digital philosophy

[madcrow]

i was looking at the web site of the free software foundation when i came across this article by richard stallman. i personally find it a great argument against proprietary commercial software. whaddya u people think?

http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html

[Chaos]

I didn't read it all but he is right, cos someone has a copy and he burns it for a friend or something and that guy burns it again and so on

[Xaenn]

I was only able to read maybe a fourth of it...it was just too damn long. But I agree that software should be free, or at the very least modifiable.

[madcrow]

i see that del_boy added a "complete rubbish" option and voted for it. it would be nice to know why he saw fit to change my poll and what the reasons for his vote were. it's more fun with debate.

[Del_Boy]

I'll post it later Though I do believe you need to have a commercial market for widespread investment in programming.

My edit btw was intended to be humourous - should have known that you wouldn't 'get it'.

[Norgus]

Its an all out good philosophy. Read the whole thing.

I hope that free software and these morals will become prevailent within my lifetime. It would certainly make me wish to become a programmer moreso.

[DarkElf]

I read most of it, and agree for the most part. Being a semi-professional programmer I know alot of the problems this article explains. So yeah for the most part I totally agree with the article, a definate good read and once I have had some sleep (been awake for about 28 hours now) I plan to read the rest

[Mistral]

After reading the entire article, I suppose I agree with many of the points he makes regarding the impedement of growth, repair, and progress, even if not his ideas regarding the social ramifications of proprietary software (Which presents flawed comparisons, ignoring some alternatives which, to be fair, may not have existed when the article was originally written, and in the case of "betraying your neighbor", what seemed to be a poor grasp of the license agreement - "Use of One Copy in One Iteration" does not mean "Use by Buyer Only by this Sole Copy in Existence" - and the use of loaded words). In essence, this idea could well take off and work well, should the early period (Which would be very difficult, as it would remove a vital, booming economic sector and entail a serious backlash) be outlasted.

[afterburner]

Open source is an awesome idea.

By the way if anyoen is interested there is something called "The open CD" which contains a lot of open source software for windows on the net. It's got some of the best open source software for windows on it set up very nicely and easy to install etc... It's very nice for showing to people ie network administrators .. blah blah blah

some of the stuff it's got on it is

Open Office: Almost exactly the same as Microsoft office cept it's free and open source also can open and save as microsoft documents.
The Gimp: Like photoshop
Pdf creator: After it is intsalled it acts like a printer as in if you want to create a pdf doc you can type it up in word and just print it straight to the pdf printer = instant pdf. A lot cheaper than bying acrobat pdf writer ie R4000 -> R0 + the cost of a CD-R (For those who don't know R (Rand) is the cirrency of South Africa, don't know how much pdf writer costs in US)

Mozilla and firefox: Web browsers but a lot more stable than Intermnet explorer and have had download managers and pop up killers for years unlike Microsoft who only just caught up in the latest service pack.

Got a lot of other apps as well as a few games and has essays and articles on open source

And best of all it's completly free no ads no hidden costs and licensed under the GNU public license so you can play with the source code all you want.

I know a South african mirror to download it from but if You search for "The open CD" in google you should find it

Actually here is the official website

<a href= "www.theopencd.org"> www.theopencd.org </a>

Also for those who don't know . You can download lots of linux versions from

<a href="http://linuxiso.org/">http://linuxiso.org/</a>

Possibly the best distrabution for a newbie to linux would be mandrake. Very user friendly and easy to install. Comes with everything you'll ever need from open office to gimp as well as pdf and ps readers. has a nice GUI and easy to use.

Also has a lot of other stuff for server use like ftp servers apache (webserver) dns servers
tftp, ssh, telnet, nfs ...etc.

By the way when the microsoft webserver went down they actually switched to apache the linux webserver. pretty cool hey.

Microsoft tries to discredit linux alot but thats cos they are biased against it, big surprise


Oh well guess I'm finished the longest post of my life... sorry guys

Hope this helps

[Dark Neighbour]

Programs should be affordable, thats all I got to say. I hardly think that anyone should have fork over $1000 for a program. I could buy a new fucking computer for that. The price of stuff has contributed to increase in piracy and whatnot.

BTW, I never read the article, too tired...

[Jase]

complete rubbish (and quit ya whinin Madcow)
Thats what i went cos it seemed funny
But programs shouldnt cost so much but they dont have to be free cos if they were free then people would be out of a job therefore lack of better programs cos no one wants to work for free do they

[afterburner]

Open source is good in theory but you'll find that most open source software suppliers charge for support instead of the the software itself.

[Jase]

Open source is good in theory but you'll find that most open source software suppliers charge for support instead of the the software itself.

My IT teacher told me something i found good today:
Open source is good in theory becuase you can alter it to how you want it BUT the down side is every one is goin of and changin it to how THEY want it but no body is makin the program better in a whole
His example:
Linux: someone need more sucerity they go do it you want better preformance they go do it but nobody is workin to make linux better as a whole

Windows: you cant change it but it advances as a whole everything is tryin to be better then the last

[Norgus]

Your IT teacher knows fuck all, and you should be weary of learning from such a person.

[Xaenn]

My IT teacher told me something i found good today:
Open source is good in theory becuase you can alter it to how you want it BUT the down side is every one is goin of and changin it to how THEY want it but no body is makin the program better in a whole
His example:
Linux: someone need more sucerity they go do it you want better preformance they go do it but nobody is workin to make linux better as a whole

Windows: you cant change it but it advances as a whole everything is tryin to be better then the last

That is completely and utterly untrue.