[ILUG] Renaming the ILUG

[John P. Looney]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 12:58:23PM +0000, Nick Hilliard mentioned:
> The argument that non-free software is restrictive, unfair, unsociable and
> many other nasty things is entirely a matter of opinion (and you're welcome
> to yours :-).  It's up there with other pie-in-the-sky arguments like
> "paying money to connect to the Internet sucks", "we shouldn't have to pay
> taxes" and a whole lot of other equally naive positions, where naive is
> naivety on a glocal rather than local scale.

 The number of times over the last few weeks that I've had raised blood
pressure because I couldn't build a version of Oracle without LDAP
support, or because a Java "moderation" client to our chat server didn't
support a USERNAME and PASSWORD param in the applet definition is not
funny.

 I've no problem paying for software. No problem at all. If it's good,
cool. But I hate software that don't have permission to change to code
myself. It should be illegal to provide software without source code, I
don't mind being told "Don't pass around the source" to proprietary stuff,
if it's sensitive or whatever, but at least let me change it, and
distribute patches.

 Oh, and people that distribute unreadable/unfixable code (re: Dan
Bernstein's Qmail) should be beaten up too. Repeatedly. Maybe change the
law, so crap code can't be release ;-P

> There is plenty of room in the world for both free software and non-free
> software: personally and professionally, I use and support both.  However,
> it is not realistic for one side to say that the other side sucks just
> because in an ideal world, we'd be using one or the other.  Both are useful,
> and the best way to foster both is not by philosophical protectionism on
> behalf of either of them but by choosing the best solution to fit your
> needs.  This has the side-effect of encouraging the other side to produce a
> better product in competition.

 And, it's looking more and more like non-free stuff is too restrictive
for non-standard companies or individuals that do something different from
the lowest common denominator.

Kate

-- 
"The fool must be beaten with a stick, for an intelligent person 
the merest hint is sufficient"                -- Zen Master Greg