Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 13th Jan 2008 16:30 UTC, submitted by anonymous
"Operating systems come with cultures as much as codebases. I was forcibly reminded of this fact over the holidays when several family members and neighbors press-ganged me into troubleshooting their Windows computers. Although none of us had any formal computer training, and I know almost nothing about Windows, I was able to solve problems that baffled the others - not because of any technical brilliance, but because the free software culture in which I spend my days made me better able to cope."
Thread beginning with comment 295656
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-08
Also the author refers to the "four freedoms" definined by FSF instead of the similar open source definitions that OSI has.
Personally I'm not interested in nitpicking about this (especially as both parties of the open source and free software debate seem to agree that the two definitions, "free software" and "open source" mean practically the same in the end, only the communities and philosophies around the two definitions may be a bit different). But because some people do seem to care about such things a lot, maybe the original author too(?), it could have been polite to keep the original author's definition in the title.
Member since:2005-07-13
Personally I'm not interested in nitpicking about this (especially as both parties of the open source and free software debate seem to agree that the two definitions, "free software" and "open source" mean practically the same in the end, only the communities and philosophies around the two definitions may be a bit different). But because some people do seem to care about such things a lot, maybe the original author too(?), it could have been polite to keep the original author's definition in the title.
I'm one of those people that cares about such things. I don't think that the two mean practically the same thing in the end. I like the element of freedom that OSS offers, but I often find that the agenda of the "free software" community is as restrictive to my personal freedom as the proprietary organizations are. I don't want a religious battle. I don't want a philosophical battle. I just want the ability to use the software that best meets my needs, open or proprietary, without hindrance from anyone. I resent any organization making that choice for me, which is more or less what drove me to pursuing OSS. That I generally prefer to use OSS software is more indicative of the quality of OSS software in general, than an element of "sticking it to the man".
The free software community is but a single sub-community within the OSS community at large, in as much as linux users are but a single segment of the compuiting base at large. It would be ridiculous to assume that the viewpoint of the linux community is representative of computing platforms in general, and I get frustrated when I see the viewpoints of the free software community espoused as being representative of the OSS community in general.
But that's just me.
Member since:
2005-08-12
Why go through the trouble of changing "Free Software" to "Open Source" in the title?