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Re: [LUG] Happy Software Freedom Day

 

On Sun, Sep 17, 2006 at 12:33:17PM +0100, Ben Goodger wrote:

> No, but pushing it in their faces is counterproductive. So is spending a day
> on useless conferences when we could all be coding.

Are you talking about the Expo? I don't think things like that are useless, I
think actually they serve a great purpose. They're us standing up and
saying "We're a community. We built a free operating system, a free kernel, we
give you freedom. Freedom for free society" - business people can understand
freedom. They understand the nature of a free market - yet, this is one of the
reasons why 'open source' was invented, so they could put a nicer, marketing
savvy label on things. It didn't really work out like that, and instead takes
everyone's attentions away from free software at a time when we're beginning to
need their attention more and more, with the influx of Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM) and software patents that look to take away more freedoms.

> No computer is, and GNU is certainly unsuited to windows refugees who think
> that windows is the only way and everything else should replicate it. As has
> been said before, GNU/Linux is not Windows sans spyware, viruses etc. Until
> people accept this, it will never be ready for the mass market in the sense
> that Windows is.

I'm not sure that no computer is ready. In fact, I'd say computers like the Mac
have been ready for a long long time. I can't comment on Windows, as I don't
use it.

-- 
Matt Lee
Chief Webmaster, GNU Project - http://www.gnu.org/ - Free as in Freedom
Free Software Foundation - Free Software, Free Society - http://www.fsf.org/

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