[PD-ot] Re: [OT] Re: [PD] Piksel'05

[Marc Lavallée]

Le 18 Août 2005 12:47, Piotr Majdak a écrit :
> And by the way: going to a store gives the saleman a salary. So, in this
> example, freeware/OSS appears to be less social ;-)

The free software business is worth billions a year worldwide. People are 
paid to program, install, maintain and use free software. 

> Yes, we'll do, I'm sure about it. Because every month some OSS
> programers scream for that what they call "freedom". 

I'm more a user than a programmer. And this debate is raging every second 
everywhere, not only once a month here.

> And forget, that 
> what they really want is to restrict freedom of other individuals. 

This is very far from the truth. 
First, there's a big difference between "freedom" and "personal liberty".
A definition of freedom (not the screaming OSS programmer's one):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom

Please (re)read those important references:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html
http://www.debian.org/intro/free

Then read this essay written for people thinking like "suits":
http://www.searls.com/linuxforsuits/1-lfs-freebusiness.html
Take a break and read this entertaining comment by Bruce Sterling:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/view.html?pg=4
And finish your reading marathon with this fine article:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_03/free_labour/

> So, 
> why do _you_ want to force NVidia to do something your way? They are
> free to sell their driver - you are free to not buying their product if
> you don't like them.

_We_ might have to buy their product if _we_ need to work seriously with 3D, 
because it seems that nVidia is now the best choice for Linux, technically 
speaking. And because nVidia is a leader, competitors are also closing the 
drivers' source code of their newer products. The only freedom _we_ have in 
this situation is to use old cards with free drivers, even if these cards 
are now considered obsolete... The 3D business is a "vendor lock-in" 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in/)

> Example: I don't like M$ and that's why I don't use MS Office. But, I
> need MS Windows as OS thus, I _buy_ MS Windows. Sorry for that, it's
> MS's and my freedom.

_I_ think this is a bit masochistic, but feel "free"... ;-)
--
Marc