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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."
...they included some of these shortcomings. I was expecting a good read, which RMS is usually keen to offer.
Wouldn't this campaign fall under the definition of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt??!! After all, the FSF already hates Microsoft with a passion, and this is just another axe to grind here. I doubt they actually have even seen Vista or used it to know what exactly it is.
Slashdot and its minions seems to hate Microsoft FUD, but shouldn't you people have a problem with FUD on the other side? This site has gone full throttle on the anti-Vista campaign already and it isn't even on store shelves yet. Sheesh.
-b.
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.
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.
I hate negative marketing.
All the effort should be spent on advocating your advantages in a positive manner - and then you can compare yourself to the competition, you have a solution to the problem, you're not merely pointing out the bad stuff.
Negative marketing has been shown time and time again to annoy the people that catch the brunt of it - political campaigns through to Apple adverts. Maybe it will stop a few people upgrading, but it won't make them think of switching another solution unless you present that alternative solution in a wondrous halo of wonder fixing all of their issues.
How about a GoodLinux or something campaign as well?
(I didn't read the article)
...plenty of ignorant MSFT-aplogists' bitching about how the "zealots" are going "mad" about "Windows being teh suxx" and all after this campaign has been announced, but, please, care to tell me where the FSF fails to tell the truth with such nifty things as "signed drivers only", "protected audio path" an the like coming after consumers, which are being promised an overall richer and safer experience in casual computing, but are being entirely stripped of their fair use rights by these "added features" instead?
Vista - it's a trap thing, really. Break out as long as you can.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
This kind of overhyped FUD campaign just makes the FSF look like a bunch of nutty hippies. People don't give a shit about losing a little bit of control over their PC. The care about features. So unless someone can offer a competitive OS that offers the features (not just technical features) that users want and on top of that offer more control over one's PC they're not going to care.
Region encoding on DVDs sucks... but does that keep people from buying DVDs... NO NO NO!
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.
I cringe every time RMS steps out into the scene. It's like trying to tell someone to stop beating his dog, and having PETA step out; or having one of your friends jokingly call you a fag, and having half of Gay Pride suddenly show up behind him; or groping your girlfriend, and having three women from NOW jump up from the next table and tell you how much of an asshole you are and start yelling out into the whole restaurant how guys are all pigs.
RMS is the definition of a modern politician. His campaigns are "XXX IS TRASH BECAUSE IT RAPES YOU OF YOUR FREEDOMS AND KICKS YOUR DOG AND TOUCHES YOUR TEENAGE DAUGHTER DON'T EVER TOUCH XXX BECAUSE IT WILL CHAIN YOU TO YOUR CHAIR AND GLUE YOUR EYES OPEN AND MAKE YOU GIVE YOUR SOUL TO THE BIG GIANT HEAD!!!!!!!111111111" I'm sick and tired of him, and his GPL (LGPL is a great general purpose license), and his bullshit. The only time he says something nice is when XXX becomes GPL XXX; if you want free marketing, start your new product closed source and get RMS to shriek at you, then open source it so he gives you tons of free positive press for 5 weeks.
Why can't we have someone out to show how great Open Source Software is? Talk about what Ubuntu Linux offers, what RedHat and Novel can do for you, what people like about Debian and Gentoo enough to make them use those over more sophisticated derivatives (like Ubuntu), and the various applications. Don't come out here spewing about how everything else is crap, because ONLY the fanatics care; anyone else either wishes you weren't representing them, doesn't care because they're already using OSS and never actually listen to you talk, or uses something else and doesn't quite get why you're such a nutball over this "DRM" and "proprietary freedom restrictions" crap.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I'm not a dedicated MicroSoft hater, but I do miss the days when I gave my computer "commands" not "suggestions". Nothing is quite so aggrivating as hidden directories and being told that I cannot delete something.
We are all just people.
This is not specifically directed at you as I've seen this many times before but I'm tired of people being so narrow-minded as to think that anyone who disagrees with them must be a paid shill or astroturfer. As hard as it may be to believe some people just honestly don't agree with you on everything.
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.
I like linux and prefer it over windows. And i'm not a microsoft fan either. but i must say that i don't like the sound of this particular FSF project. if you have a product (Linux) you should spend your time promoting it and enhancing it. not trying to degrade you'r competitors product (no matter how truthful it might be).
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.
Vista is Bad. Use Linux. Use GPL software.
Forget Linux, I'm waiting for GNU/HURD. Any day now...
4. Driver Support
Vista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista.
This is not Vista-specific, same thing happened in e.g. Windows 2000. Or Windows 95. Or other significant upgrades. Trust me, this will become less of an issue or "bad thing" in 2007, and then, once again, competing operating systems are likely to be worse off in the driver area. Unfortunately. The most common OS developer tend to get the best drivers because driver developers likes making profit from supporting the most common operating systems.
And of course MS made most built-in drivers. They always do in the shipping versions of large OS upgrades. If third party devs aren't done in time, MS will ship reduced functionality to give the user at least something to work with until the real driver is done. NVIDIA, Creative Labs and more are currently developing more complete Vista drivers. You can even read up on this on their sites.
6. Memory
Vista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.
1 GB works here on my test install. I can run Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Office 2007, Guild Wars.
Can they be more precise about "real-world needs"? Working at rendering industry buildings in 3D Studio?
8. Activation
The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
That's why there are KMS servers to reduce it to only one server connecting to MS every half a year per company with 25+ installs, i.e. "mass deployments".
9. Storage Space
With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.
Is 10 GB making up a large part of current hard drives? I see similar sizes in competing operating systems.
10. Backup
See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.
See above.
11. Urgency
Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.
Was suddenly security looking like hell in Windows 9x and XP non-issues? Interesting how they're only issues when it's suitable to complain about them, otherwise not. Vista may still have its share of these issues, but it's way too early to say there are no must-have reasons behind Vista compared to earlier Windows releases. There may not be in case of trouble, but there may also be big ones. They should not make this judgment at this time as it's premature.
12. Learning Curve
Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
Did this stop KDE's first release? Gnome's? Windows 3.0? Windows 95?
Do this author think Windows XP's UI therefore is excellent?
What is the problem exactly, or is the author only stating the blindingly obvious?
13. Cost
Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.
Yes, moving to new OS's tend to cost a lot. That's why we're still running even Windows 2000 at places.
And again, I'm not sure of what hardware upgrades they're talking of.
Memory = see above, graphics cards = similar to in XP if you don't need the Aero eye candy which I can't see too many companies really hungering for.
19. Installation
Can take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.
However, note how they conveniently fail to compare to other operating systems, Microsoft's or others.
I'm sure I can find hardware where a full install of Mandriva will take "hours" on as well.
On my 4 year old hardware, Vista install took ~25 mins.
21. 50 Million Lines Of Code
Even with the five years of development and long beta test period that went into Vis
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I dunno, for me the most important thing about owning a computer is productivity - to be able to do the tasks I want to do. I could migrate to a non-proprietary system, but I would not benefit if it had fewer applications that I find useful. I can't write my own high-level applications. Nor do the Open Source and Free alternatives meet my needs yet. Of course, control is nice, but my proprietary OS (MacOS) gives me more control than I actually use, in addition to great applications. If it stopped me from working with those apps, or locked up the media I used, then it would be an issue.
An analogy might be automatic transmission on a car, or electronic systems in a car. It gives less control and serviceability - but most users find the benefits of automatic transmission and electronics to be worth it. I could buy an old Chevy that I could fix myself - but then I would suffer many drawbacks in actually using the vehicle. Or games consoles - they are not as customizable as a PC system, but most people just want to play games, and a console makes this goal a lot easier to accomplish.
It's rather annoying when people assume what the most important thing is to me.
... and then they built the supercollider.
This page says something about the nature of Vista. It shows the six privilege levels:
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.
Yeah, I invite my friends over to show off how much control I have over it.
this is just asinine. The most important aspect of ME owning and using a computer is that it does something useful for me. (like letting me post on slashdot or look at porn) If I was interested in control, I would use a pencil and paper.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:
Purely speculative.
More guesswork.
Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.
No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.
That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.
These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).
And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.
The answer in the consumer market will be "Hell, Yes." No one there wants to deal with the internals of the machine on anything but the most superficial level.
Also, #18:
Funny, some might have said the same thing in WinXP, until they realized there is a classic view. Vista also has this classic view.
And, #25:
Are they serious? Who the hell uses WordPad to open
#8:
I suppose the author of the article missed the article on their own website about key management servers, and also on the Microsoft support website, which states:
Last but not least, #6:
No... just, no. Vista does use more RAM than WinXP, but why do you think that is? That's right, Aero and the Windows Sidebar. Between those two, I'm using a whopping 48 megs of RAM. You can always turn them off if your system is strapped for RAM. Right now my system is sitting at 696MB usage, which might seem like a lot, until you read that 452MB of that is for cache. So, I'm really only using 244MB.
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.
You are saying that you will OWN a computer in the midst of your living room, install a piece of software in it in order for it to work, you are going to do internet banking over it, send and receive private emails to your colleagues, family, loved ones and friends over it, preserve your private documents on it, and yet, you are o.k. with someone in a remote location having more control over it than you do ? To the extent that they can override whatever you want to do on it ?
What kind of over-trustful approach is this ? Are you living in a place where people still can sleep with their doors unlocked at night ?
Read radical news here
Viruses
Intruders
Spyware
Trojans
Adware
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.