« Rationality trumps ideology. » doesn’t mean « short term pragmatism trumps all form of ethic ». Confusing rationality and short-term pragmatism is not a mistake I was excepting to see here.
And all your examples are meaningless, it’s like saying “but your taxes will pay for wars, so why can’t you murder ?”. I’m not responsible of what other people, even if I can advise them to act otherwise. I’ve no real way to change the software use by the government of by EDF. But by pointing to issues about non-free software, I can have some hope to make people use Free Software alternative in places like here.
Non-free software poses a lot of ethical AND pragmatic issues. It does require to put some blind trust into the corporation to install backdoors (and that’s not paranoia, it did occur). It does create a domination link since you are totally dependant of the editor to fix flaws, especially security holes. And it does create a lot of problems, forcing you to chose your hardware and software supported by the editor (the GNU/Linux version of Skype is very crappy, doesn’t work with many sound cards or webcams, …), while with Free Software you can always port it (or write a compatible clone). I could continue for long on why freedom is, on the long run, pragmatically better for everyone (yourself and society as a whole) then centralised control.
One of the myths is obviously wrong in it’s strong form, but has a much weaker version that’s still very applicable:
Open source means all bugs are get [sic] fixed and all features get implemented
Yes, not all bugs get fixed, not all features get implemented. This is true of all software. Anyone trying to sell you this is way over-excited, a liar, or both.
However, the weaker version:
Open source means my bugs get fixed and my features get implemented
is most of what I need out of software, and radically better than my experiences with large proprietary-software companies. Why is this the case? Because if something is bugging me, I can hire someone to fix or add it. In the closed source world, the only people I could conceivably hire to do this (outside any extension support, which seems more common in OSS anyway) are the people at the original company, and it’s far more likely that anyone will be interested in doing it for a price I’m willing to pay than that those particular people will. (Being a coder myself, of course, the person I most often hire for this task is me—saving me the costs of coordination, taxes, and whatnot—but the principle is the same.)
« Rationality trumps ideology. » doesn’t mean « short term pragmatism trumps all form of ethic ». Confusing rationality and short-term pragmatism is not a mistake I was excepting to see here.
And all your examples are meaningless, it’s like saying “but your taxes will pay for wars, so why can’t you murder ?”. I’m not responsible of what other people, even if I can advise them to act otherwise. I’ve no real way to change the software use by the government of by EDF. But by pointing to issues about non-free software, I can have some hope to make people use Free Software alternative in places like here.
Non-free software poses a lot of ethical AND pragmatic issues. It does require to put some blind trust into the corporation to install backdoors (and that’s not paranoia, it did occur). It does create a domination link since you are totally dependant of the editor to fix flaws, especially security holes. And it does create a lot of problems, forcing you to chose your hardware and software supported by the editor (the GNU/Linux version of Skype is very crappy, doesn’t work with many sound cards or webcams, …), while with Free Software you can always port it (or write a compatible clone). I could continue for long on why freedom is, on the long run, pragmatically better for everyone (yourself and society as a whole) then centralised control.
Serves me right for trying to reason with people who write “GNU/Linux” instead of just Linux. Here is a point of view I can support: Some Myths That Need To Die and How To Successfully Compete With Open Source Software. XMPP clients vs Skype is a perfect example.
One of the myths is obviously wrong in it’s strong form, but has a much weaker version that’s still very applicable:
Yes, not all bugs get fixed, not all features get implemented. This is true of all software. Anyone trying to sell you this is way over-excited, a liar, or both.
However, the weaker version:
is most of what I need out of software, and radically better than my experiences with large proprietary-software companies. Why is this the case? Because if something is bugging me, I can hire someone to fix or add it. In the closed source world, the only people I could conceivably hire to do this (outside any extension support, which seems more common in OSS anyway) are the people at the original company, and it’s far more likely that anyone will be interested in doing it for a price I’m willing to pay than that those particular people will. (Being a coder myself, of course, the person I most often hire for this task is me—saving me the costs of coordination, taxes, and whatnot—but the principle is the same.)