Does it work for me

[Alan Pope]

On 9 June 2010 17:13, Martin Owens <doctormo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-06-09 at 11:30 -0400, J Mark Cox wrote:
>> I have to chip in and say I just don't get it. I started using
>> GNU/Linux
>> because it worked on an old computer that was a freebie. I've never
>> gotten into the whole "it must be free/libre, open source" or it's
>> evil
>> thing. If Windows 95 had installed and run on that old PC I may never
>> have found linux.
>>
>> Does it work? For me that is it.
>
> I disagree with this sentiment so much, perhaps this analogy can help
> explain:
>

"A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver"

> I don't believe for a second that a normal person, given a clear
> understanding, could be selfish and self defeating to presume that
> technical practicality is the only importance, that our community isn't
> worth anything, the only importance is that the software works.
>

You should get out more. I meet people every day who couldn't care
less whether software is GNU GPL 2, LGPL, AGPL or whatever. The vast
majority of people I meet want software that works. That's it. If it's
free of cost that's a bonus.

Case in point just today, a co-worker and I were comparing e-book
readers. I have an Amazon Kindle (which the FSF childishly calls a
'swindle' [1]) and my colleague has a Sony e-reader. I mentioned some
of the features that the kindle has which the Sony device doesn't,
namely over the air newspaper delivery. However I also pointed out
that there's this great software called 'calibre' (which is free/open
source) which lets you 'scrape' news content from websites and upload
to your reader (whatever make/model). As soon as I mentioned Calibre
she said 'yeah, that's the one I use!'. I showed her the news-scraping
feature and she was delighted.

At the end of the conversation I mentioned to her that I have donated
to the author because it's great software. She immediately told me
she's already donated too. At no point in the conversation did we talk
about software freedom, licenses, code sharing or the commons. She
wanted software that works, and she was prepared to _voluntarily_ pay
for it if it did!

I don't feel the need to bang on about software freedom to her. She's
already there, she uses Ubuntu (of her own choice, not advocated by
me) at home, and free software on Windows machines. She does that
without really caring what the license implications are.

I would be willing to assert that there are a massive number of people
out there just like her, and rail-roading them into being free
software advocates isn't productive. What is productive is that she
took Ubuntu CDs off my desk and used them to spread Ubuntu to her
family because she liked the software and it works.

Cheers,
Al.

[1] http://www.defectivebydesign.org/amazon-kindle-swindle