[Wylug-discuss] Wylug-discuss Digest, Vol 66, Issue 3

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010, Simon Whiteley wrote:

> This kind of 'commercial product placement' by publicly funded organisations
> is fundamentaly wrong.  Unless GNU/Linux and other alternative software is
> given the same kind of promotion, particularly when needing to open such
> documents, we will further entrech the mindset of 'Microsoft is computers'.

Linking to PDFReaders.org and actively excluding Adobe Reader from the
suggested list of PDF Readers that people use strikes me as equally
entrenched.

This is critising the government for only promoting beef while ignoring all
the vegan options and suggesting that they should be only promoting vegan
food.  I'd argue this was lunacy and hopelessly unbalanced.

I don't see why the software development style should affect whether the
government promotes it or not, so I'm thoroughly opposed to excluding free but
closed source options while extolling the virtues of open source options.

Now if the argument was that it should be linked to a list of vetted high
quality PDF readers for multiple OSs whether closed or open source, I'm all in
favour.

The general argument of FSFE that governments should make material available
in open formats is fine, and I thoroughly agree with that.  Who wouldn't?  But
one of the benefits of open formats is that it opens up proper competition
amongst all software produces, open or closed.

I'm all in favour of open source / Free software, but that doesn't have to
mean I'm against closed source software.

jh