[oclug] Priming folks to switch to FLOSS

[Brad Barnett]

On Fri, 25 Apr 2003 09:50:44 -0400
Raymond Wood <raywood at magma.ca> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 08:16:11AM -0400, MacDonald, Charles R [NC]
> remarked:
> 
> > "Rod Giffin" <rod at giffinscientific.com> said:
> > > But, you can get Open Office and Mozilla for Windows for free.
> 
> Bingo.  Who really needs GNU/Linux when more and more free
> software will run on that M$ operating system?
> 
> Those who support 'Open Source' may not see this as a problem,
> or more likely they blithely predict that once users get a taste
> of Mozilla/Open Office on Winders, then their appetite will be
> whetted for more of it i.e. GNU/Linux.  I am not at all
> convinced that this is the most likely possibility.  I can
> easily imagine a scenario (in fact I am seeing signs of it
> already) where adoption of such 'Open Source' software
> increases, but users continue to run all this wonderful Open
> Source software on a perfectly proprietary operating system.
> 
> All of this is a concern that has been voiced by a few for some
> time: that in adopting the nomenclature of 'Open Source' over
> terms like 'Free Software' (and more recently FLOSS - Free/Libre
> Open Source Software) advocates of 'Free Software' gain
> marketing momentum and media penetration at the expense of
> sacrificing certain crucial ideals, and even the *awareness* of
> those same ideals, that spawned the Free Software movement in
> first place.
> 
> In short I believe there is a real risk of the Free Software
> movement getting hoisted with an Open Source 'cross-platform
> software' petard.  Unless some way can be found to put the
> 'Free', and all that it implies, back into 'Open Source' (FLOSS
> perhaps?), many people may well settle for open source combined
> with proprietary vendor lock-in.  Is there anyone who really
> disagrees that running free software on proprietary operating
> systems is not a victory for Free Software, but rather a victory
> for the Gnomes of Redmond?
> 

I doubt it.  If you see a business running Open Office and everything else
that has a free, Linux available variant, I don't think they'll want to
pay for the next Windows upgrade either.

The software is the platform these days, not the os.