[Pan-users] Re: OT: freedomware vs... Was: Building Pan on Windows?

[Duncan]

Leslie Newell posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:47:23 +0000 as excerpted:

>>> Alternatively it is perfectly legal to borrow a Windows CD from
>>> someone and install it.
>>>     
>> Only if they delete their Windows install first.
>>   
> As far as I know you can use it legally without uninstalling their
> version first, as long as you do either delete it or install a kosher
> copy after the evaluation period is up..

I don't believe the EULA allows that, nor US copyright law.  However, it's 
likely to be legal in some other legal domains.

>>> Most applications that handle data that can sensibly be edited in
>>> another application at least offer an option to export the data in a
>>> relatively common format.
>>>     
>> And how does that help you when you no longer have a computer which can
>> run the application?

That's what's nice about standard formats such as text/plain, text/html, 
and image/jpeg.

>> That's nonsense. That's like saying that "many nails only make sense if
>> hammered by Brand X of hammer", or "many slices of bread only make
>> sense if toasted in Acme Brand toasters".

>> I'm sure you have your reasons for wanting to keep the data format
>> proprietary. That just makes you part of the problem *wink*

Indeed.  But here we have a case in point of the mindset of proprietary 
folks vs freedomware folks.  The below, from the upline such that if I'm 
not mistaken it should be the third quote level here, pretty much says it 
all:

>>> There is no point making the data format open because there is no
>>> other application that could make any sense of it. If my code was
>>> open source you could then use the data but we have already
>>> discussed why that is not practical.

Les sees that as not practical, he says so himself.  Free and open source 
folks see anything else as not practical, because we take it as a given 
that we have a right to access our own data using whatever app we wish, 
that the freedom to make apps compatible with that data is a given, and 
that the data is almost certainly valuable... to someone and therefore to 
us... or <whoever> would not have bothered accumulating and storing it in 
the first place.

Thus the divide...  User empowerment vs. the user is simply serving at the 
whim of the non-free application's master, in the context of my sig.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman