Re: Practicality of GNU project and libre movement (Sagar Acharya : 2)

[Matt Ivie]

   "And, yes, I rely on a Mac, and MS Office for lots of things - "
   Hi Miles, this is not an attack bit a practical question. What
   functions does the Mac do for you that you're unable to do in a libre
   system? Same question on MS office.
   I have been an IT professional for some years now and I have been able
   to run my workstations using debian and I use LibreOffice without much
   of an issue.
   Do we need to start a new thread or discuss this privately since it is
   a little bit of a side topic.

   On July 24, 2020 2:12:27 PM MDT, Miles Fidelman
   <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

On 7/24/20 3:14 PM, Roberto Beltran via libreplanet-discuss wrote:

     Most people on here already know how bad things are, but I don't
     think it's black or white win or lose.

     Do we really know how bad things are? Is there a report somewhere
     showing, for example adoption in free software, copyleft license and
     dependency in proprietary software / noncopyleft software in numbers
     and
     how it has evolved over the time?
     On a side note, do we have success criteria (over achievable stages,
     not
     just disappearance of proprietary software from the world) that we
     can
     use to compare and good metrics to measure the progress of the
     movement?

     Funny thing, but...
     - Pretty much every funded R&D project that I've been associated
     with,
     has contractual clauses requiring software to be released as either
     open
     source or to the public domain - the leading edge remains open
     source
     - Pretty much every ISP, Hosting, and Cloud provider relies heavily
     on
     FOSS software - with the bigger ones both funding critical projects,
     and
     releasing a lot of their infrastructure code as FOSS (Apache & Open
     Stack come to mind, Lyft's Clutch infrastructure management platform
     is
     looking particularly interesting)
     - The vast majority of the world's web sites run on Apache, on Linux
     or
     BSD - and a huge number run on WordPress (all FOSS)
     - Savvy IT directors prefer open source software to proprietary
     software
     - not for cost reasons (maintaining software is costly, whether you
     pay
     a vendor to do it or hire people) - but because it's more flexible,
     and
     avoids vendor lock in (less-savvy IT directors use FOSS because they
     think it's cheaper) - by the way, that includes some rather large
     organizations, like large pieces of the US Marine Corps
     Perhaps the real problem is that MOST software doesn't make it into
     wide-spread use, and hence cannot assemble a base of support for an
     open
     source effort.  Specialized software tends to have smaller audiences
     -
     requiring either a very high price-tag, or a grant, to support a
     dedicated development & support team.  And then there's the 90%
     that's a
     mix of pet projects, poorly implemented, that will never make it as
     either commercial or open source.
     Yes... there are lots of practical issues with the GNU project &
     other
     libre software efforts - but they have a lot more to do with lack of
     focus, design by committee, and, these days, politicization of
     language
     & discussions, and ostracism of key people (e.g., Stallman,
     Torvalds).
     The flaps over systemd (techno-politics) & Stallman (gender
     politics)
     have been far more damaging to free software, than financial
     matters.
     All of this is, of course, one man's opinion.  Based on 50 years in
     the
     networking business, including a bunch of years at BBN, selling &
     leading lots of R&D projects, being the IT department for a
     non-profit,
     and building a small service bureau. And, yes, I rely on a Mac, and
     MS
     Office for lots of things - but I run my servers on Linux, Apache,
     MySQL, Postfix, Spamassassin, WordPress, and Sympa.
     Miles Fidelman

   --
   Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.