No need to get all RMS’d and ESR’d out of shape. Rationality trumps ideology.
Note that most of the code you use daily is free for you to use, but proprietary, exactly like Skype: insides of your cell phone (or a regular phone), server side of Google, MS IIS on many sites you visit, firmware in the car you drive or in a bus you ride. Electric company, banks, phone company, your local and federal government use mostly proprietary software (like Oracle), with some exceptions.
A pragmatic approach would be to use what works best for you, possibly opting for OSS all else being equal.
Correct… but rationality also trumps pseudorationality. Ideology isn’t about addressing where things are, but about influencing the direction society takes. The mere fact that many things are broken does not mean that, when given the choice between a broken and a mended thing, you should choose the broken one.
That being said, I myself am not averse to using non-free software when there is no practicable alternative. Wherever I can have a say in what software is used, I promote FlOSS (though I also recognize that others need not share my prioritizations.).
This reasoning puts you squarely in a gilded cage. Surely, a preference for freedom can rationally have more weight than as a mere tiebreaker after comparisons of raw, short-term pragmatism. There is certainly room for discussion and dissension around what particular weightings are appropriate, but the lexicographic ordering applied in that last sentence is something I strongly reject.
« 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.)
No need to get all RMS’d and ESR’d out of shape. Rationality trumps ideology.
Note that most of the code you use daily is free for you to use, but proprietary, exactly like Skype: insides of your cell phone (or a regular phone), server side of Google, MS IIS on many sites you visit, firmware in the car you drive or in a bus you ride. Electric company, banks, phone company, your local and federal government use mostly proprietary software (like Oracle), with some exceptions.
A pragmatic approach would be to use what works best for you, possibly opting for OSS all else being equal.
Correct… but rationality also trumps pseudorationality. Ideology isn’t about addressing where things are, but about influencing the direction society takes. The mere fact that many things are broken does not mean that, when given the choice between a broken and a mended thing, you should choose the broken one.
That being said, I myself am not averse to using non-free software when there is no practicable alternative. Wherever I can have a say in what software is used, I promote FlOSS (though I also recognize that others need not share my prioritizations.).
This reasoning puts you squarely in a gilded cage. Surely, a preference for freedom can rationally have more weight than as a mere tiebreaker after comparisons of raw, short-term pragmatism. There is certainly room for discussion and dissension around what particular weightings are appropriate, but the lexicographic ordering applied in that last sentence is something I strongly reject.
Almost nobody cares about existential risk. Almost nobody cares about not making the most basic probability-related mistakes.
Appeal to majority is not sometihg to trust.
As for “works”—XMPP clients work predictably. Skype works worse for non-Windows platforms (I don’t know or care about Windows version).
« 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.)