Comment by morganvachon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by morganvachon | Hacker News Reader

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This kind of thing is what makes it difficult for me to recommend open source software to my Windows using friends and clients. My sister was looking for an alternative to Paint Shop Pro for the simple graphics she does, and she didn't want to pay for the next version if she could get something free. Without thinking, I suggested Paint.net, as I've always enjoyed using it over The Gimp on Windows. She went to getpaint.net and, of course, ended up with nothing but adware because the guy behind Paint.net is a talented but very greedy individual[1]. I should have instead pointed her to ninite.com and told her to download Paint.net there. Now she won't trust Paint.net no matter where it comes from, which is a shame because for what she needed it was more than enough.

That's only one of several cases where I've recommended a truly good, open source or freeware app for Windows, to have the person become angry with me for sending them on a spyware-laden wild goose chase. From now on I just offer to install the app they need for them, using ninite.com instead of the original source. And it shouldn't have to be that way.

[1] http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/23234-can-paintn...

Yeah, this is kind of a disaster. The non-Windows FOSS communities actually function as communities, where if you try to do something like this you get blacklisted, and there's an expectation of doing it for the sake of contribution.

Windows users do not constitute a "community". So if something's zero-financial-transaction-"free", it may still be bundled with exploitware and negative-added-value software.

paint.net is not FOSS [1]. IIRC it used to be, but it was made proprietary at some point.

[1] http://www.getpaint.net/license.html

Well, I never called Paint.net "FOSS". I referred to "open source and freeware" later though.

You should recommend a free Operating System to your friends and clients, instead of just providing them with piecemeal software recommendations on Windows.

I do in some cases. I've actually converted a couple of old clients to Debian and showed them how to maintain it for what little they used their computers for, and effectively lost them as customers because they stopped having issues with their computers. I see that as a good thing though; I probably gained twice as many new clients on their word of mouth recommendations alone.

But it's not for everyone. Most of my clients in the past have had specific commercial software requirements, so I wouldn't even bring up switching platforms. These days it's easier, as everything is moving to software as a service and web apps, and they are already used to running their home office from their iPad or Android tablets. Still, I make sure that my end goal is to offer the best value to my client, not push potentially unfamiliar and net-cost-ineffective solutions based on software license alone.

Upvoted for ninite, which I hadn't heard of before.

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