13 ms·

Makes sense to me. Regardless of if the software if free, you do have the choice to use it. I love the idea of free software, but in practice it's left a lot t

by ihodes 16y ago

Makes sense to me. Regardless of if the software if free, you do have the choice to use it. I love the idea of free software, but in practice it's left a lot to be desired for me. For others, more power to them if it works for them.

Groxx 16y ago
Same. Proprietary software provides unique encouragement for something to be created. In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. "much", not "all" by any means. Some utterly, incomparably awesome stuff has come out as OSS.
- rdtsc 16y ago
  > In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. For us, OSS has worked a lot better. Having the ability to inspect the source code all the way down to the hardware level, tweak it, adjust it, and share the fixes with the world is a lot better than waiting for that phone call back or that tech support email back. -- This is the practical benefit of OSS. It also appeals to those who want to understand how the system works, and those who dislike dealing with black-boxes that constantly break.
- sp332 16y ago
  OSS software junk may get better press than it deserves. But there are many, many times more proprietary software junk. e.g. http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html
- Groxx 16y ago
  To both / all replying to this: I'm not in any way claiming proprietary doesn't have crap. It's got loads of crap. But I'd be willing to bet that a large amount of the most used applications out there are proprietary, in many cases because there is no comparable OSS equivalent. And remember that the deciding factor in many cases is user interface - the average user does not care if they can hack it. Many many many OSS projects which could be contenders have absolutely abysmal UI and help documents.
  - tome 16y ago
    I'd be willing to bet that a large amount of the most used applications out there are proprietary, in many cases because there is no comparable OSS equivalent. Your argument would be significantly stronger if you actually gave examples here.
    - Groxx 16y ago
      Photoshop - Gimp can't handle tablet input on any system I've got (lags horribly behind input), and is generally slower and has a horrendous UI which frequently puts windows half off-screen and sometimes cuts off text. Maya / 3DS Max / Whatever - Are you really going to claim Blender is any good? Functional, sure, but that's about it. Windows - Linux graphics drivers are often an absolute joke, so Windows really is just about the only real PC gaming option. And don't claim it's because graphics cards are closed hardware - then why hasn't an open-hardware group made anything competitive? Their only major success has been the Arduino (a BIG success, but rather lonely). OSX - Linux OSes, even Ubuntu, have all had clunky UI and seriously lacking normal-user help documentation. Last time I used Ubuntu, I had to resort to the CLI inside of 30 minutes to correct a permissions error the UI could only inform me of. Try telling most people how to do that. Outlook / Mail.app - Thunderbird's the biggest contender, and has many things right... but while the new UI is much nicer, I ran into many display bugs in less than an hour of use, one of which resulted in my deleting an email I did not have selected (when I didn't hit delete). MS Office suite / iWork suite - OpenOffice has a UI lagging behind even MS Office, and in many of my uses has failed to have a working updater and lags behind my typing frequently. And then there's the preferences window... most people simply cannot understand 90% of that, and will be turned off the entire application by its mere existence. Half Life / Quake / Unreal Tournament / PC games of any kind - ? Console games of any kind - ? McAfee / Norton / AVG - ? ClamAV? Brought my system to a crawl last time I used it. Not that McAfee / Norton are much better there, but... And in the other corner, we have: Firefox / Chrome, Pidgin / Adium (though Pidgin has a bad install process and a nasty UI for most people), Eclipse (though it's slow)... I know there are more, but I'm having trouble coming up with them right now. Just woke up. I had generally thought the major ones were self-explanatory, and this is rather long, hence its initial omission.
rdtsc 16y ago
Sometime to have it work for you, you have to contribute. In other words, most OSS works only because someone else contributed. Free software works for us. We ship a complete box with a free OS, built on completely free frameworks, languages and libraries. We release any contributions or updates we make to the OS software. Just recently we had to license a close-source library. It has been very frustrating having to deal with licensing and support. Send emails back and forth each time something doesn't work instead of being able to just look at the code, apply a patch locally and send it upstream.
jgg 16y ago
>Regardless of if the software if free, you do have the choice to use it. The problem with something like Facebook, though, is that choosing to use a platform other than Facebook for Facebook's purposes is useless, because the entire purpose of a "social network" site is lost unless a large number of people are using it. Most people aren't very technical, so they're going to use one networking site, and guess what? It's going to be what "everyone else" is using. So, sure, you still have the choice to use it. But it's not like, say, system software, in that if you don't like the primary offering, you can go implement your own or download somebody else's. That being said, I've still found absolutely no reason to use Facebook, and as such I don't.
- ihodes 16y ago
  I was using Facebook, for a lot of reasons, but deleted my account yesterday. I'm living fine without it. No one is forcing me to use it, and email (free! but using Mail.app and my iPhone to give it a boost I want and need–though I wouldn't mind Letters.app to appear) handles most of my needs, along with Flickr and Twitter, which are also both closed platforms. I'm not too burdened by the software I use. I use what pleases me most. Right now that spectrum includes emacs at one end and iPhone OS at the other. As someone pointed out above, free software fundamentalism has its place, and I respect it. But I also respect the hard work and effort that goes into software like 1Password and Things, and they both make my life a little bit better.
  - jgg 16y ago
    Of course no one is "forcing" you (at least in the general sense) to use Facebook. My point was that if you want a social networking site, switching to some fair, free and open alternative doesn't go as smoothly as switchin.g something like an e-mail client or a text editor
    - mquander 16y ago
      Note that this is the whole point -- if Facebook were free software, it would be that easy, because other software could interoperate with it effectively. Free software naturally ameliorates this kind of lock-in effect. Not using free software in the first place is what gets people into this mess.

by ihodes 16y ago

Groxx 16y ago

Same. Proprietary software provides unique encouragement for something to be created. In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. "much", not "all" by any means. Some utterly, incomparably awesome stuff has come out as OSS.

rdtsc 16y ago
> In my experience, much of free-OSS has been significantly worse than a cheap proprietary, if it exists at all. For us, OSS has worked a lot better. Having the ability to inspect the source code all the way down to the hardware level, tweak it, adjust it, and share the fixes with the world is a lot better than waiting for that phone call back or that tech support email back. -- This is the practical benefit of OSS. It also appeals to those who want to understand how the system works, and those who dislike dealing with black-boxes that constantly break.
sp332 16y ago
OSS software junk may get better press than it deserves. But there are many, many times more proprietary software junk. e.g. http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html
Groxx 16y ago
To both / all replying to this: I'm not in any way claiming proprietary doesn't have crap. It's got loads of crap. But I'd be willing to bet that a large amount of the most used applications out there are proprietary, in many cases because there is no comparable OSS equivalent. And remember that the deciding factor in many cases is user interface - the average user does not care if they can hack it. Many many many OSS projects which could be contenders have absolutely abysmal UI and help documents.
- tome 16y ago
  I'd be willing to bet that a large amount of the most used applications out there are proprietary, in many cases because there is no comparable OSS equivalent. Your argument would be significantly stronger if you actually gave examples here.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Photoshop - Gimp can't handle tablet input on any system I've got (lags horribly behind input), and is generally slower and has a horrendous UI which frequently puts windows half off-screen and sometimes cuts off text. Maya / 3DS Max / Whatever - Are you really going to claim Blender is any good? Functional, sure, but that's about it. Windows - Linux graphics drivers are often an absolute joke, so Windows really is just about the only real PC gaming option. And don't claim it's because graphics cards are closed hardware - then why hasn't an open-hardware group made anything competitive? Their only major success has been the Arduino (a BIG success, but rather lonely). OSX - Linux OSes, even Ubuntu, have all had clunky UI and seriously lacking normal-user help documentation. Last time I used Ubuntu, I had to resort to the CLI inside of 30 minutes to correct a permissions error the UI could only inform me of. Try telling most people how to do that. Outlook / Mail.app - Thunderbird's the biggest contender, and has many things right... but while the new UI is much nicer, I ran into many display bugs in less than an hour of use, one of which resulted in my deleting an email I did not have selected (when I didn't hit delete). MS Office suite / iWork suite - OpenOffice has a UI lagging behind even MS Office, and in many of my uses has failed to have a working updater and lags behind my typing frequently. And then there's the preferences window... most people simply cannot understand 90% of that, and will be turned off the entire application by its mere existence. Half Life / Quake / Unreal Tournament / PC games of any kind - ? Console games of any kind - ? McAfee / Norton / AVG - ? ClamAV? Brought my system to a crawl last time I used it. Not that McAfee / Norton are much better there, but... And in the other corner, we have: Firefox / Chrome, Pidgin / Adium (though Pidgin has a bad install process and a nasty UI for most people), Eclipse (though it's slow)... I know there are more, but I'm having trouble coming up with them right now. Just woke up. I had generally thought the major ones were self-explanatory, and this is rather long, hence its initial omission.

rdtsc 16y ago

Sometime to have it work for you, you have to contribute. In other words, most OSS works only because someone else contributed. Free software works for us. We ship a complete box with a free OS, built on completely free frameworks, languages and libraries. We release any contributions or updates we make to the OS software. Just recently we had to license a close-source library. It has been very frustrating having to deal with licensing and support. Send emails back and forth each time something doesn't work instead of being able to just look at the code, apply a patch locally and send it upstream.

jgg 16y ago

>Regardless of if the software if free, you do have the choice to use it. The problem with something like Facebook, though, is that choosing to use a platform other than Facebook for Facebook's purposes is useless, because the entire purpose of a "social network" site is lost unless a large number of people are using it. Most people aren't very technical, so they're going to use one networking site, and guess what? It's going to be what "everyone else" is using. So, sure, you still have the choice to use it. But it's not like, say, system software, in that if you don't like the primary offering, you can go implement your own or download somebody else's. That being said, I've still found absolutely no reason to use Facebook, and as such I don't.

ihodes 16y ago
I was using Facebook, for a lot of reasons, but deleted my account yesterday. I'm living fine without it. No one is forcing me to use it, and email (free! but using Mail.app and my iPhone to give it a boost I want and need–though I wouldn't mind Letters.app to appear) handles most of my needs, along with Flickr and Twitter, which are also both closed platforms. I'm not too burdened by the software I use. I use what pleases me most. Right now that spectrum includes emacs at one end and iPhone OS at the other. As someone pointed out above, free software fundamentalism has its place, and I respect it. But I also respect the hard work and effort that goes into software like 1Password and Things, and they both make my life a little bit better.
- jgg 16y ago
  Of course no one is "forcing" you (at least in the general sense) to use Facebook. My point was that if you want a social networking site, switching to some fair, free and open alternative doesn't go as smoothly as switchin.g something like an e-mail client or a text editor
  - mquander 16y ago
    Note that this is the whole point -- if Facebook were free software, it would be that easy, because other software could interoperate with it effectively. Free software naturally ameliorates this kind of lock-in effect. Not using free software in the first place is what gets people into this mess.