It seems relatively simple to me: Have the first choice be "How much choice do you want?".
We have verbosity levels in logs, why not have a 'busyness' or 'user level' option for ui and configuration? With a few clicks I could change my interface from Default to Clean or Busy, and change my configuration screens from Beginner to Intermediate or Advanced.
One could even have a default that is login, desktop, or system-wide.
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If only Ben Franklin had known people would be using Linux, the choice between Freedom and Security would never have been an issue.
It does not matter who is making money off the os - the issue is that, no matter who makes money off of it, it is a shared resource that continues to grow, and, like a corporation, or a nation, the overall product is much larger than any given individual could do. It's worth creating, refining, and submitting code simply for the fact that that's how we got this OS and many other useful programs. The point is that the corporations are *free* to use the software as they wish, so long as it's within the constraints of the given OSS license. Likewise, we're free to benefit from the code that corporations, such as IBM and the many linux distribution companies, have shared with the community. And what various companies have shared amounts to thousands upon thousands upon thousands (and likely more) of lines of code. That makes those companies, whether they get money off of the product or not (which, by the way, isn't a crime -- money, unlike greed, isn't evil[*]), valid and very valuable members of the community.
Aside from that, wouldn't it be just as foolishly greedy for some random programmer to hoard code (when hoarding doesn't actually benefit that programmer) as it would be for a company to?
Also, if the programmer isn't making money off of open source, he could damn well join a corporation where he would.
[*] - I don't actually think greed is evil. I think it's a rather natural way of progression and forward movement/motivation. However, I think it is, overall, less effective than the willingness to work together as a whole. Look at biology. After a certain amount of mucking about as single-cellular creatures, those organize, and grow to become a larger system, which both consumes and produces more.
~b~
It seems to me that there are two votes we have in this economic state, and they are not political. They are where you work, and where you spend your money.
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It seems relatively simple to me: Have the first choice be "How much choice do you want?". We have verbosity levels in logs, why not have a 'busyness' or 'user level' option for ui and configuration? With a few clicks I could change my interface from Default to Clean or Busy, and change my configuration screens from Beginner to Intermediate or Advanced. One could even have a default that is login, desktop, or system-wide. ----- If only Ben Franklin had known people would be using Linux, the choice between Freedom and Security would never have been an issue.
It does not matter who is making money off the os - the issue is that, no matter who makes money off of it, it is a shared resource that continues to grow, and, like a corporation, or a nation, the overall product is much larger than any given individual could do. It's worth creating, refining, and submitting code simply for the fact that that's how we got this OS and many other useful programs. The point is that the corporations are *free* to use the software as they wish, so long as it's within the constraints of the given OSS license. Likewise, we're free to benefit from the code that corporations, such as IBM and the many linux distribution companies, have shared with the community. And what various companies have shared amounts to thousands upon thousands upon thousands (and likely more) of lines of code. That makes those companies, whether they get money off of the product or not (which, by the way, isn't a crime -- money, unlike greed, isn't evil[*]), valid and very valuable members of the community.
Aside from that, wouldn't it be just as foolishly greedy for some random programmer to hoard code (when hoarding doesn't actually benefit that programmer) as it would be for a company to?
Also, if the programmer isn't making money off of open source, he could damn well join a corporation where he would.
[*] - I don't actually think greed is evil. I think it's a rather natural way of progression and forward movement/motivation. However, I think it is, overall, less effective than the willingness to work together as a whole. Look at biology. After a certain amount of mucking about as single-cellular creatures, those organize, and grow to become a larger system, which both consumes and produces more.
~b~
It seems to me that there are two votes we have in this economic state, and they are not political. They are where you work, and where you spend your money.