[oclug] Priming folks to switch to FLOSS

[Dana Webber]

Upgrading from W95 to XP is a big jump. I assume the 
hardware needs to be changed as well. I'm guessing
these pc's have 16M or 32M ram. Therefore I assume that
openoffice would suck. VNC and a few linux 
severs would be a lot cheaper and faster to setup.


On Friday 25 April 2003 10:18, Raymond Wood wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 09:59:38AM -0400, Brad Barnett remarked:
> > Raymond Wood <raywood at magma.ca> wrote:
> > > > "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.
>
> If you think that people are going to give up Windows that
> easily, then I'd say you need to think again.
>
> > The software is the platform these days, not the os.
>
> I thought that was one of my points, and part of the problem  :P
>
> Cheers,
> Raymond

-- 
Dana Webber
dana at dunrobin.dyn.dhs.org
http://www.dunrobin.dyn.dhs.org

Getting a computer system to work is like banging your head against a brick 
wall until the wall falls down.