On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 09:43:22AM -0400, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 03:13:57PM +0200, Torsten Landschoff wrote: > > > > In such cases I sometimes decide to run the non-free tool if it saves > > > > me some time. After all I want to get my job done and I want to have > > > > some time left for leisure or for working on stuff like free software. > > > You restrict yourself to get some leisure. Don't complain that you are > > > restricted from doing something afterways when it doesn't work anymore > > > and you don't have leisure anymore. > > That's fine with me. At least I'll have a lot more leisure when using > > an available product instead of re-inventing the wheel. > If there are only proprietary programs that do a specific job, and it > is desired to have a free program for this job, then we are forced to > reinvent the wheel by the proprietary programs licenses. > > Even RMS used > > commercial software when the GNU software for it was not yet written. > You mean proprietary software. There is no conflict between the GPL > and commerciality (even if Microsoft is trying to implant another > opinion in people's mind). And yes, he did so because this was the > fastest way to achieve the goal of an entirely free operating system. > This goal has by now been achieved. You will not find RMS using vmware > for pure convenience. It is naive and short-sighted to think that because RMS takes a hardline moral stance wherever software use is concerned, anyone who doesn't behave in exactly the same manner is immoral. How do you think Free Software advocacy happens? Do you think that companies like the one Daniel Stone works for are one day going to roll over and say, "Oh! I think we should scrap this Exchange system that's a key part of our business process, and switch to using Free Software, even though no one here knows anything about it, because I've heard that Free Software is better and gives us more freedom!"? Advocacy /within/ such enterprises is a key factor in making the Free Software revolution a reality. We're not going to get there by dividing the world into two parts between holier-than-thou Free Software zealots and the Unclean. Do you think that at the rate he's going, there will ever be enough Free Software-only jobs to feed the families of all the people Jeroen insults during his lifetime? I have my doubts. One thing I /do/ know is that treating people as social outcasts when they choose to -- or are forced to -- use non-free software isn't going to create those jobs. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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