABC goes to XYZ and asks for use of their heart pumps, but company XYZ denies the use of them, but offers to buy company ABC at some rediculously low price compared to what it could make if it happened to have the rights to use said patent.
This is more or less the forsight most open source programmers have and why they frown upon closed source business practices.
... though I (obviously) have MS Office on my (company) computer, and for a good reason: it is cross-platform!
When the bulk of your "data" gets generated while running EDA software on remote Solaris cluster it is convenient to have an office tool to put together an IOC/presentation/whatener right there and then. After this I can continue to edit it on the Windows side, maybe off-line, WITH THE SAME PROGRAM!
YMMV
Paul B.
three reasons. 1) I believe that monopolies are unhealthy for both the consumer and the monopoly. The old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely seems appropriate when considering some of the business practices of MS. Because of their power in the marketplace they are able to get away with ignoring or modifying international standards to their own advantage - hence "forcing" other companies to do the same. I could go on re-hashing the arguments and wasting my time....... And, the monopoly gets slack in the end - oh of course this could never happen in the 21st century, cos they really have the needs of the consumer at heart. 2) I dont like the the way a lot of MS software assumes that you are a complete imbecile when you use it - for gods sake give us some credit for our inteligence. 3) I like to give the little guy a go, especially if his product or service is comparable to the big guy. Its a bit like going to the corner store instead of driving to the shopping mall - maybe the selection isnt as wide, but the personal service is much better.
If that ONE person I convert is saved from a virus by using Firefox, then that's good. It'll save a hundred somewhere down the line.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Look at the VB situation - a lot of companies are going to be forced to convert to VB.NET if they want support. Go for an OSS option and support it yourself, or pay someone to. And ultimately, if a language is good, it will last and people will keep improving it.
There's another part of the "long term view". Get people using .sxw as the document standard, and we can all operate our word processing for free. There will be more competition in 3rd party tools, people will innovate the document format more.
I don't really care if people use linux, however, I really care if people use firefox, or open office for that matter. The point is interoperability, let's face it, the Internet is what it is because we have a standard for web and email, and it works. On the other hand, we have word, non standard IE, MSN, which basicaly does the opposite of the Internet. Open source allows standard and interoperability, that is why I care for some software, the others are just a matter of choice. I use MacOS X, I use Linux, still I can get my open office files from one to another without any problem, and even work on it at the last time on the Windows from the pc labs at uni. I can chat with my non techie friends on their windows laptops, they can browse my blog or photo gallery exactly how they are suppose to be seen without the need for me to know all the little dirty tricks to make IE behave himself. I can do nice flyers for my house parties without spending hundreds for a software I use twice a month, and without having to pirate anything. I can just try to do things! In this world, they are two kinds of software, those who need to be open, and those who could be open. It is important to have the first ones to communicate with each others, the second ones is a matter of lifestyle/money or expectations.
I push firefox/thunderbird/*nix, because they work good for me. If you go to a restaraunt and have an awesome meal, don't you tell your friends about that restaraunt? Well, I use this awesome software... oh yeah, and it costs less than my meal at a restaraunt.
It's interesting that most of the points people are making here, while valid, do not address the "open source" part of this question at all. "Standards-based" is not synonymous with "open source". Safari and Opera are two very good browsers - both are being developed to conform to W3C standards, but neither is open source to my knowledge.
The question that people seem to be responding to here is "why I recommend non-Microsoft software solutions".
Me? I prefer (and recommend) the best tool for the job, whether it's open source or not. I love Firefox, but I also love Photoshop. My OS is OS X because "it just works" for me better than desktop Linux ever did - although both of them helped me to be more productive than when I was a Windows user.
#DeleteChrome
Here's an example. My mom uses the computer primarily to: Type documents (in Word Perfect, and I don't recommend that she change from that), do email (in Mozilla since day 1, and she wouldn't want to change from that), and browse web sites, mainly to do with quilting.
One day when I was in town (I live some 50 miles away), I got to clean a load of spyware and a few viruses off from her machine. Not wanting to deal with that again, I installed a decent antivirus, the standard AdAware/Spybot combo, and Firefox. A few days later, I got an email praising the popup blocker: something to the effect that "I went to visit a quilting site, and the popup blocker is going crazy -- but I'm not!" That sort of response leads me to believe that Firefox was the right way to go :)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
2) Self-validation by projecting themselves into the apps (if you think Firefox is good, you think I'm good too.)
Bugger open source witha brick, no make that a breeze block.
Open source's functionalist arguments only apply to open source software which is demonstrably better than the alternatives. That is by no means all of it.
Free software on the other hand has the virtue of all of the above. Plus it's about the freedom baby.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
All I care about is myself. And I want to use software I like. If everyone uses MS Office, I am forced to use their dc/xls/ppt file formats. If eveyone else is using Windows I will have to deal with wmv files. Many properitory plugins are not available on platform I want to use (because of small user base). As 90% people use IE website will refuse to work with browser I use. I dont care what other people use. I just want everyone to follow (open) standards. If MS Office supports open document format, IE is standards compliant and wmv is replaced by ogg I dont care.
The more people using OSS, the more eyes are on the product, and the more interest developers will have to improve the products.
Also the better the products are, the more people using them and the faster they improve.
Why do non-smokers urge smokers to quit?
I don't care so much about Open Source advocacy among my non-programming friends. They generally don't care how something is developed. As for my developer friends, it's only because the Open Source model is more productive.
Among my average user friends, I advocate free software for liability's sake. Most of my friends are broke college students like myself. 99% of the proprietary applications they're running are pirated. Now, I live in a country where the government is corrupt and has declared open season on media producers, users, and consumers on behalf of the media distributors who don't want to change their business model. (You ask what kind of f*cked up country I live in? It's a corperate welfare state known as the Corperation's Republic of the United States of America.) The fact is that if my friends cannot afford the proprietary licenses, they most certainly cannot afford the lawsuits that the distributors, who are generally the ones who get the copyrights due to their arrangements they force upon the media producers.
Free software avoids this problem, as its producers have stated that anyone can help produce, study, or redistribute their media (essentially turning everyone into a media producer) with a guarntee that those rights will not be revoked. Furthermore, under free licenses, my friends can use the programs that they can aquire for free for any purpose: they can continue to use the programs when they leave the academic world. Compare this to the proprietary software world, where my country's law and academic licenses demand that students stop using the software that they have aquired legitimately upon completion of their academic careers, regardless of whether the program itself has changed.
It's all about looking out for my friends. They are good people who don't deserve to be blackmailed out of their money by greedy and lazy media distributors just so that they can get their work done. They don't deserve to have to suffer through the indignity of the lawsuits that the predatory media distributors would inflict upon them just so that they can write their papers and whatnot.
Free software means never having to be raped by the government and the media distributors that control it.
You ask why we don't try to ouster them? Simply put, every politician in our country that runs for office is a sockpuppet for the media producers. If we were to take arms against the producers, the government will use its army against us. If you've seen our army in action, they can overrun entire countries in the course of two weeks, leaving naught but bodies and rubble in their wake. Furthermore, a vast majority of the citizenry would stand against such a revolt, as they're people of sub-par intelligence. Civil disobedience is our only option, and the only way that can work is if we can fight with our pocketbooks. They cannot sue us under my country's law if we go to the producers directly, an action that only free software allows.
That, my friends, is why I advocate for free software. I can't afford not to do so.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
The reason why I tell others of the benefits of the superior open-source software over Micro$oft is because I'm sick and tired of people complaining about the endless errors. Errors, vulnerabilities, and other such issues in open-surce software is pretty much always fixed before the user even hears that there's a problem.
This particular Ask Slashdot has a dumbfoundingly obvious answer: most FOSS zealots try to convert users to FOSS software because they gut-wrenchingly hate and fundamentally mistrust businesses and want to do everything they can to stick it to businesses where it hurts.
On the other hand, most users don't care whether software is free (as in liberty) or not because they just copy whatever they want anyway, legally or not. Most users don't care whether software is open-source or not because most users are not programmers and have no interest in or need for source code. And most existing FOSS software today is more difficult to install/configure/maintain/use than commercial offerings.
So from the user's point of view, there's only one motivation to switch to FOSS software, and that's to get their obnoxious FOSS-touting acquaintances to shut the hell up. And as statistics suggest, this isn't enough of a reason to convince your average user to switch.
That is, unless you are a particularly hairy and foul-smelling breed of FOSS zealot and your victim is a reasonably good-looking young woman who would much prefer suffering through a difficult computing experience for the rest of her life over actually tolerating your incessant geek whining for yet another day.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
But if they're running Windows, I tell them they're on their own. First of all, a typical Windows machine has far more than its share of major problems. Worms, viruses and spyware are almost entirely Windows afflictions, and most people just won't pay attention to my repeated lectures on proper network hygiene until it's too late.
Second, I find it quite painful to debug a Windows machine even when it's in front of me. Time really starts to drag after the first ten or twenty reboots. Trying to do it over the phone from thousands of miles away, unable to see the screen or type some complicated command without having to spell it out verbally several times, is just beyond my patience. VNC is sometimes useful, but it's painfully slow even over cable modems or DSL, and you still need local human intervention whenever a reboot is needed -- which is all too frequent with Windows.
When you buy a proprietary piece of software, you are at the mercy of the vendor to fix problems for you, and since they are the only ones that CAN fix problems, it invariably takes them a long time to do it. With open source software, you won't find yourself out of luck when the vendor won't return your calls; hypothetically, you can fix it yourself.
Proprietary software firms are good for a few things. They can pool enough resources into one place and do enough crap work to do some things right. Consider Apple and user interface design, for instance. Also consider things like Synopsys, where the application is so specialized that there isn't enough demand to attact the attention of open source developers.
But when it comes to common tools, open source hackers engage in a democratic meritocracy. Whoever does the best job wins. And the tools make the source code available so end users can engage in fixing and augmenting them.
Also note that pooling resources and open source are not mutually exclusive. Consider TrollTech, MySQL, and various Linux vendors. Freedom AND good tools.
The main reason is that using popular product is _much_ simpler than using some good yet unknown program. For example, if nobody would use Firefox, many webmasters would still make IE-only websites, thus making Firefox unusable. Moreover, if we're speaking about commercial use, it worth noting how easy it is to convince your superiors to use popular solution. So if I would like Ruby, I would want Ruby to be well-known.
There are other reasons as well. Products without solid user base are not supported very well (especially OSS products).
I mean, after all, we've invested alot of time and effort into the FOSS Project. We've invested ourselves in the idea of free as in freedom. We need to question ourselves, to reassure ourselves that we are actually making a difference, and that the FOSS semi-revolution is progress like we think it is.
The alternative is to sit in our closeted communities, preaching to the choir. Only by confronting those of different opinions, and attempting to convince them, do we validate ourselves.
Talk is good.
... more immunized kids means smaller healthcare costs when they don't get sick. Well, hopefully, anyway. Similarly, maybe we could see a decline in cable/dsl costs if they weren't paying out the wazzoo for bandwidth because of billions of zombie machines.
I care because M$ refuses to support standards. They also refuse to interact with competetive products. I use Open Office, if I send a Word user a .sxw file they will just reply that they don't know what to do with it and that they can't use it. This makes people use .doc as a standard, not because it is better but because Word is restrictive. Same thing with IE, I refuse to write code that will only work for IE. I also refuse to write code that detects what browser the client has and alters code to suit. My web code is built to W3C standards, if a browser doesn't support it (IE usually won't) then it is up to the browser manufacturer to fix it (which M$ won't). I must add as a result of my stubborness I don't write much UI code, which pleases me just fine.
The reason I advicate Linux and other Stuff that usualy comes with it is for completly selfish reasons.
I'm proficient with a lot of this software. I also like the way a lot of the software works. In fact I don't know if I would have stayed in the field otherwise.
The more people who use this software, the more in demand my skills will be.
If you think about it though, allmost everthing we do is for selfish reasons.
Because people have a right to not be held back by bogus bugware that is WAY overpriced for what it does.
Because when people go to joe random website it should display in their browser of choice, not look like an abstract painting because they choose to use something other than IE.
Because when people want to do some online shopping or banking, they shouldn't be forced to install an operating system and browser that may not be their choice.
Because people who are all citizens should be allowed to view publically available tax payer funded government documents without being restricted to one computing platform.
Because the internet is for everyone, it is not the domain and property of bogus billionaires.
Because large critical infrastructure shops in the private and public sector should NOT, repeat NOT, be running easily hacked bugware, it's a national security issue. and taxpayers shouldn't be forced to foot the bill for easily hacked crapware either.
Because our economy would be better off with more reasonably priced and more reasonably functional software being available to this "the masses" dude,from ma and pas desktop to "the enterprise", we shouldn't be limited to one billionaires idea of what the net and computing should be and everyone and their cuzzin leroy have to periodically send a large check to turn billionaires into trillionaires.
Because we should be able to buy computers easily that have a choice of OS on them, not be forced to go grovel and beg for something else when we go into any random computer retail outlet.
Because it's a complete ripoff to people to fake them out that joe billionaires crapware products are the "only" way to do things, leaving them stuck with malware infested boxes that they have to drag to the puter fixit shop at 60$ an hour to "fix" every other month when they shouldn't be broken in the first place.
Because establishing the precedent that very expensive software with zero warranties with it that you only get to "use as-is" is another bad idea, we should be able to tinker, change, modify our purchases, to our hearts content, same as we can with a million other products out there.
Because some billionaire bogus doofus doesn't need to "control where you go today" with your computer, it's none of his business what you do with your own machine. A persons machine doesn't need to report in and be analysed and probed by some faceless company someplace if you choose not to.
And because it's a *good thing* to be able to help your neighbor, easily, without worrying about violating some billionaire reactionary goons "profits" or the bogus "law' that protects those expensive no warranty chunks of alleged code. We DON'T NEED some fascist mafia don billionaire computer master overlord, nor his legion of profitable doom running our computing lives.
That's some of the reasons anyway...
%>)
That said, I don't ever feel the need to harass people into trying the stuff. I just inform them when somethings convenient and can save them time and money... then I move on.
I inform a lot of people about firefox, picassa, gmail, ubuntu, and openoffice (among other things)... notably, not all open source.
Popularity is not a function of hackability. Being poorly written and stupidly integrated into the low rings of the OS is.
Yeah, right.
And by care, I mean, I want the best for everyone. When I find a product, mainstream or otherwise, that I find superior to another, I feel it is my duty to inform others of it's superiority, so they too can reap the benefits of easier, more efficient programs. If they don't find it easier, well, so be it, but as someone who's more 'in the know' than the average Joe, I almost feel a sense of duty to help others find better computer software.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
It's too bad you're an offtopic post, because Media Player Classic really is a great thing to have in place of Windows Media Player. I had a codec pack install it for me (I forgot to uncheck the box) and it's everything you describe: fast to launch & play, simple UI, and it even plays MOV files (I always hated loading up Quicktime's viewer to see those).
Ok, its all well known: /. users love open source and many of us are zealots!
That includes me too. I would rather spend 5 hours fighting to get an OSS program working that 20 min figiting with propritary software. After 5 hours fighting OSS I fell victorious, after 20 min of the other I am cursing the bastards name!
But let me rant about the Windows idiots out there in the world for they are legion! I get freaks telling me: "OSS is bad because someday programmers will have to work for free!", "OSS is bad because you can't call someone when it breaks." OK, tell your freakin mother to call M$ next time Windows craps out. What's that? Chicken?
End Rant
Go buy a Windows PC, and a Linux box. Get them on the internet. Surf with them. Let us know how it goes, brother.
We all dance, we all sing.
-The Streets
Its pretty simple. Windows has 95% of the desktop market. They include their version of everything, even when it isn't the best. When someone comes up with something cool, Microsoft either clones it in such a way that you no longer need the 3rd party item, or comes out with a different format to make standard that only their software uses. Lets look at each one. IE vs other Browers. NCSA Mosaic was one of the first web browsers. It was the basis for Netscape, which once was the most popular browser. Microsoft, instead of working out a deal to include Netscape, wrote IE, made it free (putting Netscape pretty much out of business with regards to browsers), and imbedded it into the OS. Every computer has IE, why do you need something else? Thats the MS philosophy. The fact is there are other things you might like better. I for one, can't stand Outlook or any variation. I prefer Eudora. But all anyone knows (of that huge MS user base) is Outlook because thats what they were given. The second way, where Microsoft comes out with their own standard is just as snotty. Adobe PDF files are pretty much a well documented standard. Many people use them and they make peoples lives easy. However, Microsoft doesn't like that Adobe gets the limelight for this so they are coming out with their own PDF like format and will call it the standard, give the tools in the OS to use it, and suddenly Adobe's PDF will fall by the wayside (and their income stream from their PDF authoring tools, etc.). Why do we need .WMF (windows media files)? .MP3's were perfectly good.
People know they have a choice in cars. They have a choice in TV's and toaster ovens. They have a choice in computers, OS's and software too, but Microsoft's monopolistic policies does a very good job of hiding choices from the consumer.
If no other reason, thats the reason to push Open Source solutions.
Rob Miracle http://www.robmiracle.com
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (paraphrased)
With users comes support. Under the old regime, when you bought something at the old compushack, it worked under DOS, maybe Windoze if you were lucky.
Now that Mac has become vastly popular, these little Mac OS/X compatible stickers are starting to pop up...
If enough people start using the stuff I use (linux, mozilla, etc.), they will get support! Manufacturers will build stuff for ME!
:wq
Your sig slightly bothers me.
It appears you're missing "are belong" in the Latin. Might I suggest either "sum", which would give the same "MY LANGUAGE IZ PASTEDE ON YAY!" feel as the really bad English translation of the same sentence?
Of course, if you really want to be proper, you could just use "sunt".
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
we are sick to fucking death of other peoples worm/spyware infested pc's bombarding us with spam and useless traffic, we are sick of supporting shit house apps like outlook, and we are sick of having a large chunk of our IT budgets WASTED on inferior software. This is a networked world, what other people do has a DIRECT effect on us. that good enough for you?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I advocate open source products all day, and really feel like it's a waste of breath. Users who get fed up with issues in windows world usually end up finding their way to mac or linux, but the rest really aren't smart enough to know the difference anyhow, so I don't waste my breath on those types.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
I care becauseof product quality and security.
I do not care about open source vs closed source.
If MSIE was more secure than Firefox, I'd use MSIE. I currently believe Firefox is the safer browser to use. Firefox is open source.
If MS Office hadn't been such a slow buggy annoying jerk when I used it many years ago, I might use it now. Unfortunately for them, that bad experience with Word 6 has made me look elsewhere. Openoffice hasn't given me a bad user experience yet. Open office is also open source.
The recent "Windows black box" news giving them the ability to see the contents of my email/document/whatever is concerning. I have access to certain documents under NDA. What if the viewer program crashes and I forget to remove that document's contents before sending off the "core dump" to Microsoft? Am I fired for giving information to MS against my NDA agreement's terms? Is my employer screwed for the same reason? I'd rather simply avoid that possibility. I was quite fond of a set of programs called Final Writer and Final Calc, which was closed source, but has been unsupported for some time now. I'd like to try one called Pagestream which is also closed source.
I don't use any x86 or Windows app for email. With all those viruses and other junk clogging the mail system today, I'd rather not be in any way compatible with that code. So I use an antiquated computer platform with a Motorola 68060 CPU. I ain't gonna get none of that crap... This email program is open source.
I don't like many smaller details of the Windows user interface and how I interact with it. These small details annoy me, and they add up enough that I prefer to use something else. I've tried Linux, but it's still too hard to configure and maintain to my liking, but I do like it as a general user. Just not as an admin. I'm comfortable using Solaris at work, but I won't be setting that up at home. I'd like to give MacOS X a try, but cannot currently afford a Mac, but someday I'd like to get an iBook.
For the moment, for most tasks, I again use my antiquated platform simply because I get on with it better than the others I've tried. This OS is closed source and currently in beta. It includes a project I'm working on, which is also closed source.
When it don't do what I want, I load up Windows for games or web sites unfriendly to my aging web browser, and my linux box currently cracks keys for dnetc but will hopefully someday be a successful MythTV installation. Windows has already proven unsatisfactory as a dedicated always-on DVR machine. MythTV is open source.
I can't stand Windows Explorer. I find it to be the most clunky interface I've ever used. I use the Directory Opus 6.x replacement for it. It's not perfect either, but is far better for me than WI is. DOpus is closed source.
I haven't used Photoshop. I can't figure out how to use Gimp. I like ImageFX, which is closed source.
So, it depends on how safe I feel using a product and how comfortable I am with the user interface. A lot of Windows programs suffer from the Windows GUI design forced upon them IMNSHO.
If a closed source program makes me happier than open source equivalents, then RMS would be disappointed to hear that I do not share his obsession with the open source concept as being the only possible acceptable way to write software. If open source makes me happier than the closed source equivalent, I'm happy to use it. I'm not part of a revolution, nor do I want to be. I just want to use whatever product is best for my own personal needs and preferences, regardless of what anyone else thinks about it. Each of you should use what you use because it's best for your own particular needs, not because you're on a magical quest or are trying to impress the open source fanclub here on slashdot, or whatever.
let's see how this late-entered comment that is only mildly off-topic fares against the great mass of fervent clickmongers that comprise the slashdot readership...
first off, i sometimes write and most of the time maintain free software (released under GNU GPL or LGPL, no exceptions) for my own happiness and other reasons. you may call it "open source" or whatever, but that particular confusion does not enter here. the relevant point is that writing computer programs is a skill that i search to improve in myself, and both the end product (software) and the search for self improvement are (for the most part) rewarding.
now, i'm not going to tell my personal sob story here on slashdot, but suffice to say that after a bit of looking around, i see enough suffering in the world to conclude that whatever i can do to help others cope w/ it, would be a Good Thing, not just for others but also for myself in that (like the improvement in skills associated with writing software), i can improve my own self-understanding in the process.
but what can i do to help others "cope"? i don't know anything more than how to think logically and to type quickly some strange symbols into the keyboard. and why just "cope"? that's pretty lame when it comes to helping people w/ their suffering compared to, say, providing health care or friendship or even a willing (if unprofessional) ear to the stricken.
my answer to this is to try to encourage people to write free software, since it is the only thing i am certain of. i imagine that if i were a user of software w/o ability to read, modify, change and share the software, the frustration upon encountering a bug or misfeature must be similar in some way to the suffering of others who may not have insight enough into themselves or their situation to read, modify, change and share the improved situation.
suffering is a bug in the happiness (or merely serenity if happiness is too much of a reach) of a person. to "cope" is to work around the bug. to improve the situation is to fix the bug. but to fix the bug you need the source code.
because i cannot relieve people of their suffering, the least i can do is to show a methodology for gaining insight into something (that being the source code of computer programs) and hope that the techniques can be transferred to other things.
anyway, that's why i do what i do. i have not answered the OP's question, but then again, i feel the answer i have given shares some overlap w/ the intent of the question. momentary overlap is what life is all about, after all...
There are about 10 computers I take care of in my extended family. 99% of the problems I took care of were malware related, and most of those problems were on my father's computer. I'd be over to my father's house every week fixing the computer.
So one day I installed Mozilla on my father's computer.
It's been a year, and I haven't had to fix the computer since.
Is "open source" better? {shrug} That's a flamewar I'm not touching.
Is Mozilla better? Hell, yes. I've seen the results first hand. It's saved me hundreds of hours of tedious work (visitng my family =) ).
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I also remind them that there are some pages IE was not displaying correctly either
I ditched IE as my primary browser permanently when I discovered MSNBC's website rendered better in Mozilla than in IE 6. I switched from Mozilla to Firefox (while it was still called Firebird) when Mozilla's default behavior changed (loading a folder of bookmarks now replaces existing open tabs by default), and I found it was easier to override that behavior in Firefox than in Mozilla. Now I'm a full-on Firefox convert, baby.
Never mind proper support for CSS or transparent PNGs, IE can't even render goddamned tables properly. I was doing page layout for my personal website in FrontPage 2000 (I know, ICK!) and noticed that in layout mode, everything looked fine, but in "preview" mode (which uses IE as the rendering engine) and in IE 6 itself, the column widths were screwed up. Viewing the page in Firefox and Mozilla, the column widths looked fine. Microsoft's browser can't even properly render pages generated in the WYSIWYG view of its own HTML editor.
... it completely explains why.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
and it will be distributed like a bell curve.
Intelligence, zealotry, penis size, baldness, you name it, bell curve.
So, you've got some zealots, they can be obnoxious to varying degrees, BFD, that's life.
I am a linux fan, but...
Linux is not more secure, Windows is just a bigger target.
Watch as I am modded down!!!! Weeeee!
<overrated>Insert Sig Here</overrated>
The problem I have with this question is that it singles out open source software. The same questoin could just as easily apply to non open source software. I have many times seen in online forums or heard in person, people making statements like "Oh you should be using Photoshop/MS Word/Internet Explorer/Lotus Notes/SAP". How is this any different than the advocating of Firefox/OpenOffice/mySQL/GIMP etc?
Surviving America
because i'm sick to death of spam zombies, botnets etc..
not only is my inbox clogged up with shit from compromised win* machines, networks around the world are congested with windows virus traffic.
So we do have a very good reason for caring about this sort of thing. Don't give a shit about your prospects of entering Free Software Heaven, I just don't want to put up with your broken shite right here right now...
Of course, this does nothing to invalidate proprietary software - there are many very good closed-source operating systems. But there are also poor ones, and we all bear the consequences...
Being the friendly neigbourhood geek, I am usually the one called in when the box goes to hell. There seems to be a strange correllation between Internet Explorer/Outlook Express and spyware/malware. Nine out of ten of the PCs I visit don't even have the basics of network security. (at minimum a cheap and nasty firewall and an antivirus package that has been updated in the last month).
When people take basic precautions, things sort themselves out. Mozilla is a cheap good alternative to IE as well as being free. (both senses) Thus it makes it into my fixit routine.
I havn't had a play with open source antivirus packages or firewalls for Win32 environments, and because there is no paid support for such projects, there is less incentive for people to keep the patches flowing for the new viruses. I still reccommend commecial packages for such things.
However if people cannot afford the upgrade to a new box and are getting shafted by MS' end of life policy, I'll throw them a copy of knoppix to let them check out the "free" alternative rather than the AU$2000 upgrade. (Machine with XP installed plus Office) For some people this is a good thing.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Example 1: One of my customers relies on a web site hosted by Positive Internet (www.positiveinternet.com). Last weekend, Positive got DDOSed. I had to explain to my customer that the problem is made possible by all the compromised PCs out there - and Microsoft isn't going to do much to fix it until 2007 at the earliest.
Example 2: Another of my customers was using a Debian based PC that I made for them, until they asked me to fit a cheap Vivitar digital camera to it. Which doesn't work, because the camera doesn't properly support USB Mass Storage. Goodbye, Linux. Hello, Windows 98.
Conclusion: I hope that popular open source will help people keep control of their computers. I also hope it will help manufacturers stop producing broken hardware.
I really don't like people all that much. They want to use crap, let 'em use crap.
Each of the computers that are running windows in all the world helps msft to keep its market share.
;)
Each *one* helps them.
So, if you want to stop them pushing for patents in Europe and elsewhere, or for other reasons, it's easy... just talk about linux everytime the poor windows user complaints and then leave without solving the problem.
Interestingly, I've seen hardware faults that magically disappear once linux has been installed
Because there is a "war" going on, a war which the public knows or cares little about, a war which even many software developers do not seem to recognize, but it is one which threatens to alter the very meaning of a "personal computer".
I am a software developer - I do it not only for my livelyhood, but also as a hobby. I, like many other developers here, both young and old, started with my first computer (at the time, a TRS-80 Color Computer 2) to develop code. I remember reading books and magazines on coding, and, unlike today's younger set, typing in code (usually BASIC) from magazines, character by agonizing character. I learned to code in this way. I traded code with friends, and learned to convert between BASICs - from C=64 or Apple IIe BASIC to my CoCo's BASIC. I even played around with some funky graphics code found in a book on FORTRAN, which I converted to BASIC.
These are the skills I learned, from a diet of "open source", of a kind. No, it wasn't licensed in this manner, but it what got me started, and I am sure many others here got started in a similar manner.
Today, it is difficult to find code in this manner - to learn to code in this manner, simply because of the lack of magazines and the amount of code available on the internet. But the availability still teaches, and this is a good thing for budding coders.
But this isn't a good thing - ultimately - for the corporate interests. If you can code it yourself (using free tools along with source code) - or if you can find somebody who has already coded it, and is giving it away - why should you need to buy it? This is question that keeps proprietary software manufacturers up late at night...
I guarantee you, if they can find a way, they will do everything they can to make personal software development a thing of the past - whether that means licensing and regulation or what, this is what they want. It isn't just Microsoft - though they are one of the bigger players - it is any company that manufactures software - personal development is an affront to their business model, and must be stopped or severely limited. If they succeed - it will be a great loss for future generations of coders...
There was something special about typing in that first "Hello World"-like program on my TRS-80 - the mistakes I made, the corrections I had to do to get it to run - and then, it ran, and did something that I told it to do! A whole new world of excitement and wonder opened up to me, and 20+ years later I still remain fascinated...
So - I push for open source as part of my effort to fight the hidden "war" that proprietary software manufacturers are waging - I want my future sons and daughters (if they are inclined) to be able to sit at whatever is a personal computer, and still be able to fire up an editor or IDE and type in that first "Hello World"-like program, and see their eyes light up as they realize that they invoked "magic", and made the machine dance. By pushing for more use of open source software, I show my support for the model, and my efforts will hopefully help in some small part to stave off and possibly reverse the disturbing trends I see to lock down personal computers and turn them into meaningless "terminals" in a pay-to-play only world...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
There's no doubt that part of my reluctance to use Firefox, even if it's just a small part, is Firefox evangelists. I use Avant Browser atm and that has all the extensions I need, and I can handle my own comp-sec, but tbh I switch to Firefox occasionally for bits and bobs and there's really very little difference.
However the evangelists get on my wick, not least because most of them are just parroting propoganda, some of it quite likely made up on the spot by other evangelists. Ten gets you twenty 90% of them couldn't back up their "more secure" claims with actually technical details, for example.
They're just a complete pain in the hole. I hate them.
adam
I don't care what you use. I care that my computers can interoperate with yours. I like Unix, and I'm cheap. FreeBSD (sysV is evil, and most linux distributions are sysV style) fits me perfectly.
When you send me a Microsoft word document because you assume I can open I we have a failing in interoperability.
At least with Linux, I've found that there are plenty of people in the community, and that, if Linux keeps on gaining ground in the OS world, then eventually we will run into cases where people will start writing viruses for Linux. Because we're currently a niche market (so to speak), we are safe from that. Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe that open source coding is more secure, but that doesn't mean that there are no bugs in the code.
Some idiot whom I probably don't even know had their address book raided by a virus. My address was probably just a CC on a joke email. Nonetheless I got onto the spammers' lists, even though my address is not on any public page.
The less people have M$ insecure-ware, the less likely this is to happen in future. So I've started by helping friends and relatives convert. They are very happy with Firefox, for positive reasons, like tabbed browsing.
The reason worms/virsuses/etc spread so quickly is the monoculture of software. Imagine a company with 300 computer users, evenly spread between Linux, Windows, Mac and Other. With Firefox/IE/Safari/Opera/etc all in use. No imagine yourself as a virus writer that would like to bring that company to it's knees. Sound like more trouble than it's worth? Suppose all 300 users are running Win98 and IE 5.5. NOW think about writing that virus/worm/malware. Sounds a lot easier, doesn't it? If Linux/FF had a 90% Market Share, I'd encourage everybody around me to use Microsoft Windows and IE. OK, Mac & Safari but you get the idea. Of course, the next best thing to a multi-cultural environment, is to be the 'odd man out'. Ask any Mac user how he feels with the rest of the company is in a blind panic over the latest Windows Worm.
In a professional IT environment I would recommend avoiding vendor lock-in, by using standards-based software. It is hard for other vendors to compete on price when M$ provide web, IM and email clients free, so leveraging Open Source-based solutions is the way to do it. The government department I work for does not allow the bulk of users to use M$-Word, Excel or other M$ products other than Windows, and IE. But even then, IE is not our primary browser (We use Lotus Notes)
Personally, I don't care. I currently live a Microsoft-free life. Except that I also use email- and my email box is cluttered with spam comming from zombied Windows boxes, and virii sent to me by infected Windows machines. So yes, you running Windows does effect me, in a very negative way.
The reason worms/viruses/etc spread so quickly is the software monoculture. Imagine a company with 300 computer users, evenly spread between Linux, Windows, Mac and Other. With Firefox/IE/Safari/Opera/etc all in use. Now imagine yourself as a virus writer that would like to bring that company to its knees. Sound like more trouble than it's worth?
Suppose all 300 users are running Win98 and IE 5.5. NOW think about writing that virus/worm/malware. Sounds a lot easier, doesn't it? Anything that makes life harder for the bad guys is a Good Thing(tm).
If Linux/FF had a 90% Market Share, I'd encourage everybody around me to use Microsoft Windows and IE. OK, Mac & Safari but you get the idea.
Of course, the next best thing to a multi-cultural environment, is to be the 'odd man out'. Ask any Mac user how he feels when the rest of the company is in a blind panic over the latest Windows Worm.
Dave "20 years of Tech Support" Reed
I work at a medium sized university whose IT department has pretty well standardized on Microsoft everything. Not a week goes by that the network doesn't get taken down or seriously degraded by various worms, trojans, viri, or other dreck, predicated upon a single Microsoft product: Outlook Express. When I'm trying to order parts for a malfunctioning spectrometer, or just send an email to a friend at another university, and I can't do so because of problems related to a particular program, open source or not, it directly affects my life and my job.
So, I care.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
That actually works for me. Not email, but something similar.
Has a similar effect on guys when I show them how to have new pr0n 24/7 through BitTorrent.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Can we mod the story itself -1 Flamebait?
Easy - a little facet of human nature called self-validation. If you can convince someone else to make the same choices as you, the feedback it provides validates those choices. Plus you get to feel superior because you were there first. It's really the same thing that drives much of religion, political viewpoints, sports team preference and preferred vehicle brand.
Besides which, I get to charge more.
How does this work?
If things break half as often because of what I've done, I do half as much work, I can charge half as much again for my work and the customer spends 25% less on me than on a competitor advocating less, um, safe software. The customer's machinery also works more reliably, so they get more work done and live in less fear of stuff vanishing from under their hands.
IRL, I "visit" a typical Linux server (I do mostly servers) by remote control about twice a year and in person about once a year on average. OTOH I will typically need to visit an MS-Windows server in person about every two months (some better, some much worse). This makes the billable-time ratio about 3:1. "Aaak!" the traditionalist says, "you have 1/3 of the income!" Not so. I am able to support 3x as many clients, charge 50% more for my time, and yet provide double the value.
Workstation differences are even more pronounced, since users have a far greater ability to break things on MS-Windows, which synergises very effectively with MS-Windows' ability to spontaneously break itself.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
So you're saying you're a decent human being who doesn't require validation by haranguing other people into liking the same things they do so they can feel better about themselves.
:)
What the hell are you doing on Slashdot?
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
I'd like people to switch so I don't get calls at 2am about this "dr. Watson" person that keeps popping up.
I agree with the parent 100% If you're going to ask me to fix it, then expect to run what I tell you. After the third time fixing a person's spyware issues, telling them to run Firefox becomes habit. Everyone you come into contact with on a regular basis becomes a potential "customer" (everyone is your best friend when they have a problem) of yours when they have a problem.
In short, we're trying to reduce the maintenance level of our network of friends. Selfish? Yes, but also helpful.
To some extent, the competition between closed and open source products is an experiment. This is even more relevant in for web-centric applications based on published standards.
Take browsers as an example. Given the presence of malware/spyware and other online trouble makers, which kind of software is going to succeed? Many people have responded by saying that Firefox only seems to be better because it is not currently being targeted. Well, it will be targeted (along with Apple's Safari), and the maintainers will have to respond.
Personally, I bet on Firefox. When the bad actors target Firefox, I think the open source model will prove to be better then the closed source model, for the reasons that open source advocates always cite.
Remember, it is a competition. If you want to view it as a sporting event and you are an open source fan, then it makes perfect sense to try and get people to switch. Part (not all) of winning is market share.
Personally I think that open source is better for the internet. I'm not in the Stallman camp where I think that all closed source systems are bad, but I do think that having the basic infrastructure of the internet and software development be open source serves the common good. Let closed source work were it works best: highly targeted market segments that don't have gigantic user bases, things like very high end chip design software or software to develop drugs.
Janet was a school teacher. Like many teachers she didn't decide on her profession based on the financial rewards. Money was tight at the best of times.
Janet buys a computer for herself, but doesn't buy a copy of Office. Later she finds out that Wordpad isn't really what she needs in a word processor. She visits one of the local appliance shops which also sell PC software.
Discussing the situation with the sales person she finds she will be paying $200 for a copy of Office. Now $200 is much better than the full price only because she can get the academic pricing, but it is still $200 she can ill afford.
Just then a young man comes up to her and asks her what she needs the word processor for. Does it need to run Macro's etc. She answers that it will be used for writing letters, looking at the childrens homework etc. The young man then suggests that she take a look at OpenOffice, which can be purchased at another store thats only a few minutes walk away.
Intrigued she walks down to the store and buys a copy of OpenOffice for $10. Getting home she pops the CD into the computer and with littlw effort has OpenOffice up and running. How, she wonders, can such excellent software ge so cheap. She begins tgo read the front cover describing that OpenOffice is open source, and what open source means.
Three months later the entire school has changed to OpenOffice, as the idea of freedom that Janet brought to the school caught like wildfire with the teachers that saw the quality of open source. Janet was now used Linux at home, but her journey into open source was just beginning.
Basically, this line of thinking mandates that all software be written to slavishly pander to the desires of the least-capable users. Innovation or orthogonal thinking are things to be feared. Let's impose, instead, a "tyranny of morons."
Programs should be written to do their intended tasks as well as possible. To bring new ideas and new capabilities to computing. Merely working on a free replacement for an existing program is a waste of time. Nothing new or creative is produced.
I care because I've been working with proprietary software for 10 years and know it very well.
I was so thrilled about Windows 95 when it first came out. I knew all about DOS and Windows 3.x. And when I first moved to the bay area I got a job supporting a DSVD gaming modem on Windows and Mac. I learned all about modems and Windows internals, such as how it detected hardware, while I was going to school learning NT, Novell and UNIX.
UNIX was a much better design. Modular and efficient all the way. But try telling that to an MSCE or Novell admin.
Then I spent the next few years contracting as a UNIX sys admin at Sun, SGI, AOL, and many other corporations. While contracting I got to know these OSs very intimately. I worked with NT, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, IRIX, OSF/Tru64, Linux and BSD. All these OSs had bugs as did their hardware.
But the problems I saw were not the bugs, but the way these corporations would try to hide critical bugs and security vulnerabilities. In 2000 we knew Outlook and IE would have many security problems. We knew it because we understood how this software was designed for features and ease-of-use instead of security. Every new OS Microsoft released didn't fix these gaping holes. We watched as the IT industry got compromised again and again, years after we warned them.
Our warnings fell on deaf ears. Even now XP is still vulnerable upon install. But we knew NT 4.0 was insecure back in 2000, and Win2k didn't address those problems. Why didn't they listen to us and move on to something that would protect their data and networks?
I wanted, more than anything, to build a solid and stable network that would page me before any critical problems caused service interruption. But these corporations I worked for didn't care. They replaced that network again and again, running into the same problems again and again, asking me to run around removing worms from Windows systems when my job title was Sr. UNIX Admin.
I moved over to being a UNIX only admin because of the problems I encountered on Windows. And when Linux became the perfect replacement for many systems and services they still would rather spend money to upgrade to the latest commercial OS instead of bringing their core business in-house. With FOSS we could have fixed all the problems that plagued them for years. Even now they're looking at expensive outsourced solutions, like IDS and IPS systems to protect them.
All the while I've been getting free bug fixes, new features and enhancements for my Linux desktop. Its faster, more stable and more secure and it would have cost us $0 and saved me much frustration. And BSD or Linux would have been a much more stable server platform, when built with redundancy and fault-tolerance in mind. Cheaper hardware than Sun means more redunancy for the same cost. And all hardware has bugs, even now. 99.99999% uptime, I learned, is a very real possibility. This combination of this FOSS technology could have saved millions, and that is no exaggeration.
I watched hundreds of people lose their job because management was too stubborn to take responsibility for their decisions. All they had to do was give up a little control and have their IT engineers engineer them a solid and stable solution. But they wanted to play these games and lay down the law and look where it got us. Compromized.
What I care about, what I've always cared about, is the technology. And what I love about FOSS is its all about the technology, not the money. What does it take to convince people that FOSS is the right way to do it?
Do I hate business? When it costs all my coworkers their jobs, yes I do. I hate hurting people to make a profit. Business should be ethical. Without ethics we'll lose our humanity and buy widgets made by enslaved children without even realizing it. Are people just another widget to you? Or do you really care about your community? That is what this is all about. People before profits.
When we have the
Secondly, MS expertise staledates far more rapidly than Unix expertise. Every release of MS necessitates retraining (Primarily the LAN admin and Support, but it used to include a fair portion of the user community.) Things move, change, get renamed. In Unix, things are added. (Ya still wanna use PINE instead of Thunderbird? Feel free.)
Which brings up the third point. There are reasons in the Unix world for changing or upgrading software, but its not because I've been forced into another d*mned OS release!!
And so we arrive at cost. Most of the TCO studies I've seen that show a higher cost for Unix tools usually factor in training cost for switching to Unix. But this is to ignore points two and three above. Over the long run, I would expect the training costs for a predominately Open Source shop to show an increasingly favourable ratio to those of MS shops.
Not to mention the reduction in licensing costs.
So, the reason I would like Open Source to succeed is the reason I became a programmer. I like to make things work right! Gracefully. Efficiently. Cheaply. Satisfactorily.
And I'd have more time to help my clients and improve the system instead of spending the majority of my time just keeping the fscking MS LAN stumbling along!
(Additionaly, it would make my life far easier!)
--//--
(I note in previewing the above that I have tended to refer to the Unix world rather than the Open Source community. Still Linux is a Unix, and in my mind - such as it is - they are synonymous even if there are commercial Unixes and software about.)
One reason why Internet Explorer and Lookout Express (tm?) are more prone to being hacked is the easily-guessed location(s) for email storage, cookies, and cached IE/Javascript pages to escalate priviledges and wreak havoc. A Mozilla Profile, in contrast, has all of this stuff hidden within that nice "salt" subdirectory (the one named "#$%^*@#$.slt"), making it significantly more difficult to crack into the cached URLs with scripts, the cookies, and so on.
;)
These Windows users are my customers, I don't want their computers to be cracked and expose my stuff... or theirs.
(This msg brought to you by Mozilla Suite on Linux. I support Windows but I sure don't use for *MY* stuff
Simple. If most people use closed source software, the big companies will ignore it and not do anything. For example, would nvidia release drivers for linux if just the few geeky used it?
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
...I'm a laid off software engineer and have nothing better to do with my time.
My feeling is that you should use the best product for the job, not just the product that gets the most press coverage or is the most easily available.
In the case of Mozilla based browsers for example, they have a faster engine, as well as more useful features and better security.
Linux is better for most server applications. You get the best use of the equipment and you can tune up a Linux box for performance where you really can't with a Microsoft OS. On the desktop, it depends on your purposes. Linux or Windows XP for newer machines, Linux or Win98SE for older machines.
I personally hate seeing good applications fade away because while they are the best, they get ignored due to things like being added(for free) to Windows, or because of poor marketing/distribution. That last of course is the fault of the company that makes the better product, but when Microsoft decides to add a "feature" just to hurt a smaller company(such as Netscape), you see why people go anti-Microsoft.
People tend to push the products they find to be the best of their type, or best for the money. For many people, OpenOffice is a great choice, but there are a number of people who based on their needs will best be served with Microsoft Office. Most people don't realize there are alternatives to the Microsoft solution, so that is why people who know better tend to push the alternatives.
And, like anything, you have the rebels out there who will push whatever product that isn't popular, regardless of how well it works.
"most"?!? Classic generalization followed by a strawman attack.
Maybe someone is trolling?
Don't feed the troll!
I hope I'm not obnoxious about it, but the major reason I've recommended OSS in the past has been for security reasons.
Story: my roommate had a WinXP machine, I have an iMac, and we share a cable modem connection through a linksys router. My roommate is, er, a novice computer user, and over the course of a few months, his machine became so addled with spyware that it became impossible to use. Not to mention that the internet connection is in my name, and I didn't want to be responsible for whatever crimes his zombified PC was committing. So I went through the standard drill: downloaded and ran SpyBot, installed Firefox, etc. Weeks pass. The spyware/malware/search bars/viruses/trojans persist. So I said:
"Hey, this computer is fucked. Do you want me to install Linux?"
-- "What's Linux?"
"It's a different operating system. And I'll throw in a Microsoft Office compatible suite, web browser, image editor, etc."
-- "Ok, sure"
One Ubuntu install and several universe apt-gets later, and he's much happier with his PC than he ever was before. And I feel good for having made the world a better place.
So I don't have to worry as much about having DDoS attacks happen to my servers that are too big to cope with.
Really, I don't give a rat's ass about open source solutions. I recommend the best tool for the job, and I VERY VERY STRONGLY recommend the most standards-compliant tool for the job. IE fails both tests. So does Outlook. Windows usually does, but not always--if the 'job' is playing games, then Windows is your best tool. (there are other examples, but games is the easiest one).
Firefox is a great tool. OpenOffice is a great tool for wordprocessing and spreadsheets, as of 1.0.1 (I think--the version that corresponds to StarOffice 6.1). On Windows, Pegasus Mail is the best tool, and it's proprietary. QCD is the best media player, and I have no idea what the license is.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I care because I want to make this planet a better place, and libre software is a step to the right direction: The creation of a libre society without oppression. If I meet someone who doesn't use libre software I will inform them about the alternative choices and why they should switch, but if they wish to remain oppressed I won't insist.
I'm sick of suffering from being a non-IE user. Too many websites are built for IE, instead of abiding by html standards. Mostly it has to do with web-applications, but when I wanted to see if Harvard thinks I'm a racist ( https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selecta test.html ) I get pissed off that I can't open the tests with Netscape or FireFox. And the only way the websites are going to change is if demand changes. It's simply economics.
Of course we care, we read read slashdot, meaning we love this kind of stuff.. but really firefox is something special because it is well recognized and shows to non-tech people that there is something behind this open source thing and that quality software is being produced by these means. I have friends that have never heard of open office, gimp, etc. but they do know about firefox... the word is getting out there and opening doors for open source and showing that microsoft doesnt hold all the keys.
Because It's our job to know whats best for our clients.
period.
Thats why we make the money.
Because too many open source enthusiasts are douche bags.
I never try to convert individuals to 'Open Source' or more specifically, non-Microsoft products. The topic I focus on is responsible computing usage. I work as a netadmin in a 95% Microsoft/Windows environment and am provided ample opportunity to discuss this topic while I clean their machine of spyware. I approach the subject in two parts; The users responsibility for making intelligent choices in how they use the internet (as it is the main vector of attack) and secondly; the inherrent flaws in their OS and browser of choice (IE). Never will I preach an alternative, because as with bible thumpers, I find that attitude and mode of communication one-sided and counter productive. I do believe it is of significant importance that users are brought out of their innocence (ignorance) and are given an opportunity to learn and understand how the choices they make while using the PC extends far beyond themselves and effects everyone on the net. (Windows Zombies) I believe in the next 10 years, we will see a new field of study open up, 'Digital Ecology'. The conservation of bandwidth and human resources used to combat polluted data streams/sources.
.lurk.
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch16s01.html int 20h;
OSS zealouts are gay homosexual faggots
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
-- Tom Rathborne
I like Free, open source software -- and that's upper-case Free, as in the FSF/GNU/GPL, etc. I like it because it's accessable ("download newest version now, for free"), because I can pass it on to friends and family, because it's cheap (related to but distinct from whether it's easily accessable), because I *enjoy* a lot of it (some obvious ones -- TuxRacer, GIMP, Audacity, Inkscape, Mozilla/Firefox), because much Free/open source software comes out of adversity, and therefore does a better job than certain proprietary tools of opening / converting various file formats, and for other reasons that have all been laid out elsewhere by people who have described them better than I would.
...
However, my favorite, peevish reason for getting people to use FOSS is to point out that any time the money being spent on software comes from taxpayers, it can immediately and substantially benefit the commonwealth if it's used to support open source software. In a far more indirect way, of course, money spent on Microsoft software (and that of any closed-source software company) *can* benefit the commonwealth trickle-up style, as the employees of the company pay taxes, etc.
However, a) I'd like the government to be smaller and confine itself to fewer roles (Ah, to dream!), so I don't much buy the argument I've just reluctantly presented and b) software is a multiplier; if I can legitimately and freely give OpenOffice and XMMS ImageMagick and various other pieces of software to everyone in my family, suddenly all the formats those programs can manipulate are worth more to them. If the government of a particular state / county / court system / municipal government is going to drop X many dollars (again, TAX dollars, which theoretically do *not* belong to the government bodies, but rather to the citizens on whose behalf the money is being spent!) on, say, a a few hundred licenses for an office suite, I'd rather they do it in a way that maximizes the value to the people who are picking up the tab.
I like to talk about OpenOffice.org in this context, because a) it's multi-platform b) it comes from a respected, established company (Sun) and is no flash-in-the-pan and c) because it's at least in the same ballpark of usability as MS Office; it's not like asking people to "just shut up and learn TeX!" For several reasons (like out-of-box PDF creation, and my own skewed sense of aesthetics), I prefer OpenOffice; another good reason is that Microsoft doesn't make Office -- at any price -- for Linux, and why the heck should I jump through hoops to work around it, possibly voiding the license (not sure on that) to make it work on an unsupported platform? Like the Woody Allen joke, "... And such small portions!"
There's a lot of sour-grapes, cultivated-haughtiness reaction sometimes to the idea that (say) OpenOffice can replace Office, a lot of ueber-cynical scoffing. Sometimes it's well justified (or well enough), and sometimes it's of the Comic Shop Guy variety, cartoonish teenage-cool / movie action hero smugness (perhaps "Zapp Brannigan" is the ideal cartoon hero for this sort of dismissal). Among the complaints are that
- "My VBA scripts run everything!" Fine. *If* you're a business. You can be hypnotized by Oliver Wendell Jones to stick cucumbers up your nose, too, if it's on your own dollar. More power to ya. But if you're spending tax-payer dollars on a product with only one supplier and a tendency toward lock-in, that sounds like poor stewardship unless there are extenuating circumstances. (Which there might sometimes be.)
- "People are used to Word / Excel / etc. It's very expensive to train users! By using MS software [or Oracle, or WordPerfect, or PhotoShop], we avoid expensive retraining costs." In a word, bluster. Some businesses do train their employees -- that is, they hire consultants to teach classes, or pay for employees to attend training sessions on the new software, etc. However, the typical case (this isn't a deep survey, of course, and it's all based on what
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I just gripe about sites and M$ users creating a system that is not standards compliant for the alternative software I like to use (Opera). Other than that I try to help friends see the light, but if they are not intersted, I don't care.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
I hate the fact that Microsoft is a powerful monopoly. Nobody can compete with them... except open source. I WANT open source software to become the monopoly, as it isn't necessarily "owned" by a corporation, anybody can take it and make something better or different. Corporate monopolies kill innovation.
Meh.
There is a sweet spot, probably 1/4 to 1/2 of the market share. Too big and complacency sets in, too small and no one cares anyhow.
When you are making your way from 1/1000000 of the market up to 1/1000 of the market, there is a strong relation between the number of users and quality of product.
Wait, I don't get it; how do I moderate the submitter as a Troll, now?
It's over now. That, or it's go time. One of the two. acts of gord
The W3C, or the World Wide Web Consortium, publishes documents which explains what all the HTML and XHTML tags are, what they do, how they behave, etc.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer team figures "We own 90% of the market. We can just make up our own standards."
Some Web site designers think "IE has 90% of the market. We should write websites that look great on IE."
The end result is the the pages look bad on standard compliant browsers, such as Firefox.
Sun publishes documentats that explain what all the Java statements are, what they do, how they behave, etc.
Microsoft's JVM team figures "We're preinstalling the JVM with Windows, so everyone's going to use our JVM anyway. We can just make up our own standards."
Java developpers running Windows write Java programs on their Windows machines.
These programs don't work with Sun's JVM.
And so on. In the end, people who actually follow the specifications (or people who use software which follows specification) suffer because of Microsoft's large market share and general apathy towards standard compliance.
No, hobbits often stand with each other, on their feet.
Let's see, where to start...
1. About a year ago, my boss was looking at options for bug tracking/issue tracking software. Knowing I could save the company some money, and implement a great product, I recommended Bugzilla. I even installed it and let other people in I.T. take it for a spin. Mr. Boss didn't even LOOK at it, and we ended up spending $15K on a commercial product that uses an ActiveX control as a front-end, forcing us (i.e. ME) to use Internet Explorer. Choice between an excellent, free, browser-based product that we could modify to suit our needs, or a commercial, closed, platform-specific and expensive product - we go with the expensive product.
2. A few months ago, we as a group decided that we needed a better way to centralize documentation and information, some way to make it easy for us and our users to find and maintain documentation. Perfect use for a wiki! I installed and configured TWiki, showed a few people how to use it, and we started populating it. Everybody loved it! Two weeks ago, Mr. Boss announces that we're installing Sharepoint and migrating all of our documentation there. Reason? He saw it used at a Great Plains conference that he attended. The wiki is running on a retired 350Mhz desktop machine, serving content to approximately 40 users. Think Sharepoint will run on such a machine?
3. In response to our users' increasing complaints about SPAM, we decided that we needed to implement a server-based filtering mechanism. My recommendation - stick a Linux box in front of Exchange, running Exim, Spamassassin, and ClamAV, the same combination that makes me very happy at home. Nope, we spent money on a commercial content filter (can't remember the product name). Our email admin is adding FROM addresses to the blacklist on that thing every day. Explaining that this is an exercise in futility, because FROM addresses are forged and random, passes cleanly above his head, and he merrily continues adding addresses to the blacklist.
It just goes on and on and on. The mentality that money must be spent to solve these problems astounds me.
Why do I care? I care because I have to work with these products as part of my job. I care because I see it as useless spending on the part of my employer. I care because these products are NOT the best solution to the problem, but we're happy to throw money away on them. It is EXTREMELY frustrating to sit back and watch, but trying to argue the point gets you labelled a zealot.
AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!
Fuck no, one more Firefox user is one less zombie box. Also, if a free alternative is as good as or better than the proprietary competitor, I'll recommend it to a friend. Also, I tend to recommend what I have experience with, and I'm a cheap bastard.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
First of all, As a web developer, I want people to be using standards-compliant browsers for the obvious reasons--when they don't, it creates more work for me. A lot more work. To the point where fixing my CSS to work with IE5's fucked up box model dwarfs the time spent actually designing a usable interface.
Secondly, I don't like the constant barrage of windows worm requests when my machine is on an open network. It dirties the log files, making debugging a local site harder. Just because you happen to have managed your windows machine badly doesn't mean that you have the right to poke my computer with yours every ten minutes.
Third, interoperability. This isn't much of a problem, or at least, it used to be more of one. I use office on my mac (which is my main development machine for web stuff) and even on linux, the free stuff is usually good enough. Besides, I haven't seen a word file in a long time--pdf's have largely replaced them for document distribution.
Lastly, I don't want to support your windows machine for free because you are too inept to do it. When I was younger, I did this all the time. At some point I decided that that would stop, and that there were better ways to use my time than doing a professional's work for free. Now people get angry with me for not helping them because I used to. I've never had an open source OS user get angry at me for not helping them with something, and they're usually more interested in learning how to prevent the problem from recurring than just 'make it go away'. In short, OSS users make better peers on the internet and more knowledgeable computer users.
That enough? This is a pretty idiotic "Ask Slashdot?" if you ask me...
I'm not really willing to admit that I "Push Open-Source" on anybody. I do however make the odd recommendation.
Why? How can anybody ever know what's best for them if they haven't tried anything? It's kind of like telling your kids to try a new dish before kicking-and-screaming about how they don't want it...15 years later you've spared them an eating disorder all because they tried other foods.
Old habits die hard - bad habits die harder and it's like that with software. Do you think people would just "accept" that their computer crashes twice a day or gets infected every 10 minutes if they'd been anything other than bad software?
Is there a positive message between the lines?
Bill Gates is trying to bring cheap workers into the US when he has a huge investment in off shoring.
Could this mean that there are some I.T. jobs that are not practical to off shore?
that is like MS Marketing caring how many people use IE or XP.
wait,,,,,
I regularly go head-to-head with Stallman's Zombie Legions right here on slashdot (when will I ever learn...?)
That said, I still recommend my friends and family to use Firefox/Thunderbird over IE/Outlook Express. Not because of any idealism, but because it's better software.
Everyone I've ever convinced to try FF has said something along the lines of "Man, my computer is running so SLOW for some reason. Can you take a look at it?" and, shock of shocks, the machine is so stuffed with spyware, malicious ActiveX, BHOs, and all sorts of other cobblies. So I will usually fix it, suggest FF as a replacement for IE, since there is a minimal learning curve, and even offer to install it.
Most of them have liked it. Some have gone back to IE. The next time the latter group need help cleaning the cruft off their box, they get to pay me for it (once is a favor, twice is assuming my time has no value.)
Which is not to say FF is perfect. I've had a few problems where a bad extention is installed, but all in all things run pretty smoothly afterwards.
I make my family run Firefox because I get tired of cleaning up spyware. As for the rest of the world, I say let them burn. Fuck them. To all those who like to point out the good things about Microsoft products, fine. Keep running Windows/IE, assholes. See if I give a shit. I'm sitting fat and happy on Debian with no worries. You're the ones debating about which spyware remover to use. You're the ones warning each other left and right about viruses. I can happily filter all that out, because it doesn't effect me a bit. I can focus on more interesting things than wondering if it's safe to click on a link or not.
Now, I realize this isn't true for everyone, and it's not true for me when I'm working in our Windows-based office. But when I'm sitting at home, I get a good chuckle out of the demise of Windows/IE users. Mod me insensitive. I just don't care.
http://www.jms1.net/ie.html
- or -
http://www.jms1.net/{anything else} if you're running IE.
If people are happy with the MS apps that is usually because they do not know that there are alternatives. Maybe they will be happier with something better? That has been my experience with switching people to Firefox. People switched to Linux have mostly been happier as well.
I am happy to drive a my Hyundai but that does not mean that if someone offered me a BMW for the same price I would have still bought the Hyundai.
It is a stupid question because the assumptions were never examined. For example, the assumption that other people don't have friends. You know, people they like and that like them.
Because most people are sheep. They just do what they're told, or what is easiest. So, naturally, it is up to the more technically adept and informed to direct them into what's best. Best, because IE/OE/Outlook are so incredibly full of holes and constantly spreading problems that the non-technical user can't keep up with. Not that Firefox/Thunderbird don't and won't have security holes, but it's much less likely to be as critical and not tied to your OS.
I care to get people off of their dependency on microsoft and paying for services.
Just because I stay away from exploited closed source software, doesn't mean I want everyone too. I have $100 in my pocket today because I fixed some nasty spywear (my comp is slow!) problems. Of course my first answer was to use Linux, but hey... if they insist, so be it! ;)
Meh
Open source software breads new minds.
When i first got a computer i would dream of all the things i could do, things i could create that would make me rich. Given i was young or in high school, but the sole reason for wanting to do things was money.
Now, through just the use of open source my mind has been opened to the hours of dedicated peoples who go into make such execellent products. No longer to i feel if i create something i should make money out of it. Rather, i'd quite happily give it to the community under some open source licence that helps everyone learn and colloborate openly. In return i ask for nothing, except maybe sometype of recognition from my peers I.e ego boost.
These ideas have been distilled in my from using open source. They could be me maturing but i dont believe so. What i want to do when encourging people to use other software is not just to use other software but to think out side the box. Or to take the analogy further, to think out side the windows box and let them see what happens when people have access to such wonderful cheap/free standards compliant software.
The internet really is the begining of utopia!!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Should be "Why would you leave people at Bill's mercy?" After years of supporting Windows I know what a time bomb it is. It's going to blow some time. The user's not going to know why, but it will have to do with some stupid vulnerability Microsoft has built into the system. It's all about 'trust-able computing' and we've never had it from Redmond.
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?
Personally, I use gnu emacs on linux for email and just about everything.
For work, I use outlook, and occaisionally a web email client.
Work is work. I am an insgnificant cog. It is way to much effort for me to change anything, hence, I don't care.
Basically, I couldn't care less about so-called "open source". For me, it is and always has been about Freedom. Every time someone chooses a proprietary format, they limit the freedom of others. That needs to be stopped, or at least only done with awareness of the consequences to every member of society.
Why Firefox?
CSS SUPPORT!
I'm sick of having to write:
a) hacks to make css layouts work on IE
b) use javascript dropdowns (not my idea to use dropdowns btw) instead of the great CSS hover elements
Unfortunately neither Abiword or Open Office are really up to the task of replacing Word for 80% of the users:
What is interesting in this, is to compare the OpenOffice v's MS Office battle to the Word v's WordPerfect; or MS Office to Lotus Suite...
Just 2 contradictory points, on the one hand:
1/I think free software should be run for developers and the real advantage of newbies is that they may become developers, one should restrict costly help (i.e. time) to newbies that are unlikely to become developers. If help can scale (for example answers on the web for lots of newbies can gain from) that should be encouraged.
On the other hand:
2/Vendor drivers for linux are encouraged by the volume of users, or are drivers mostly made available by developers, perhaps even internal vendor developers, so even here 1 still holds a lot of weight.
An elitest attitude, but only if software developers consider themselves elite, rather than just another specialty, or just another club. Do plumbers encourage people generally to do plumbing, do doctors encourage people generally to do medicine?
I suppose one should remember that clubs are run for the benefit of current members or contributors, helping new members who may not contribute much and may be more likely to leave the club depends on whether that eats up other resources.
Having a barrier to entry such as repartitioning ones hard drive after playing with live CDs may not be such a bad thing. An initial barrier to entry sorts out who are potential future contributors rather than those who will be more passive members of the linux club.
This can be regarded in defiance of the many eyes credo. I am just saying that encouraging or trying to over encourage general use of linux may not help linux, so tell people that options exist sure, even help them for a fee, but do not expect the masses to automatically become contributors, from new software to maintainers to bug reporters, to the free software pool.
[oops went over my 2 point limit, or was that 2 slightly contrary points followed by several fudges to make me believe I am not completely evil]
I am just wondering if my offer for free tuition http://www.geocities.com/totierne to help people become contributors is a step forward, maybe the real contributors will be self starting, and the ones that need help will always need help. Just talking against myself.
It all depends on context, the bigger picture.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
I feel the same as the OP; I am also an OSS convert, but I don't disparage others' choices of apps. However, healthy advocacy for OSS projects is absolutely necessary, considering the strong-arm tactics Microsoft uses to get people to use its products -- FUD.
JoloK
Because I get paged at 10pm when the damn Windows servers crap out.
Because I need our PC guy to do stuff and instead he spends all day fighting spyware.
Because I have to walk users through web pages and they can't find the window they opened this or that up in (ie. they don't have tabs).
Because when our LAN guy goes out of town, they turn to ME to manage their exchange server. And guess what? It's unreliable.
So, as a resident techie, there is no "they use this, you use that, what's the big deal?" There is only "WE USE this." We need to stop.
Competition & Security for all
By encouraging users to use other products such as Linux, MAC, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc. we force software companies and projects to increase stability, performance, and features.
If more users used products other then Microsoft's then they would in turn need to better their offerings. As they increase their products features, performance, and stability users will depend that alternatives to Microsoft's products also increase. Competition is a good thing and healthy competition leads to advances for all of us.
Users who do not use Microsoft products are less likely to experience viruses as most of these are written for the masses (i.e. Windows, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Office).
Viruses are easily propagated today as once a security hole is found the majority of users have this same security hole. By reducing the number of users that use Microsoft only products we reduce the number of identical security holes. This decreases virus propagation which reduces traffic on the Internet.
We can not move everyone off of Microsoft products nor should we as this will just move the problems from one platform to another ore one application to another. However if we encourage users to look at options they have and in doing so we convert a percentage of them to other products everyone will see the benefit of better products and less virus propagation.
Just my two cents....
My dad adamantly likes to use Microsoft Windows XP because he got used to it. I saw the machine crawling as a result of running too many antivirii programs.
I managed to get him to convert to Redhat Linux 9, however being a photography enthusiast and sharing his collection with his friends, his window photo sharing applications/sites(Webshots,etc.) wasn't providing linux viewer clients and upload clients. He ran into problems trying to get the printer(HP) reconfigured with a different set of catridges. There were some issues when the softmodem had to operate while music was playing with the lin(nish)modem driver I could lay my hands on.
I had to be around for almost every fix required, a LUG non-existent in my town for now. While I was away for another three months, he reverted back to Windows.
I came back and realised that the best answer was to give him part of what he needed and also try to give better features+performance for what he was doing. I got him to download Firefox+Thunderbird+Gaim for his windows box. Added a reconfigurable firewall outside the machine (to make configuration easier for me.) and now he's quite happy. The whole network connectivity and application usage is quite transparent to him.
So, providing smoother usage with less troublesome and (probably better written) applications is the way to go. This does not essentially mean, pulling out a linux installation and replacing the whole thing.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
When people use "the easy choice" (i.e. whatever monopolist software they got with their computer, provided by their company, stolen by their friend or even bought) they participate in a certain world construction. A world where your media experience, computer usage and governement interactions are seamlessly integrated. And DRMs, DCMA, Patriot ACT II will garenty that you will not be able to circumvent the way your media experience will be built. Your e-mails, documents will be open for "security reasons" to whom ever has a "need to access". I do not want this world for my children (or anybody elses children). People that accept "software patents", "closed formats", are willingly renouncing all their liberties.
And conspiring to remove mine.
Patented Document formats means that you loose the full right to your content.
Using propriatary Instant Messages means that you are creating a community of people under the control of the company that owns the IM servers.
It means that you are pushing your friends into having to accept whatever "advertisement", "content surveillance", "payment schedule" the provider wants.
So to be very clear: using "monopolistic" software is either a demonstration of ignorance, cowardice or evilness.
Take your pick.
People often assume that I care about whether others use OSS or not.
In truth, though, I don't really care. Sometimes I recommend that others don't use OSS! e.g. My wife & kids use Macs. (Although they use some OSS on the Macs.)
What I do, though, is ask people why they let software vendors get away with charging money for a product that doesn't have the features that similar OS product has.
(Of course, they can ask why my software doesn't have a feature that theirs has. To which I say: I have no one to blame but myself. If a feature is important enough to me, I have the freedom to implement it myself without recreating the entire application. Since I didn't have to pay for the software, I have nothing but thanks rather than complaints for those who created it.)
Plus, I tend to complain when people send me data in proprietary formats that are harder for me to deal with. But I still don't care what software they're using. I'm quick to point out that their software can write to open formats just fine.
I care because Firefox renders my http://lividict.org/ better. And Safari 1.x sucks!
I wish I could say it was just because I wanted OSS to succeed, and that definitely plays a role for me. Also, the better OSS is doing, the more people will work on it.
Truly, however, it is for my sanity. *I*'m the one everyone goes to when their MS products break, and I'm *SICK* of having to fix things, and having people blame me for Microsoft's shoddy work.
"I'm feeling very shpongled. Smashed, mashed, completely geshtopenflapped."
its a much harder sell to people to drop what they already have ( switch ) then it is to capture new users..
There are few good reasons to *switch* if you are already a paid customer of the commercial items..
There are many good reasons if you arent.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
By creating more competition amongst developers, they are all forced to put more thought into their code and pay more attention to what their user's want/need. That is why microsoft has sucked for so long...for years there was no adequate competition so many of their programs were just thrown out there without adequate testing or full regard to user needs.
I see just the opposite. Microsoft may suck, but it's not because of the lack of competition (I bet I can find proprietary software that competes with every one of microsoft's applications).
Open source encourages less innovation. Many applications are re-built on-top of existing code. If the source was proprietary, programmers would have to create their own version (with different code). There is also a drive by the programmer to come out with better applications.
This also has the added advantage of encouraging the commercial software developers to lower the prices for their software, which is often very expensive. Not to mention it drives user's towards opensource projects which are need more users because their software is free and often are only supported via user donations. Because they're opensource and contribute to the knowledge of the community, it is generally more of a public service to get them more users in hopes that some of them will donate something to help sustain the opensource project(s) as long as possible.
the market determines the price. Adobe wouldn't be charging $200 for photoshop, if people weren't buying it.
- Openoffice - removes macro virus problem.
- Thunderbird/ Firefox - removes email and web virus problems.
- All of the above - removes global problem of vendor lock-in and dependency on obnoxious/ arrogant corporate tech support.
Thank you.
In the first place, I always tell people that GNU/Linux/BSD is not for everyone. I tell them if all you do with a computer is surf the web or play games or download music - in other words, if a computer is nothing to you but an entertainment device - than you're better off with Windows.
If, however, you even *think* of attempting to get any productive work done on a computer, then I say you're a fool to use anything *but* an open-source platform. That is motivated solely by my honest belief that, on the whole, GNU/Linux/BSD gets the work done faster, more correctly, and certainly more intelligently.
The side-ways motivation is, we are coming upon an age that will doubtless be looked upon as a dark one. Every time I hand someone a tool which they can take apart and learn from, I am showing them that elves and faries are not what makes it go, that an invisible man in the sky did not make them out of mud, that they are not stupid but rather impeded by their society from learning anything, that science works in a logical fashion.
Which will serve to prevent the human race's devolution back to tree-dwelling primates not a bit, but will at least slow it down enough to help ensure I still have people with minds to talk to while *I'm* still alive.
Regarding competitive business:
One of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism and free trade is that competition promotes innovation and growth. Just because an opensource project uses some of the same code doesn't mean it's bad or isn't innovative. One of the beauties of opensource is that you are free to take the parts of existing code and use them and modify/improve the rest to your specifications. As I was told quite often in my programming classes: Why re-invent the wheel? Especially when you can take a pre-existing wheel and modify it a little to produce a better one. It is always necessary to start everything from scratch. Most people never do start from scratch, even commercial developers, unless certain innovations make it necessary. If it isn't necessary, they use any preexisting code they have and/or modify it to fit their needs. With opensource projects, there just happens to be a MUCH bigger repository of code to choose from because of the other opensource projects. You can learn from their code and incorporate it in your own.
I was stating that it inspires innovation and such between competitors. That is the essence of competition, doing better than your competitors. When I see noone is buying my product because you have a better one, then i strive that much harder to make mine better.
Regarding photoshop:
People wouldn't be buying it if there was a cheaper solution that worked as well (or if they knew about one).
as a web designer, it's frustrating trying to make web sites appear just as you want them to. when microsoft's internet explorer fails to follow css and html standards, it can be very annoying to web designers. so, converting users of ie to firefox is a matter of wanting your audience to see something the way it was intended to be viewed. i also think that monopolistic corporations should not be supported in any way. converting users to non-microsoft products that are generally better applications helps break down consumers' faith in microsoft.
I like your brain... and your saying.
Yes, I see your point, you're saying competition kills your profits, so you must do everything in your power to kill the competition...
I see that it's more important for you to kill the competition than to give real value to your customers, I can understand; you would be a closed source proponent.
But I'm warning you, I'll do my best in the following years to educate peoples around me and make them understand how much added value the source brings to a software, even to non-programmers, how it will promote innovations, how it will prevent the lock-ins that corporations tend to like too much. This, if I'm successful, will be less customers for you and I'm not sorry.
If it happens the way I would like it to be: Yes the economics will change, some companies will fall, some others will thrive. The days that a guy was able to make billions just because he had the software product of the moment with enough lock-ins in it are over, I hope.
Why would I hope?, why would I put efforts in trying to convince others? why?
Because one day after 10 years of MS and after 1 year of Linux I instinctivly wrote that line:
dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > ~/drawer1_part1.gz
That day I started to believe. In this tiny shell command line I saw the thruth, the might of the thruth, I've been illuminated by it.
And the thruth was that I've been had for 10 years.
And OK, you're right, I didn't take much time to "semantically attack the other's arguments" but I went for the heart of it and left for other stuff..
Now being a resonable person and not totally driven by greed (rather than those individuals who with a complete absence of morals can ignore the defects in microsoft products and promote and sell them as long as they as individuals are making a profit), Linux as the best solution for operating systems is worth promoting and distributing even when you get no other reward apart from the satisfaction of working ih the public's interest (this of course includes firefox and thunderbird).
Now you could ask people, is there any reason other than greed for supporting microsoft and it's products. Because there are things people are willing to do for free does not devalue them against those things people are only willing to do when they do get paid.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This isn't really about GNU and you shouldn't spread confusion; Open Source and GNU don't really have anything to do with each other.
I want to open source them so we can fix that dang human stupidity bug that we have been working around for a few thousand years.
The reason I think people should use more open source products is because we seem to be facing a time where everyone wants to shut doors and put locks on everything. It could just be the whole information wants to be free argument, but I think it's really something larger.
The linux driver world keeps getting better and better, but I think it's still not nearly as close as the MS world and it will continue to not be until more people start adopting linux and the hardware vendors start providing native support.
Linux in some ways is always on the bleeding edge of what can be done with the hardware. It's pushing it's limits, but with microsoft it always seems so cut and dry. I think that once the hardware gets to be more open.. things should take off....