Man Tries To Live an Open Source Life For a Year

jfruh writes "Sam Muirhead, a New Zealand filmmaker living Berlin, will, on the 1st of August, begin an experiment in living an open source life for a year. But this is going way beyond just trading in his Mac for a Linux machine and Final Cut Pro for Novacut. He's also going to live in a house based on an open source design, and he notes that trying to develop and use some form of open source toilet paper will be an "interesting and possibly painful process.""

Comments

Re:A life without Coke?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I once spent 2 hours walking around with RMS looking for a restaurant that he liked AND served pepsi. This was in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, where most good restaurants have an exclusive deal with Coca Cola. In each place we entered, he asked if they served coke, and in a few places he insisted on speaking with the manager and when he got his way, he explained to him in gruesome details all the atrocities the Coca Cola company did in Colombia to workers.

I firmly believe in Free Software, and I admire RMS for everything he has done for the world. I try to uphold my principles, but this semi-religious thing of taking it to the extreme and avoiding anything even remotely related to something you disagree with, as if it was permanently tainted by immorality, is just plain stupid.

My company tries to free under the GPL as many products as possible, but if we freed certain things, we would be out of business. If I refused to use privative software at all, I couldn't even use a phone (even if the soft is free, the GSM firmware won't be).

What this guy is doing is just a publicity stunt, and a fairly stupid one at that. He thinks he's sending a message, but it's not the one he's thinking about.