Re: (Really) Free Software future

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > I agree that systemd has quality/complexity issues, but it is not
   > vendor lock-in. It is free software so you can fork it – and if your
   > fork would be better, distributions would use it and Red Hat would
   > stay alone with their original systemd.

   In your dreams. How can you compete with a company having full-time
   software developers with your own free time??
   It is a vendor lock-in. Period!

There are many projects that have grown large, and it would be
impossilble for a single person to do the same amount of work -- but
that is not the same as being locked to a vendor.  You can still try
and do the work, you can get others to help you, or you can hire other
hackers to do it for you.

With systemd, and really any free software, you are not dependant on
some other organization to do your bidding -- you can do it yourself.
If you are are locked-in, you don't even have that choice.  For
example with printer cartridges, where you cannot get another one from
another manufacturer.  Or with the MP3 format, where the situation
could have been that we would not have been allowed to write software
to encode such files due to patents.  Thats the meaning of vendor
lock-in.