I read it but I'm not sure what you're trying to say really. Sure, there are people like Stallman, there are others who are more 'pragmatic'.
World keeps turning.
Do your thing. See how that plays out for you.
World keeps turning.
Do your thing. See how that plays out for you.
As a proprietary app, we have encountered quite a bit of resistance from Linux users, usually berating us for not being open source. I think that's short sighted. We need more pragmatists.
Linux runs the world. I highly doubt it needs more "spreading".
If you include BSD as well as Linux, you get the Apple computers and phones.
Example: I have an older laptop with a 5400RPM hdd that I've since bought a SSD to image and put a new OS on. Currently it runs Windows 7. Hate Windows 10 after being a lifelong Microsoftie (DreamSpark worked as it turns out), been learning Linux at work, so let's try it at home. I work on computers for a living, I can handle the learning curve, right? I will be reinstalling Windows 7 so I can AskWoody Group B it until it is out of support, then move it to Windows 7 POS Ready to get security updates until the last possible second. From there? I guess a mac because I refuse to use Windows 10 on personal devices aside from maybe a LTSB version. Different rant though, back to Linux on desktop:
I _want_ to run NeonOS or Debian KDE on that laptop, but cannot as the tools I use are not available on those platforms. The "fundamentalists" as portrayed in this article would say that I shouldn't have chosen to use the tools I chose. That doesn't help my problem though and won't do anything to get the 'unwashed masses' using the better software en mass. Here better software = FOSS since we are being a hypothetical fundamentalist a la Stallman.
If these Stallmen could "hold their nose" long enough to build Linux such that it could run most rando Windows programs without huge fuss and individual WINE config tweaks, the long term benefit would be that they would be positioning themselves to overtake Windows in usage on the desktop as well as the server side.
Knock-on effects are strong:
1. More users, more developers to create software
2. More developers, more improvements made to system codebases, package maintenance, dev tooling
3. More Linux, more Linux compatibility out of the box
4. More Linux on desktops, more people who've never been tainted by MS DreamSpark (like me) and due to baby duck syndrome prop up MS Windows, Office, VS and the Microsoft way
5. MS might even open source Windows itself (a core product) if it is no longer profitable. Making the job of dealing with Windows compatibility A) easier and B) nearly redundant
So the FOSS people win the war, at least on the desktop Linux vs Windows front.
One does wonder whether this situation is intentionally exacerbated by the fundamentalists. Case in point, there are people against Flatpak because it makes it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package maintainers.
Hello there. An not so much against it, as not "for it".
> it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package maintainers.
No, that's not the problem at all. The biggest problem is duplication of libraries, most of which will not see security updates nowhere near as promptly as the system version would, integration with the DE and the problems there, fundamentally replicating the Windows/macOS model, while many see native package management as superior for the reasons I mentioned.
Flatpak isn't even good enough, in my opinion, since it adds complexity to an otherwise simple scheme in an effort to accomplish some of the deduplication you and other fans of package managers want. Ditto its repo model.
And here lies the main point - they believe that many users will simply reject their proprietary software on principle. If the community was seen to embrace proprietary, which is what I'm calling for in the article, they might just support Linux.
Also worth noting that the largest contributor to the Linux kernel is... Microsoft.
Yes, because we've grown tired of companies abusing their relationships with customers: abandoning products and leaving them useless, charging more and more for the same or less levels of support, removing features, suing users for repairing their own property... The list goes on. Sure, similar issues can happen with FOSS, but at least you have some recourse if the creators disappear.
> Also worth noting that the largest contributor to the Linux kernel is... Microsoft.
Yes, but only now. And only because they did what they could to kill Linux, and they still lost. That former behavior is the kind of thing we like to never be an issue in the first place.
Which aren't properly any FOSS angels, when we examine their product portfolio.
Actually IBM is the king of patent submissions.
"But it doesn't run games or Excel on my desktop!" Ah yes you're right. Guess Linux is niche and needs spreading after all.
Yes I do. I was talking about selling packaged food, but still, restaurants make a good example also. They will always tell you if one of their recipe contains a particular ingredient (of which you might be allergic), and whether there are vegan options. Many restaurants even write the complete list of ingredients on each item in the menu!
Even then, except for very complex sauces, it is quite easy to see all the ingredients once you have the dish in front of you. This is impossible with proprietary software. Just grepping at a binary, you won't get too far.
https://github.com/Microsoft/Detours/wiki/Using-Detours
At one point I wrote a little piece of software as a proof of concept that used detours to redirect any file I/O in IE that was deemed "unsafe" to a special in-memory file system.
The bottom line is that you don't need the source code in order tell if an application is "phoning home" or if it makes suspicious API calls. In fact, it is often easier to just simply monitor how the software interacts with the host system to determine if it is performing (possibly) malicious actions. IOW, if you're concerned about a certain piece of software, then auditing the source code isn't going to be as good of a solution as just sandboxing the application so that it's impossible for the application to do something bad.
I authored the article. People ask us about our software all the time. We answer their questions. We have a post on our views on privacy, how we collect and use data etc. We give people the option to opt-out of data collection. Our email list is strictly opt-in. It seems that you are fine trusting the people that provide your food, but not your software.
Microsoft uses Linux on something like 60% of their own cloud servers, presumably because they find it more profitable to do so than to use the software they wrote themselves.
One thing you have possibly missed is that the people you think are fundamentalists rather than pragmatists, are for the most part being fundamentalist about pragmatism.
They are not telling you to open source based on some abstract philosophy, but because they think that the practical effects of doing so are better.
And given that open source as an economic system of production is currently out-competing liberal capitalism at its own game, on its own terms, on its home turf, I suspect that they may have a point.
Do what you want, but it may be a mistake to dismiss the open source community as not being pragmatic when they critique you.
I am dismissing those that reject proprietary software on principle.
I also made it clear that we would open source our software if we could find a business model that would work for us.
That dismissal presumably includes both Stallman and the Debian project. I would not dismiss them all that lightly.
>I also made it clear that we would open source our software if we could find a business model that would work for us.
You are making a nice email client. The service of rock solid business email management would presumably be the obvious model to start with. There are more people willing to spend money on that than there are people willing to buy a better email client.
If they dismiss it then they don't need it. You can't force anyone to buy things they don't need, at least in free society that is.