FSF Launches "BadVista" Campaign

FrankNFurter writes to note the launch yesterday of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan: "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care."

Comments

All I have to say is...

[Zebra_X]

Wow...

No really, this might be a new low for the FSF. I mean, really people, does this tactic ever work? Far from becoming an effective bad PR campaign it is going to further elevate consumer and user awareness of Vista.

While were at it, why aren't we bashing the hell out of Apple and it's release of Shaguar? After all, Jaguar runs on fully DRM'd, TCP'd hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows users.

So....

[Planesdragon]

Where's the "here is how you do that in Linux" part of the movement?

It's all well and good to say that Vista is a "don't upgrade" for the next twelve months -- but there are improvements in it, some of which rise to the level of intuition, and right now there's no Free way to get those improvements.

The site has bad design...

[kosmosik]

Really. :) I think the message that the site wish to send is good - don't use Vista since it limits your freedoms. OK for me. I can take care of my freedoms on my own no problem.

But the point I am making is the site is crappy. The site is ugly. It consists of bunch of long TEXTS (like anybody likes to read long texts). It should communicate better with some pictorials and clear picture of what Vista will not allow you to do.

Re:The site has bad design...

[Virtual_Raider]

I was thinking the same. The design sucks, it has NO SUBSTANCE whatsoever. It is sad that they are so incredibly lame at communicating their idea.

I went in wanting to be convinced, but instead it comes across as a Fanboi site like many others pointed out. The main page should have the juice straight away. You get in and you read the bulletpoints: Windoze is teh sux because a) It will take away your freedom to copy your legally owned music (insert link)

b) It will spy on you, reporting your every move back to the corporations (insert link)

And so on. They really don't have a clue how to present the information, they are overly verbose for the intended audience which it is very clear they don't understand, the design is so ugly that it takes away much credibility, their claims are not backed up by concise facts, they constantly appeal to emotion, and they don't offer clear-cut instrucions for the alternative.

Also their choice of gNewSense as an alternative OS is weak because it lacks in the same departments: null communication skills, poor design, ZERO instructions. They could at least have picked Ubuntu, which looks much more professional and at least would make an unexperienced user that the thing may actually work.

Why the FSF and other antimicrosofites can't get it through their heads that the average windows user is not stupid but they are also utterly unconcerned with the technical side. From the few distros that I've seen, only Red Hat and Ubuntu seem to have picked up on this fact. If it looks ugly it breeds distrust, and if it is complicated it's deemed not worth it. Free as in Gratis is not enough. In fact, it's no different from a cheap knockoff in their minds. Don't take my word for it. Talk about it to people around you that are not tech fans and you will see, they are not idiots, they simply have different interest and this is a very, very bad attempt at interesting them and it will backfire.

Unless they completely revamp the site and make it look as serious and well presented as the marketing sites for Vista are/will be, offer sensible, to-the-point arguments, and a clear and easy guide to upgrade they would appear to the uninformed like a National Enquirer next to a Wall Street Journal.

I'm registering at the site to tell them this now, if many of us do the same maybe they will listen.

"Treacherous Computing" "Genuine upgrade promlems"

[GodWasAnAlien]

According to the article, They mention the Treacherous Computing nature of the OS and that the Genuine checks cause problems with upgrades. Though more details would be helpful.

Eventually MS and others pushing [Un]Trusted Computing and Digital Restrictions Management will find out that the strangle grip is not the best way to hold and attract costumers.

Not an upgrade?

[im_thatoneguy]

Has he used the RC? I'm finding it a huge upgrade on just about every front. A welcome improvement that will increase my productivity. Of course I'm going to need to upgrade my system to get the most out of it, but I was planning on doing that in February anyway.

This is nothing more than a giant pile of FUD. Accountability in drivers is a huge upgrade, not some soul sucking attempt to steal your humanity. Besides... since when did 'freedom' apply to our computers and operating systems. What's next? My office chair needs the freedom to vote? If I double click on it, it does the job I want it to do, I don't care if Stalin programmed it and titled it "3D Studio Max for the advancement of the Social Utopia and down fall of Democracy." It works it works. Vista works very well. Windows XP hasn't let me down yet, and I'm looking forward to some new glitz and sparkle.

My cameras are black boxes, my lights are black boxes, my chroma paint is top secret, I eat proprietary cereal, my car's design is patented, my apartment design is owned by another company, I can't even paint my walls without permission. but wait... my Operating System... THAT's a holy grail of democracy and freedom. I use almost 0 Open Source software day in and day out, because in my field, it's all worthless except for linux. Gimp? Pfff... yeah why don't I just use MS Paint?

If the author drives an open source car, lives in an open source house, uses only open source hardware, only eats food from freely available recipes and sleeps on a mattress with a freely available design I'll give a shit.

More detail (Re:"Treacherous Computing" "Genuine

[quentin_quayle]

This page says something about the nature of Vista. It shows the six privilege levels:

• Trusted Installer
• System
• High
• Medium
• Low
• Untrusted

The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.

Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control? If you prefer to own your own copy of an OS, you will have to choose free software over Vista.

Free software protects free speech

[Geof]

Your apple shop is a monopoly, and we know monopolies reduce freedom. If freedom is the ability to satisfy wants, e.g. by choosing what to buy (a very narrow definition of freedom, but it's one you apply here) - then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.

You say, "Don't complain unless you can tell me how to fix the thing." We know one way to fix the thing: introduce choice. That's what free software is doing. That's why we need to support it and make it better, not simply say, "it doesn't do X today, so I don't even want to know." For some people, it's a practical choice. That's why Microsoft is afraid of free software.

But there's a wider issue here, and it's the reason I really care. Speech is freedom, but it isn't just a matter of choice: it's generative. It involves creating something original. In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.

I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays. I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified. I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set. I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key. I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene.

This isn't the world we live in. Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software. But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough? When DVRs are limiting the ability to share content; when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer, not the people who buy their software; when Microsoft and Apple are starting to lock down what their systems can do, I don't think that they are. Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own. That's what free software is about. I'm thrilled and proud of everyone who puts in the effort to make my freedom that much greater. You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do.

Re:More detail (Re:"Treacherous Computing" "Genuin

[kinglink]

Yes. Good examples, except one thing. I didn't buy Google, I didn't pay for the servers google is running on, I don't expect Google to bend to my will or help me work (though it does at times). An OS is supposed to be an operating system. Not a Media center / word processing / DRM providing / internet browsing magical box. I have programs that do all of that, I don't use Windows Media Center, Word Pad, IE, for them.

As computer users we have slowly been giving up more and more of our computer to Microsoft and other OSes (even Mac is starting to expand). I think it's time we start saying "Fuck you" to people who over charge us so they can take our computer and run rampant on our hardware. I don't think it's time for Linux if you don't already run it. But it's time for us to remain on Windows XP. It's time to demand that DirectX 10 get ported to XP if you need it. It's time to basically stop taking shit from OSes and start demanding a better OS. Dos could give you a disk operating system for 640k, All I want a simple GUI, that all the programs now run on. Why am I sacrificing 2 gigs of memory just to my OS when it's something that should only require a couple megs if done properly. If we want to clog our systems it's our option.

That's my opinion. But i believe it's anyone else who is sick of being forced to upgrade every 3-5 years to an OS that takes at least double the processing power. Moore's law? Didn't know Moore's first name was Peter.

Re:Would've been nice if...

[ardor]

Funny. Many things you mention are actually old news for many graphics coders. Yes, these are nice new features to see in Windows, but hardly an overall breakthrough.

- The RAM thing exists already - without the paging. Drivers can allocate AGP- and even Sysram to get some space for the data. Sysmem is obviously a very bad idea with AGP, but its there. With PCI, this is much less of an issue. There the drivers can transfer from/to sysram, which gets paged by the OS already.

- Running multiple games at once will obviously hurt their FPS, unless they are not very demanding (running Gothic 3 and Oblivion at the same time is not a good idea). Running several 3D apps side by side HAS to work in Vista since the entire interface is going to be a 3D application, actually. In fact, D3D10 adopted a server/client model from OpenGL here; in OGL it never was a big deal to run several GL apps at once, because they are clients using one server (the graphics card).

- Accelerated drawing: not going to happen. At least not on a primitive stage. The windows are VERY likely to be rectangular textures, but forget about drawing every line with 3D, this is just too inefficient as it chokes the CPU because of wait states. 3D engines usually avoid as many API calls as possible for this reason. CorelDraw's calls are likely to involve GDI. It is perfectly ok for GDI to draw in the window texture. This is faster than traditional GDI because pre-Vista GDI immediately shows the result and has TONS of waitstates built in. The texture approach just involves some writing in a memory block. (Afaik this is the same way Qt4 handles drawing with GL-acceleration, and it is really MUCH faster than traditional 2D.)

- The composer: well, it is really strange why nobody EVER thought of this before. You don't even need a fully-featured composer, just some simple double-buffering would do. This is the very reason why tearing does not happen with Aero, NOT the blending and composing. Turn off double-buffering, and the tearing is back.

As for the vector thing, this DOES sound like marketing babble. I want this in a more detailed form. It would be very strange to see entire bitmaps transferred to the composer anyway, and I doubt its done this way now; heck, even X11 does not handle it this way.

Scaling old apps will give you a blurred result because of the bilinear filtering. Still better than having huge pixels though. GDI calls could be scaled nicely, yes, by sending the coordinates through a scale before drawing. But bitmaps will get blurry (that is, all icons etc.)

- User mode drivers are back, finally. But how am I going to handle GPU driver crashes in Vista? There is no textmode console, so what if video just doesnt restart?

I agree that Vista is a leap, but it just doesnt make it more attractive, really. Its expensive, has a bazillion features that need to be turned off etc. Direct3D 10 is going to be the likely reason why I'm gonna get it (its new features are VERY cool, and I write 3D graphics stuff), as soon as VistaAntiSpy is available :-) but other than that, hm.. The Samba guys have to play catch-up again, because MS changes the SMB protocol yet again and keeps the specs secret, thus enforcing lock-in again. So I can forget using my Samba fileserver with Vista, not good.

Then again, once OpenGL 3.0 is available, D3D10 won't be alone...