[sclug] Cheap'n'nasty Tesco Linux machines

[Phillip Chandler]

"Copyright is evil and morally and ethically wrong" and "Which troll are
you" what a pair of pratts.

Why does nvidia & ati both have closed source drivers, which Im assuming
some of you use ? Goes against the ethics of free open source !!!

Heres an example for you all. Some little geek sitting in his bedroom,
writing a nice little ditty, going to school, doing his / her homework
then doing some more work on their ditty. This is great, its even better
if a few other kids do the same to help grow the program.

What if the program takes off big time and he / she has to work on it
full time. What if they decide they wanna have a life and move into
their own place, so their not living at home with mummy and daddy ? Is
doing FOSS and NOT getting paid for it going to pay the bills ? Put a
meal on the table ? Allows them to go out and get laid once in a while ?

Lets have a look at something like Sage or SAP, sage is a big accounts
package, Ive used it. The company who writes it isnt going to have it as
open source so the competition can steal the code or see how its done.
Plus to make an accounts package as big as sage, you need investment to
pay wages and support etc. Having a forum of people all giving support
for free doesn't cut the mustard, especially if you need a definite
answer NOW. Even in the Linux community you have to pay for support.
Ubuntu may be free but if you want real support, you have to pay for it.
And when a business is trying to do business, their not going to be too
pleased having to go to a forum and wait two days to get an answer that
MAY do the job. They also want software that does the job. All onsite IT
blokes are all qualified MCSC etc, thats what they know, because windows
is whats used in businesses, they get the it dept to fix the problems
TODAY and have it done properly, not tomorrow with a maybe it'll work
and maybe it wont attitiude.

The FOSS is only good if its in a small enough community, and everyone
wants to give as much as they take. But in the real world of working in
offices, linux wouldnt cut it.

So if the two rodneys who said the two comments up top, if you wanna get
moralistic, fine, thats your privilege. I on the the hand dont give a
rats arse if I use closed source, copyright software / drivers. Thats
the freedom of choice, and if it means my computers work perfectly for
me, then tough luck, Im using the non free closed source alternatives.
Thats why you have the media repos (especially for ubuntu) because
enough people have the same attitude as me.

On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 01:00 +0000, mail at europa.demon.co.uk wrote:
> On Friday 14 March 2008 20:24:13 Phillip Chandler wrote:
> <snip>
> > The fun Ive had having to add repos to then download codecs etc because
> > of copyright. 
> <snip>
> 
> Copyright is evil and morally and ethically wrong.
> 
> Next question?