This is the we hate Richard Stallman thread

[NickFitz]

We're back to the same thing: this bizarre idea that users want to look inside the source code of products that they buy and modify them to their own ends. 99.9% of users don't have the skill even if they did want to, and why would they want to? I don't, and I'm a software engineer by trade. Accept that reality, and all this talk of freedom is a total irrelevance.

I refer you to what I said earlier about "Windows Genuine Advantage":

Ordinary users just want it to work, and hopefully to get better over time. By deliberately infecting their customers' purchased software with an application designed to protect the proprietary software business model, which then went wrong for some customers, Microsoft revealed the fundamental reason why software should be free: not so you can recompile the kernel with your own changes, but so that your working installation doesn't suddenly get turned off in a flawed attempt to protect the vested interests of its manufacturers' shareholders.

[VectraMan]

1. I bought Windows XP2 Pro SP2 about two years ago at full retail price - about £260;
2. I now buy one of these desktop/gaming machines from Dell;
3. The XP2 license forbids me from running my legitimately-purchased copy of the software on this machine because it's quad-core.

Seems like a restriction that affects the user to me - a perfectly usable piece of software that I bought two years ago, so that I could legitimately install it on a single personal computer, becomes valueless if I buy a new personal computer.

If you bought a Mac, would you be complaining that you couldn't run your legitimately purchased copy of XP on it? Of course not.

You agreed to those terms (i.e. limited to dual core). It's not a restriction that affects the use of the product according to the terms of the use of the product. It's not like they're saying "you can't use it to look at porn", they're just saying "you must pay us more if you use a higher spec machine than this". You chose not to buy a higher spec version, because you didn't need it. Which again is MS protecting their business by creating a pricing structure, nothing to do with restrictions on use.

I didn't know about the quad core thing, not sure what you're meant to buy.

[VectraMan]

I refer you to what I said earlier about "Windows Genuine Advantage":

Microsoft screwed up, for sure. But imagine a little old lady whose XP installation suddenly doesn't work. Is she going to think: "I wish I could recompile the kernel to get around this". What would it being open source have acheived at that point? Ubuntu being open source didn't help me at all when I couldn't install it on my laptop a couple of weeks ago.

It's not like the open-source and/or free software community has never done a bad release, or experienced bugs.

not so you can recompile the kernel with your own changes, but so that your working installation doesn't suddenly get turned off in a flawed attempt to protect the vested interests of its manufacturers' shareholders

You make it sound so evil. Which is the knub of what we're talking about here: you're saying MS or others shouldn't be allowed to sell what they want, and that theft of that product ought to be legal. By "restrictions" you don't mean restrictions on the legitimate user, you mean restrictions on the software pirate.

[NickFitz]

If you bought a Mac, would you be complaining that you couldn't run your legitimately purchased copy of XP on it? Of course not.

I do have a Mac, and I can run my copy of XP on it just fine

[VectraMan]

I do have a Mac, and I can run my copy of XP on it just fine

Yes that was a bad example really.

[NickFitz]

You make it sound so evil. Which is the knub of what we're talking about here: you're saying MS or others shouldn't be allowed to sell what they want, and that theft of that product ought to be legal. By "restrictions" you don't mean restrictions on the legitimate user, you mean restrictions on the software pirate.

I'm not saying that. They can do whatever they damn well please, and usually do. I'm just saying that what they do sucks, and that it restricts the freedom of the user.

RMS may regard Microsoft and all others as an evil that should be eradicated, but all I've done is try to correct people's misunderstandings on several points by explaining that RMS does not hate anybody who makes money from software, that open source and free software are not the same thing, that free software does not mean non-commercial software (free as in speech, not as in beer), and that proprietary software (from any company) imposes limitations on the freedom of the user.

The fact that other people manage to make money out of free software shows that the Microsoft business model, reliant as it is on restricting the freedom of the user in ever more onerous ways, is not the only way to be successful in the software industry. Given the impossibility of ever fully securing digital media from redistribution, I think it is a fatally flawed business model, and even Microsoft will ultimately be forced to abandon it.

[bogeyman]

Indeed... although my correction of the original false premise of this thread seems to have drawn me into correcting the various other misrepresentations of the free software movement that have been posted, I personally use a Mac, on the grounds that as a software developer I can't afford the hassle and proprietary lock-in of Windows, and am happy to pay for the proprietary OS X because it's simply streets ahead of Linux.

Much of the software I use on the Mac is either free software (some of which costs money if one can't be bothered to build from the source oneself) or open source, but a fair number of applications that I use on a daily basis are proprietary.

At the end of the day, what's important is to have the best tools to do the job - I even bought a legit copy of Windows XP Pro at full retail price simply because I have to test client-side code on Internet Explorer

There's a chap at CurrentClientCorp who refuses to use any proprietary software whatsoever... I can respect his principles, but I wonder what would happen if this came into conflict with the requirements of the business.

UPDATE: Just realised that I should have referred to "misunderstandings" rather than "misrepresentations" - I didn't mean to suggest that anybody was speaking in anything other than good faith. Sorry

So you use a Mac for the same reason I do: I can do *nix, Windows and other x-platform development on the same box. I have all the advantages of OS X, (and Linux) but am not lacking my essential Windows apps either. I'm not a Mac 'fanboy' - it's a pragmatic decision - best of both worlds and all that.

Your chap at ClientCorp should learn a little about pragmatism too. Mind you, there's always at least one such ideologue deep in the techie bowels of every corporation