[Fsf-friends] Re: FREE SOFTWARE THAT IS GOOD ...
Mahesh T. Pai
paivakil@vsnl.net
Fri May 7 23:27:02 IST 2004
Harish Narayanan said on Fri, May 07, 2004 at 12:03:03PM -0400,:
> A primary reason they aren't as wide spread are
> because of societal inertia,
<snip>
> Do I want it installed? No.
> Do I need it installed? Not really.
> Am I one of the 210 million who paid for it anyway? Yes.
> Did I have much of a choice? Yes and no.
See??
You had a choice, did not exercise it, and blame `intertia'?
Huh?? Did you say `What about the greenbacks I paid?'? We have a
restrictive trade practises law much stronger than that of US of A.
> I could have tried really hard to find a company that sells a
Inertia, is the word.
The largest and oldest hardware-cum-software vendor in the world
supports GNU/Linux on their PCs. May be you did not ask the right
question?
> RedHat is a major supporter of many free software projects,
Yes ...
> and doesn't ship anything proprietary with their operating
> systems.
Not very sure of that. Maybe, going by hearsay, this holds good for
the free-as-in-beer version of RH which we used to get till sometime
back. Cannot say the same for the paid version. I have not used the
paid version, so dunno. Hope somebody will clarify on whether paid
isos from RH contain non-free binaries.
Tha apart, a major component of the RPM system is considered non-free
by Debian since its license imposes burdens on users.
> I respect them for this,
Me too.
--
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,
'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,
Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,
Kerala, India.
http://paivakil.port5.com
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
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