4 ms·
RMS is extreme, but your questions don't seem that hard to to imagine answers to. 1. Why would we want to do that? What problem does creating the next Microsoft
by splawn 13y ago
RMS is extreme, but your questions don't seem that hard to to imagine answers to.
1. Why would we want to do that? What problem does creating the next Microsoft solve?
2. I have never heard him claim this. Free software means that you have a right to troubleshoot and resolve problems yourself if you want... not that diy is the only option
3. Why can you see one, but not the other? Some of the best documented software is foss. For example, Its hard to beat Emacs documentation.
- mathattack 13y ago1 - At the time, creating the next Microsoft meant creating a company from scratch, which built products that the whole world uses. There are many economies of scales that great software companies can achieve. 2 - He didn't claim this explicitly. It was my interpretation of the results of everyone growing their own. I'm less convinced of this today.
- kec 13y agoIt doesn't matter how good the man pages are, I can't give emacs and latex to my mother and expect her to produce a document. In general, FLOSS really sucks at supporting nontechnical, mainstream users.
- mathattack 13y agoThis captures my point.
- hexis 13y agoGive her Abiword, or one of the many other FLOSS word preocessors. - http://www.abisource.com/ http://www.abisource.com/
- splawn 13y agoI understand your point, but I was talking about documentation, not ease of use (sometimes they go hand in hand, sometimes not). Also to further my point about docs in emacs, emacs goes waay beyond just a man page, documentation is baked into everything. Everything is in there... minimal googling required. If you can't tell... im still high on my first few weeks playing with emacs, plz excuse my cool-aid stains.