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Comment by bregma | Hacker News Reader

This is once again the confusion between free (gratis) software and Free (libre) software.

There are plenty of vendors who support Free software. They will install Free software and configure Free Software and provide whatever level of training is required for Free software. What they don't do is provide that value for free.

The difference between Free software and non-Free software is not that there is no training involved. It is that if you purchase Free software you end up with Free software, and if you purchase non-Free software, you end up with non-Free software. That's it.

Oh, and if someone decides they want to cut costs by not paying for something of value that they need, they will get what they paid for. That's orthogonal to the liberty of the underlying software.

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Then who provides that training? And why aren't they knocking on the doors of all the schools in the country?

The big difference from the perspective of the schools is that proprietary software is backed by a big corporation that has made taking care of your needs their business model. There's nothing inherently stopping companies from offering the same quality of service with free software, but in practice free software often means doing things yourself and relying on a community of volunteers.

Meanwhile, for the big corps it's fine if this is a loss leader, because it teaches a new generation to use their products. You've got to get them while they're young, after all.

If you search a given free software (provided it's popular enough) with "onsite training" you will find a plethora of companies that provide it.

> Then who provides that training?

Depends on the product, there might be several to choose from. In the case of LibreOffice, there's an official list of recognised support providers, but LibreOffice don't offer paid support themselves. [0][1]

> The big difference from the perspective of the schools is that proprietary software is backed by a big corporation that has made taking care of your needs their business model.

With Free Software, the support provider might be the same organisation that develops the software, it depends. If you want support for Red Hat, you can get paid support from Red Hat themselves, or go with an independent support company. Red Hat have a certification scheme so you can get some official assurance they know what they're doing. [2]

[0] https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/

[1] https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/certification/

[2] https://www.redhat.com/en/services/certification/certificati...

>This is once again the confusion between free (gratis) software and Free (libre) software.

This happens because "free software" is a terrible name. It should be changed to "freedom-respecting software".

Or just Libre would be fine. I personally like L/OSS software, but that makes an unfortunate acronym.

FLOSS (free (libre) open source software). Because good Free software makes your smile brighter.

I just feel like adding free onto the beginning is more harmful than helpful at this point.

So many people have been conditioned that "Free is bad, and steals your data". Which is kind of ironic, but unfortunately true in my experience.

https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/free-libre-open

I like the acronym they suggest actually.

The only problem is that the usage of "Free" worries me. I recognize that it's for "Freedom", but Joe McConsumer both doesn't, and doesn't care enough to listen about it.

I got told the other day that Linux is bad because it's "Off brand Windows" because it's "free". This was after explaining the gratis/libre difference.

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