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Free is too expensive (Economist)

Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Apr 7, 2012 12:12 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by rqosa
Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)

If the Linux desktop were to be changed so that developers "must support old technology (often decade old technology) thus development is nightmare", existing users would be very unhappy, because a large proportion of those existing users are developers (which is how it should be, according to FLOSS ideology).

Linux has larger proportion of developers among it's users but these are still minority. That's why we have this discussion on first place. If you want to kick out all the “mere users” away and keep only developers then perhaps it's better for you to join the OpenBSD camp?

These people are at least honest: We hack OpenBSD for ourselves. Not for you. Not for the users. If the users end up enjoying what we have created for themselves, good for them. This may be because some of the users are have the same needs as us. But, then they are just lucking out, since we are doing it FOR OURSELVES.


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Free is too expensive (Economist)

Posted Apr 7, 2012 14:44 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link]

> If you want to kick out all the “mere users” away and keep only developers

That's a strawman. No one ever suggested "kicking out" users — there's nothing preventing users from migrating to Linux if they prefer it over the alternatives. It's just that its developer base (which makes up a large proportion of the user base) is not, and should not be, willing to make things more difficult for themselves, and other current Linux users, for the sake of pandering to techinally-illiterate people (and you yourself admitted that "development is nightmare" on the platforms that those technically-illiterate users are currently using).

> perhaps it's better for you to join the OpenBSD camp? These people are at least honest

They're honest, and we're honest too — as far as I'm concerned, there's no significant defference between us and them. (In fact, I have used OpenBSD in the past.)

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