Voice messenger for Ubuntu 7.04

[Rapael Morcha]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2007 at 01:54:11PM -0400, Harold Hartley wrote:
> Thomas PARIS wrote:
> > On Sun Oct 14 at 04:20 (-0400), Justin Gruenberg wrote:
	
........................

> I just want to say that if there is a linux app that is proprietory and 
> runs well on linux, big deal.
> I run some proprietory apps on my linux box too, but its made for linux. 
> Its not like I'm running a app for windows in wine, but as long as the 
> app is made for linux.

Agreed. Doesn't have to be propreitary. Has to be free/libre (as in -free beer-. Now! :)

> It sounds like some people think that all linux apps have to be open 
> source showing the source code. Well it doesn't have to as long as its 
> made for linux is the main thing. The more apps made to run on linux the 

Agreed. Has to be free/libre. BTW, who are -some- people? If it's made for Linux, and doesn't provide source, what good is it?

> better wether its open source or proprietory.
> Thats just my 2 cent.

Just my 3 cent.

TBH, every user has different degree of requirements. If you are a home user, you'd obviously would want Linux software to be bug-free and free/libre _with_ source code and have GPL-like license so that if you can hack the guts of the source, you could do so with full freedom. But say software ABC was released as binary only and under some propreitary license, you wouldn't be able to do so then. But you could still use it i.e., if you are happy that way.

The other type of users are the business organisations,companies etc. where they might want to get full support from the developers and if that software gets them certain competitive advantage over others, they might get the developers to work for them and arrange some restrictive propreitary license on that software (given that the original software developers agree to the license arrangment). 

So, if the software is binary-only and if there's some problem/bug/error with it, how should you as a user/developer try to fix it? Report it to the software company and wait for next release/patch? OTOH, if it was free/libre, you could co-operate with developers and discuss the potential ways of solving that problem/bug/error (could happen even in real time). The end product is that you get better software with the collaboration involved in ways that propreitary software can never gaurantee. Having said that, also, not every gold are worth the same price.

Now that was my 4 cent. :)

Cheers,
Raphael.