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No Respect for Windows Open Source
man_of_mr_e writes "Shaun Walker, one of the founding developers of the DotNetNuke Portal/CMS has written an interesting piece about Open Source software on the Windows platform. "It's hard being an open source project on the Microsoft platform. Because no matter how hard you try to exemplify true open source ideals, you will not get any respect from the non-Microsoft community." He also says "There are Open Source zealots who believe that unless an application is part of a stack which includes 100% Open Source services and components, that it can not claim to be Open Source. [...] But does this "stack" argument actually make any sense?""
his reminds me of that Star Trek Voyager episode a friend of mine watched and told me about because I'd never watch that. The Voyager was chasing down some other Starfleet ship that had modded there ship by using direct port alien injection. They were squishing Martians or something to make warp 1000 to get back to Earth. So this story is exactly like that; the DNN team are essesntially doing a good thing (like the alien mashers getting their people home), but in a bad way (helping the evil company by providing it with free apps that promote their product).
Personally, I don't trust them. In this case, I'd encourage them to go closed source. Nobody should be promoting the use of VBScript or whatever that crappy Basic derivitive is that people use to write ASP (I've converted a lot of this garbage to PHP/Perl, and everything I've seen written using ASP has been absolutely horrific - the worst, least optimised crap I've ever seen - hell I could do better way back when I used to sit in my high-chair bashing away on my toy learning computer - last week it was. Now I think of it, maybe this is why IIS seems slow and wobbly; it's burdened with coping with the worst "Programmers" on Earth.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Open source is open source, no matter what platform. Just because you use Windows does not mean that you beleive that everything should be DRMed or closed. If you write something open souce, you know what, thats good enough for me.
Yay, I have a sig.
Considering still 90% of people, inc me, use a Windows environment, having your software work on it is not a bad idea, unless you want to cut 90% of your market off without even trying. Get people onto free open source software and they may try your OS. I wouldn't have tried Linux if I hadn't tried OSS such as Firefox/OO, yes it's silly but I didn't know about it before them.
I hold more respect for people willing to produce open source products for windows. Mainly because of the people this article is written about. I think there's some sort of irony to giving away something so open on top of a platform that stands very much for closed. Maybe that's just me though. I don't see a lot of people griping when their Closed-Source ATI linux driver keeps their video card running on their "open source" OS...
Why is this a surprise? Devlopers of closed-source software on Linux get a similar lack of respect (oracle excepted)
Unless an application is running on a system in which the processor design, motherboard schematics and BIOS firmware are 100% Open Source, it can not claim to be Open Source.
Sound reasonable?
No, of course not. These are zealots we're talking about. Logic rarely has anything to do with it.
As to the argument: What are the overall goals of OSS? I suspect you'd get 10 different answers from 5 different people. But even if you define the goal as free and open software, you'd still want OSS projects on windows to create a transition medium. So the zealots would still be wrong.
In short, ignore them and keep up the good work.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It's just a vocal minority. Chill. Most people aren't that particular.
Seriously, I love the fact that people are passionate enough about something that they're willing to write Open/Free Software for Windows. After all, it's a VERY popular platform, and unlikely to go away any time soon. Firefox? Sure! OpenOffice.org? Yes, please! These two projects are helping keep things at the office I work at both safe and legal. ClamWin? Why not? I could go on, but I won't.
A good analogy would be the days when kuro5hin.org was worth reading. You'd have material that was getting voted to sections and the front page all the time, but you'd only see comments like "stop posting this crap, we don't want to read it!"
Who's "we"?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I'm usually very understanding of people defending linux, unix, bsd... and in fact, I'm an avid NetBSD user myself. However, people who don't support open source software on Microsoft platforms are really just hurting themselves. For example, how can one argue against the "low quality of open sourced software" to a Windows user, who cannot try any open source software themselves? Mozilla Firefox has helped immensely in this regard, showing how open source software can truly trump proprietary software.
I'm all for open source operating systems, but let's be realistic here: zealots who don't respect open source efforts on Windows are not only being stubborn, but are hurting their treasured cause.
- dshaw
Here's what I think of open source, at least from a technical perspective.
From a legal perspective, there are 58 OSI-approved "open source" licenses last I checked, which together constitute at least 58 different definitions. There's no consensus on what it really means. Personally, I feel that if I can read the code, the code is open source. All the other factors are extraneous.
However, one would think that in the spirit of openness, the open source community would welcome whatever contributions it gets, no matter how they're licensed. Sadly, that's rarely the case. I actually had someone threaten me with trademark infringement on the term "open source," when we released the Lampshade PHP framework under a dual license of our own. Of course, that person didn't own the trademark, becaues there is no trademark on the generic term, but whoever it was felt justified in threatening me anyway.
If the open source community wants respect, it should be willing to treat people who contribute with respect, too. Scaring off contributors is not the way to go.
Why is this a problem? and why should OSS developers on the Windows platform care about opinions of zealots?
I know a lot of people are going to say that if you want to use a content management tool like Dot Net Nuke, why not just go Linux instead.
That's sometimes easier said than done. I worked for a company that had a huge existing codebase in ASP and C#, and they had already bought the licenses for Windows server. The actual Microsoft Content Management Server was so insanely prohibitively expensive that it wasn't even an option. Dot Net Nuke saved the day.
For the open source model to become what people want it to become, it needs to be not only embraced by the slashdot community of Linux nerds, but by everbody else, as well. Stuff like this is a good start.
Is there a story here? Even if these people were a majority it doesn't do anything to stop anyone who wants to write open source for whatever platform they feel like. Even if these people want to declare that freely distributed Windows source is no longer to be called Open Source it still wouldn't stop Windows users distributing software and calling it something else. So try as I might, I can't find even the tiniest shadow of a story here.
If it's Windows only I could see how the anti-MS types would lose respect but if it's cross platform then intentionally preventing it from running on Windows would seem to be missing the point of openness.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
The kernel that is being run doesn't really matter to a user when they consider one specific program. Usually what matters is the librarys being used. While supporting Windows is a honorable goal, using Win32 exclusive libraries creates problems. The windows implementations of Gaim, and wget work well because the foundational libraries project authors used to write the software have been ported to platforms that did not already support them. When you choose to write an open source program using proprietary libraries, porting to a more useful platform is hard, and the lack of forsight observed is just frusturating.
/. crowd will not assess many pity points for whining.
I think the quoted in this post was trying to get false sympathy. By using someone elses foundation you are gaining advantages that allow your job to be done more easily, However when that foundation is closed source you do no favours to people who would improve or port your project. So unless you want to do ALL the non-foundational work yourself, find a good open source foundation, or write your own OS foundation.
This is more of a practical argument than a philosphical one. I'm sure the
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I mean, sure, there are undeniably people who insist on running a 100% pure free software stack (I'm close to this end of the spectrum myself). And there are undeniably trolls out there who see the use of non-free software (more commonly MS software specifically) as evidence of moral corruption, idiocy, or malice. And these populations have some overlap.
But so what? The reaction from the sane folks in the OSS community is going to be just, well, ignorance. As a full-time linux user, I will admit that I've never heard of "DotNetNuke" and have no plans on using it. It just doesn't enter my field of view, sorry.
Ignoring projects isn't the same thing as "disrespect", and I suspect the author has confused the two.
Would I care if a project that was really useful to me on Windows wasn't viable on Linux? Yes and no. I think that platform independence is a HUGE plus in the FOSS world. It definitely earns you bonus points. It increases the level of freedom the users of that project have. BUT, users of that project are also free to port it to other platforms. I wouldn't be able to run my WAMPP environment if people hadn't ported the AMPP portion to Windows.
Using more proprietary foundations like .NET do limit the usefulness of an OSS project, but only until people get interested in developing ports. If nothing else, you can build a forked project that uses the best logic and functions that aren't platform dependent and merges them with a more platform independent underpinning.
If you're developing OSS for .NET, kudos on being open source, but you do miss the bonus points for being platform independent and don't whine about not getting the cred platform-independent projects of the same nature do. If you're an OSS user who sees this great project built on a proprietary stack and are pissed because it's not available for your platform, "port up or shut up".
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
It's just platform chauvinism, plain and simple. It stems from a very simplistic world view, a sort of If you aren't 100% against them, you must be against us.
The irony is, it's often those who whine and complain the loudest about Micro$oft that do the least to support actual Open Source development.
Ooops, that was almost well thought out and reasoned... I should have just said: "You're new here, aren't you?"
The question is not does it run on an open platform, but can it. Linux and NetBSD, for example, will boot happily on a MIPS system running on an FPGA - and the core can be downloaded from Open Cores under a Free license. That's probably a bit more Free than I feel the need to be, but I like the option being there. Software written using Windows APIs, however, will not run on anything other than Windows unless care has been made to port it to winelib or similar.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
From my experience, there are a lot of people who make "free" software in windows and it's frowned upon becuase "it's a plot to install a virus on my system". Then there is the folks who feel that writing software for windows should earn them money no matter what. On the flip side, you can get a lot of flack for making non-free software on Linux or you can been seen as evil for charging for services that "should be free". Long and short of it: you can't please everyone. If it makes you happy and people are using it, just keep doing what you are doing. There is a vocal minority on either side of the fence to flame you :)
-Carl "No, we already thought of that one. 'Why?' '42' - It doesn't fit." -Hitchhiker'
...reminds me of that Star Trek Voyager episode a friend of mine watched and told me about because I'd never watch that. The Voyager was chasing down...
We're all geeks here, no need to deny it.
1) There is no operating system called "doze" - You might benefit from the link in my tagline.
2) You can't defeat something unless you have something better to replace it with. Linux is not better from an end-user standpoint.
3) People who port their software are NOT part of the problem. They are part of the solution. Exposure to what F/OSS is capable of will make it more likely that someone will use it in the future.
4) People like you are part of the problem. You would limit choice based on platform.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
This is one reason why I don't use C#. People who use C# develop for Windows and Windows only (MONO be damned). C# is owned by Microsoft; true there is an open implementation but Microsoft has refused to support it, refused to allow them to their .NET conferences or anything else... which says they will NEVER support an open implementation of C#.
It's like building an 'open source' house with wood that's owned by Bill Gates. What is going to happen to your house when Bill decides to start breeding termites on location? Bye bye house. And bye bye open source C# implementation.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
The stack argument never made any sense. Over the years I've seen too many projects that claim to have Windows versions, and then when you download the source they don't include any kind of Windows build files (NMAKEs, project files, etc) or they say it has source for Windows when it really just has source for Cygwin, which isn't native Windows. Worse than that, I have even seen projects that just give you headers and libs with the Windows "developer" distribution. Or, if you offer to provide better Windows development files, they say they don't want them. This will often happen with project files for MSVC. Yes, I know they are subject to the format whims of MS's next release, but for cryin' out loud the format doesn't change that often, and there is nothing that says you can't provide NMAKEs and other, more stable build scripts too. Regardles, those MS files are part of the preferred method for modifying the program and I have even seen projects where the developers obviously used MSVC but wouldn't tar up those files. That's just cruel, because then I have to go through the hassle of re-creating them.
Anyway, the stack argument is being invalidated every day by apps like Firefox and Open Office. It might not have taken so long if so many people hadn't been snobbish. People are more likely to replace their kernel when they can keep familiar apps then they are to replace familiar apps for the sake of a kernel.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I had the utmost respect for OSS but no knowledge of linux or any of its programming languages, so i felt like opening up my Vb6 apps would be my small contribution to the world. i got no respect from any other programmers and i couldnt figure out why. they told me that as long as my projects were on a microsoft platform, in a proprietary language, that they could not fundimentally be open. i would forever be microsofts bitch.
Then microsoft killed Vb6, and i understood what they meant.
I am now writing this from a laptop i built especially for ubuntu and i need to stop looking at slashdot because my C homework is due in 3 hours.
(Meh, sorry to those I modded up, but I need to say this.) The article is (possibly intentionally) vague on what they mean by 'Windows OSS projects.' If you read into what DotNetNuke actually is, you'll discover that it is a Windows-only OSS project built on the .NET framework, and that they appear to be partly sponsored by Microsoft itself. The article is referring to Windows-only OSS projects, not OSS projects with Windows versions.
Though I imagine projects like VLC, Freeciv, and Gaim occasionally have someone whining about their supporting windows, that's not what this is talking about, and frankly, where DotNetNuke is concerned, I'm with the 'zealots', despite having nothing against proprietary software. OSS has built up a strong reputation for being cross-platform, so an OSS project that's for Windows-only and is dependant on Microsoft technology is understandably going be frowned upon by OSS purists. Windows-only OSS developers are, arguably, not helping the OSS communities much, and they are especially detrimental to the spread of Open-Source and Open-Source-based operating systems. It's not showing Windows users that they have something nifty that they could still have if they decided to try linux or get a Mac, it's just further miring people in the Windows platform.
Now, are these people against DotNetNuke still looking so much like zealots, or are they perhaps starting to look more like people against Microsoft who see this as yet another boost to Microsoft's power?
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
I am a strong believer in F/OSS. Not only do I run it, but I contribute code and money (I also submit bug reports, patches, contribute answers to forums, and am an advocate of F/OSS to my peers). In short, I drink the Kool-Aid. I use only Linux and FreeBSD on machines I own (and I bought the machine on my desk at work, so I can use it there). I am a zealot. I think that an all (or mostly) F/OSS stack is something to strive for & that a lot of F/OSS software does work better on a free OS (usually because that is what the developers write it for & where it gets the most complete and knowledgable testing).
That being said, I do still sometimes have to use Windows & I am happy to have F/OSS on that platform. I patch my own code to work around bugs that only impact Windows users & I have financially supported projects on that platform. I have even given money to good F/OSS software which is only on that platform. I am certainly not alone. Just look at the top projects on sourceforge. Most run on Windows. Some run only on Windows.
So...some of the best Windows-only/Windows-mostly F/OSS:
Filezilla--great (S)FTP client/server. Hopefully a *nix port soon.
7-zip--excellent compression software. p7zip is there for the rest of us, but updates take a while to reach us.
PuTTYFor your ssh/scp/sftp needs.
I've given money to these projects & carry them around on a USB key (along with Thunderbird, Firefox, and vim). Cygwin is another handy thing to have if you have to be on win32 for very long.
Good heavens, don't do that!
There are only a few vendors who make FPGAs with enough gates to run a full MIPS core (you'll need more than the mimimum to boot an interesting operating system). And then you're locked in!
Unless the FPGA design is open source, you're a complete hypocrite, worse than any Windows user, because you preach open source and are living in sin.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
1) It wasn't right then, it's not right now. If you really love Linux/Unix/Etc, then at least try to support it in a way that encourages new users. This brand of advocacy that you endorse just makes it so people think you're a raving lunatic with no objective opinion. You know, a zealot.
2) Sure it can. Right now, OS X is better than Linux is, and it appears to have coexisted just fine in a Windows dominated world.
3) Most people don't know anything about OSS, and are unlikely to move to Linux just to experience it. Face it, Linux users in general are the minority, and if you want to see that userbase increase, we need to slowly get these people used to the idea that OSS is not something to fear.
[..]we shouldn't be supporting windows by making it more usable.
4) Actually, as per your original post (see above line), you flat out said we shouldn't port OSS to Windows. That's limiting choice based on platform. Isn't part of the whole FOSS argument that you're giving the user choice and freedom?
5) You take things way too seriously. Relax.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
From your site:
In order to download DotNetNuke® Projects, you must register on the site.
I'm thinking you're getting no respect in the Open Source community because you don't get it. The community is not about how you license your software (you don't even have to be a developer to be a member of the OS community). It's about the spirit of community and openness from which springs the compulsion to use a particular license for your software.
The above statement from your site and your publication of an MS-only piece of software makes me assume that you accept Open Source because that's the way the world is and it is how one develops a resume these days, not because you like it. Is that necessarily true of you? I can't say for sure, but first impressions mean a lot, even your post somehow hits me as a little off - something about the whining or faulting others because you are not being accepted, like you need someone to bless your OS-ness, instead of just knowing you have it. I can't say exactly what all it is, but I'm guessing it's the same thing that has made others uneasy (perhaps some other poster will be more insightful in identifying the real causes).
Moreover, changing that one line on your site isn't going to do it. Faking it won't work - if you don't understand, people will see it in a million ways. OS developers will see it and continue to give you no cred. If I'm wrong, or if you're willing to learn more and understand why Open Source is a good thing, more power to you. But until you do, you're probably in for a fair amount of continued disenfranchisement.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Since XP, technological measures have been in place (DeActivation) that can separate you from your applications (not to mention your data) at any time, through wilful act of the vendor, or fault in the system, and this is regularly experienced by customers of M$ and Adobe.
It seems obvious that portability is part of the spirit of freedom as expressed in free and open source software. If your code can't migrate from Windows - then it's going to be taken from you and your users sooner or later.
you had me at #!
Just go look at the stats on sourceforge, software that runs on windows gets 10x the downloads that linux software does. A great example is Postgresql which was ignored by many until it got a windows port. Who needs respect when you've got popularity?
I've found a couple of situations where free software has a better quality implementation on Windows than linux. I came to mozilla for Windows from a linux background. Yet there are several niggly ways in which mozilla/windows is better than mozilla/linux. One of them is the fact that you can't use ctrl+arrow in the address bar to select by word in linux.
Eclipse is far more responsive and cleaner-looking on Windows than linux.
I've used postgresql on linux for years and years. The other day I installed postgresql for Windows and was quite impressed by the implementation. It works like a Windows app but doesn't compromise performance or power.
Believe with me, my saplings.
The problem is that a significant cost in producing a hardware product - any hardware product - is the software engineering. If a Chinese company could "borrow" the driver for an ATI product, they would be one step closer to producing an ATI replacement product. I am sure they already either are licensing or "borrowing" the hardware bits.
So, ATI knows this. All opening up the driver would do is (a) give people more of an opportunity to screw things up and (b) give a helping hand to people that want to drive them from the marketplace.
Most video drivers these days are pretty large - larger than your average open source project - and unlikley to respond well to being tweaked by people unfamiliar with the architecture. Surely you don't think ATI's drivers are better self-documenting and structured than most open source projects, do you?
I use and recommend a lot of Free/Open Source software on Windows. I just don't use Windows for my own purposes, so most of these solutions tend to be cross-platform.
I don't use Windows because I don't like the terms of the EULA. But I don't make that decision for my customers. In these cases, complimenting Windows with Free/Open Source software (like SpamBayes, Cygwin, and the like) makes a lot of sense. So while I make my own software use decisions around the stack argument, I want my customers to have access to Free Software regardless of what operating system they currently use.
For the most part, I don't recommend a lot of Windows-only FOSS. Most of the projects I recommend are somewhat cross-platform. So a Free/Open Source Windows-only apps aren't going to get much of my notice. However, there are exceptions and I think it is important to cultivate a Windows-based open source community (if nothing else it will warm people up to other open source projects).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Still living in the 90s?
That is simply no longer the case.
Install ubuntu from CD, download nvidia driver (as you would need to with windows anyway), boom.
Installed.
Been using it for 6 months without even having a compiler installed.
I will *not* buy Vista 64 bit (and not because I"m cheap/broke/live in mum's basement/whatever - I'm 28, living OUT of home and earning a decent wage with 90% disposable income).
There's simply no need for it.
Sure, there's a limited games selection, but there hasn't been a single game in the last 12 months thats really grabbed my attention in any case (and yes, I've been keeping an eye out/playing them from time to time on Windows) - except for GT4, which i play on PS2.
I love how many people consider themselves an authority on the whole Windows v Linux debate, when they clearly have no experience with Linux since the mid-late 1990s...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The kernel and shell are the easiest parts of a system to swap, considering the obvious similarities between modern GUI shells.
The applications are the hardest part to replace. Change apps until they are all free, then it's trivial to move them to a free kernel and shell.
The true beauty of free software is its cross platform and hardware independant nature.
POKE 36879,8
I think that the author of the article misses the real point. Most people writing OSS run Linux. That's a fact. People writing OSS are much more likely to write for a platform they use frequently, Linux. If you are writing an OSS app for Windows, most of the rest of the OSS community, running Linux, sees little point because they can't use your software.
Few care about the nit-picky definition of "not being open because the whole platform isn't open" The author of the article misrepresents that for the general lack of interest most of us have in Windows-only software- we simply can't use it, and are therefore unable to see why we should care. That being said, many larger OSS projects maintain windows ports (firefox, gaim, etc), but they were Linux programs first for the most part.
I suppose this would be as good a place as any to mention the wiki I started, Windows for Linux Users, which attempts to gather up some software that is useful for long-time Linux users who are for some reason constrained to use Windows. I know I had a terrible time getting the environment to a point where I didn't want to smash the computer because focus wasn't following mouse and a bunch of other little annoyances.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
but open source software that runs only on Windows encourages the use of Windows
and discourages the use of free operating systems. On the way to a fully free
software stack, it's basically a dead end. You can't expect the members
of the FOSS community to endorse that.
Open Source, two words. One means 'Open', e.g. the opposite of 'Closed' and the other one means sourcecode, together they mean: a non-closed form of sourcecode.
Gee, since WHEN is that tied to CROSS PLATFORM crap? Because in this particular situation, it's very handy to use that cross-platform nonsense to hit back at this DNN OSS developer?
It's precisely the whining YOU put forward in your posting what made him write the article.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I won't deny anyone the right to spend their time the way they want to, but I can see why people writing OSS for Windows don't earn as much respect as those writing for a free *nix.
The reason is that Windows is incompatible with existing OS API standards. This makes it difficult to port apps to or from Windows, whereas getting an app that uses mostly POSIX APIs to work on any other operating system requires a lot less effort.
Thus, if you want to support multiple platforms, your choices are essentially to spend the extra effort and support Windows, or to support only the other operating systems and spend the effort actually developing your app. As I said in the beginning, you're free to chose as you wish, but I'd choose the latter option any day.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Windows, by its very way of being, has instilled in people a certain culture that is at odds with the Open Source movement.
Windows brings the idea that the act of writing software is a service that must be paid for, by charging money for the privilege of installing said software. The Open Source movement believes that the act of writing software should not chargeable. After all, the programmer who wrote it was going to write it anyway irrespective whether or not you paid for it; so refusing to hand it over without payment is just playing dog-in-the-manger -- and contravening Freedom Two in the process. But Windows goes on further and directly contravenes Freedoms One and Three {both of which are contingent upon the user having access to the source code, which is not supplied with the software} and even goes some way towards infringing upon Freedom Zero by means of the -- mercifully unenforcible -- End User Licence Agreement.
If something costs money, goes the thinking, then it can be stolen. And so there has appeared a group of people who have obtained Windows and other software without paying for it. Microsoft calls these people "pirates" and "thieves"; in reality they have stolen nothing but are merely attempting unilaterally to assert Freedoms Zero and Two. This fuels an attitude amongst these people that they are "sticking it to The Man" somehow, when in fact they are just as dependent upon The Man as any paying customer. In fact, by far the vast majority of software used in the world consists of unpaid-for copies of Microsoft Windows and applications running upon it.
Back in The Days, when computer users had no choice but to be knowledgeable in the field, the Four Freedoms could to a large extent be taken for granted. Computer users were effectively a society who looked after their own. Everyone benefitted from everyone else's work, and collaboration was the only way to advance. The community shared the bond that comes from a survival situation. The incompatibilities between different kinds of computer meant that the only feasible way to share software was in the form of source code {and often, different implementations of the "same" programming language meant that even this needed significant alteration}.
Today, it is possible even for a person who knows nothing about the inner workings of a computer to use one. This situation has led to a large number of people who are ignorant of the existence of this thing called "source code", believing it to be of importance only to boffins in laboratories somewhere. This attitude is deplorable: it is like someone who lives in a city not caring about which plants are edible, or how to build a bivouac, dismissing such knowledge as of importance only to "survival nutters" and the Military. Even if you do not know these things yourself, it is important at least to have friends who know these things -- it might save your life one day.
Ignorance of the benefits of the Four Freedoms is exactly what fuels the acceptance of the way Windows, and other closed-source software, trample on them. Windows users typically have been taught not to care about Open Source software. Either they expect to have to pay for software and not get the source code, or they expect to be able to get it without paying {like they are doing something big and clever} and do not care about the source code. Windows users who go on to become developers typically perpetuate the Cycle of Abuse by releasing their software closed-source. {cf. children brought up in violent families who go on to inflict violence upon their own children}. In some cases, the abuse of users' Four Freedoms is malicious but in many cases, it may be attributed to ignorance caused by developers having no better example.
The kind of computer user who is savvy enough to understand the importance of the Four Freedoms in general, and source code in particular, typ
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Well there's been some interchanging of "free" and "open" throughout the comment sections which I'm not sure is warranted since there's two different philosophies at work here in terms of software. But for all points and purposes I suppose I'll try and tackle both.
:)
Yes, GNU isn't interested in developing things which are not [or rather, cannot be] free from the ground up. That's why they don't endorse OpenOffice 2.0 or the Sun JDK [the former due to great use of the latter]. Sure, there was compromise at the beginning, what with having to develop GCC on some other compiler that wasn't free [if memory serves me right from "Revolution OS"], but the groundwork has been laid out and so there's nothing stopping the 'proper' development of free software now.
But the perceived issue here is in regards to the politics of open source and the lack of understanding of those mentalities when it comes to Windows users. Indeed, it's hard to change that mindset overnight; as a University student [and a CS major to add to that] I'm faced with enough "pay me for my work" peers that cannot even begin to understand the point of doing something for free [they believe no one will donate a penny given the choice]. There's also the ones that use Linux due to financial constraints but have no other affinity to the OS or the mentality.
I consider that neither of these groups can truly understand the nature of free and/or open source. While the world is happy enough with just one Richard Stallman, it cannot be denied that Linux is a movement that has more than just technological implications. Sure, it isn't communist [as it has been sometimes thrown around] but maybe some "technological marxism" [economically speaking] can be traced to it, and surely it bothers a lot of people.
Okay, kinda went off-topic there, apologies.
Windows OSS isn't a movement per-se. It's sprung as a by-product of the Linux/BSD OSS movements and lacks the drive or 'notoriety' characteristic to these. There's rarely any understanding of the core mentalities in most [read: average] Windows users and they'll look at anything free with incredulity at best and suspicion at worst.
The non-Windows community doesn't disregard WinOSS based solely on the non-free stack upon which it tries to function: yes, I think it is generally a matter of portability rather than anything else. Most OSS devs work in free environments because it feels more 'at home' to do so; and non-portable code does not interest them since they cannot benefit it.
The stack principle is valid in terms of free software; the mentioning of it here, when it comes to Open software, seems an indication of the lack of depth given to clearly understanding the difference between the two issues... wonder why you'd get shot down sometimes
Cheers!