20 ms·

This is incorrect. It becomes impossible to say "no" 100% of the time. It's very possible to say no occasionally. Indeed, if everyone said "no" when not overly

This is incorrect. It becomes impossible to say "no" 100% of the time. It's very possible to say no occasionally. Indeed, if everyone said "no" when not overly awkward, it would make a world of difference. If everyone was willing to pay even an extra buck for a microwave based on free software, market economics would push for 95% of microwaves to run free software. And if everyone picked banks which ran on free software, being willing to give up just 0.1% interest, every bank would run 100% free software. If everyone who could afford to pay for a free Google Docs clone did so, we'd have nice alternatives. I don't know the adoption, but it'd be enough to sustain a company. And for video conferences, I'd never move a business meeting, but I do pick freedom-preserving technologies when I set up meetings, and many of my friends do as well. No one has ever commented on it.

Groxx 6y ago
This assumes there are equivalent free software options each time, at only slight disadvantages. That's pretty frequently not the case. Even if you want to claim there exists a stable configuration with all those true, there's still a bootstrapping problem to get there, and we're certainly not past that point right now.
- NateEag 6y ago
  This is absolutely true. That said, I have been thoroughly impressed with https://meet.jit.si https://meet.jit.si every time I've used it. It genuinely works well, and it may not be a Zoom killer, but for my one-on-one calls, it has absolutely been a viable alternative.
  - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
    quite stable for me as well with whomever I can convince to chat with me there
  - noobermin 6y ago
    I used jitsi until I was overruled and now we use teams (sigh). It worked somewhat but would start to get iffy after 5 or 6 people would be in a call, especially when they're a few hours away. We'd have to start turning off cameras to get it to work. That of course doesn't seem like a software issue more than it is an instance issue, zoom and microsoft probably have hosts of more servers to handle stuff compared to the default jitsi stuff.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Microwave is the canonical example of RMS strange inconsistency where he says that "appliances" don't need to be free software (along with some remarkably quaint dated examples like "watch" and "automobile".) https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.en.ht...

Groxx 6y ago

This assumes there are equivalent free software options each time, at only slight disadvantages. That's pretty frequently not the case. Even if you want to claim there exists a stable configuration with all those true, there's still a bootstrapping problem to get there, and we're certainly not past that point right now.

NateEag 6y ago
This is absolutely true. That said, I have been thoroughly impressed with https://meet.jit.si https://meet.jit.si every time I've used it. It genuinely works well, and it may not be a Zoom killer, but for my one-on-one calls, it has absolutely been a viable alternative.
- DennisAleynikov 6y ago
  quite stable for me as well with whomever I can convince to chat with me there
- noobermin 6y ago
  I used jitsi until I was overruled and now we use teams (sigh). It worked somewhat but would start to get iffy after 5 or 6 people would be in a call, especially when they're a few hours away. We'd have to start turning off cameras to get it to work. That of course doesn't seem like a software issue more than it is an instance issue, zoom and microsoft probably have hosts of more servers to handle stuff compared to the default jitsi stuff.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

Microwave is the canonical example of RMS strange inconsistency where he says that "appliances" don't need to be free software (along with some remarkably quaint dated examples like "watch" and "automobile".) https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.en.ht...