Re: [ox-en] Re: GNU/Linux distributions and commerce
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 09:55:54 +0200
Hi Franz!
2 months (64 days) ago Franz Nahrada wrote:
your two diagnoses of the relation between communities and distributions
could not be farther apart.....it is confusing and shows how little we
really know.
May be only some misunderstanding.
I also tend to deny the simplistic worldview that "software that has
nothing to do with firms is simply better".
Me too. Anyone who holds that position? I could prove the opposite
even with one of my own Free Software projects ;-) .
But if Oekonux shall lead us somewhere we must ask about the relation of
both parts and the different ways communities sustain themselves,
maintaining their fundamental independence from commercial interests, yet
keeping the process alive that fuels general interest into FLOSS.
Franz, you are completely misguided here. The interest in FLOSS as
something useful is *not* fueled by that warm feeling in the stomach
that Doubly Free Software is independent from commercial interests.
Computer people are interested in solutions which help them doing
their work - not in helping some revolution by using Free Software.
For instance my first contact with Free Software was the `gcc` - a C
compiler (and only a C compiler at this time). There were a
proprietary C compiler in that SCO system but it was buggy (producing
wrong code - the worst thing a compiler can do) and it was not
portable. `gcc` was simply better and so I quickly switched to that
Free Software solution (back in 1993 or so). And it needed some effort
to compile your programs with `gcc` instead of the default - but it
was certainly worth the effort. I didn't even know what Free Software
is about at that time - though I *were* interested in political things
already. It is normal and fine that users of Free Projects are not so
much interested in the background.
The ongoing and increasing success of Free Software is *not* based on
some idealist feeling. It is based on concrete and hard use of some
product. I'm absolutely convinced that any concept which can be
thought of as a basis for a post-capitalist society *must* have that
improved use with respect to capitalist solutions. Otherwise it is yet
another idealist concept which some avantgarde needs to force down the
throats of people. I think we had seen this often enough in the 20th
century.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
--
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