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Proprietary software considered less usefulProprietary software considered less usefulPosted Jul 5, 2012 13:18 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment by lxoliva Parent article: Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment
Don't you agree that the lack of freedoms in the latter, that presumably leads you to choose the former, would be detrimental (and thus harmful) to you, no matter how much you need the features offered by the software?I don't agree at all. Proprietary software is less useful than free software, but it is not harmful. Having to use unrar from the nonfree repos because the free unrar doesn't work for me, I am not harmed by the former. True, I lose some of my freedoms to study and modify the code, but usually I don't want to exercise those freedoms so I don't care -- I just want to decompress the fine .rar archives. Is the free version actively harmed because (having the nonfree binary) nobody cares enough to make it work? True. Again, is it harmful to users? Nope, it is just less useful than it would be otherwise. Other proprietary software can be actively harmful because it is full of security holes (like Acrobat), it places impractical restrictions on how we use software (like DVD players), or locks people down to proprietary formats (like Office), but being proprietary per se is not so relevant -- many of the same effects can be achieved with free software.
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Proprietary software considered less useful Posted Jul 5, 2012 15:21 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
Hmm. It is harmful to users if they want to unrar from a platform for which the non-free version doesnt exist.
Proprietary software considered less useful Posted Jul 5, 2012 17:34 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] That means that proprietary software can be harmful to some users -- who don't even have access to said proprietary software. However those users do have the motivation to write a free replacement... Not that I deny that effect, but it is, you will agree, a long shot.I would even prefer the moral argument: proprietary software is harmful to the hearts and minds of users who accept the state of affairs. But I think it is enough to say that proprietary software is less useful than free software, and work from there. Being a card-carrying member of the FSFE and a long-time Debian user, I like Debian's stance, although I would welcome a large, dire warning about nonfree repos.
Proprietary software considered less useful Posted Jul 5, 2012 17:19 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
You might want to run these commands:
apt-get install unar ; apt-get purge unrar
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