Slightly OT: is free software development indirectly subsidized?

[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Saturday 03 February 2007 6:26 pm, Man-Chicken wrote:
> that haven't become a high priority for society at large.  If we want
> Freedom, there is a cost.

Definitely, although the individual cost to me has decreased appreciably since 
2001.  It's been years since I spent 14 hours getting the bloody anything to 
work, and most of my troubles with Linuxdom as a whole hinge on comparatively 
trivial matters.

> Be it time, money, time, beer, time, technically 
> inferior hardware, or nights where it takes 14 hours to get the bloody
> wireless card to work, it's worth it if you value the freedom that it
> yields. We have to work for our freedom, because those who would remove our
> freedom are more than willing and capable to do just that.

For me, personally, it's less about freedom per se, and more about giving 
people in poor countries good tools they can afford, so they don't have to 
steal.  I know a lot of people who make less a month than I make a week, and 
they're not even in the REALLY poor countries.

> > Ho ho, spawn of emacs, that would have been clever, except the number of
> > the beast is Roman numerals is DCLXVI.
>
> Oh come on, did you really have to kill the poor innocent little joke? 
> What did he ever do to you?  *sob*

Actually, the truth of the matter is very simple.  On my very first Linux 
install, emacs was busted, and vim worked.  Thus I chose my side in the 
eternal war, and bowed down to hail the mighty Lord Vimm,,,

(Wow, that was weird.  I kept typing , and it kept printing m, and then KMail 
crashed.  Now where was I?)

Lord Vim, and to revile the putrid, rotting stench of the evil *m*cs.

:)
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre