Posts by John Cockroft

No "freetard" insults - commercial software is more retarded

I work within the open source world, developing bespoke applications and giving Linux based consultancy. I make enough money thank you very much, pay my taxes and contribute code (and money contributions) back to open source projects.

Your continuing use of the word "freetard" is not only very insulting to a hard working and committed section of the software industry, it is a form of FUD intended to put down open source software and hence discourage users from using it rather than paying vastly more money for commercial products that may not be any better.

Using open source software does not make you a leech on the community, stupid or to be content with poor quality software. It means that you care about having software which is free to use by everyone and which can be contributed to be everyone. It also means using software that you can trust (as you can view the source code) rather than closed source software which could contain trojans, time bombs or other nasties. It is also the direction in which whole software industry (including Microsoft) is slowly but surely moving.

IMHO making Symbian open source is great news for the industry as community members (such as myself) will be able to improve and contribute to a better version of Symbian and it may well now end up on other embedded projects which might have used either embedded Linux or Windows CE. Using the Eclipse licence is not perhaps as good as using the GPL but at least it will be open source. Time will tell as to whether Nokia will fulfill their obligations (I have some reservations) but it would seem to be a positive thing.

Why not use open source software rather than pirate commercial software

So is the BSA suggesting that businesses install *legal* open source software instead of pirating commercial software e.g.:

* OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office

* Dia instead of Microsoft Visio

* Evolution instead of Microsoft Outlook

* Planner instead of Microsoft Project

* Scribus instead of Microsoft Publisher

* KompoZer instead of Microsoft Frontpage

* SharpDevelop/MonoDevelop instead of Microsoft Visual Studio

* PDFCreator rather than Acrobat Distiller

or even (gasp)

* GNU/Linux (e.g. Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE/PCLinuxOS/Slackware) instead of Microsoft Windows

Of course they won't recommend using open source software rather than pirating commercial software. They are a self-serving corporate software propoganda machine intent of maximizing profits of commercial software vendors such as Microsoft or Adobe rather than actually trying to educate the public and reduce piracy.