1. You can't say RMS is not a leading voice of free software. Then there is mint. Then there are others. <br><br>2. The advantage of diversity is that if MS drops skype, and there is a market need, they would come up with an alternative. And if not, there is always Apple, Oracle, or another business that will gladly jump in. Not forgetting OSS solutions, if any.<br>
<br>3. The problem is VMware and VirtualBox on Ubuntu, not the OS. Vmware links directly to version dependent libraries (even if the number, not the library, changes one has to recompile). VB has not been working well for me.<br>
<br>4. There are advantages - in addition to price - to OSS products. There are also advantages to capital-driven-products, be they somewhat open (MS partner driven approach) or more closed (Apple controlled approach). <br>
<br>5. If one considers OSS a religion, their Gods have just lost some of their shine. <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 10:35 AM, Tzafrir Cohen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tzafrir@cohens.org.il">tzafrir@cohens.org.il</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="im">On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 09:19:55AM -0600, Steve G. wrote:<br>
> I am neither planning nor recommending to boycott GNU or FSF. I also drive<br>
> German and Japanese cars.<br>
><br>
> I AM planning to maintain alternatives to them - that is, while my attitude<br>
> in the past was to find ways to use open source solutions even if it meant,<br>
> often, spending days fixing bugs and glitches (using third party patches or<br>
> instructions), I am now going to use MS or Apple solutions instead.<br>
> Specifically, I will use Skype, VMWare and VirtualBox on Win7, iTunes on<br>
> Win7/OS-X, etc. instead of compiling every other week on Linux.<br>
<br>
</div>Hmm... diversity. How nice.<br>
<br>
So when VirtualBox gets abandoned by Oracle, or Skype gets abandoned by<br>
Microsoft, where will you move to?<br>
<br>
Or when OpenOffice.org gets abandoned by Oracle, where will you move to?<br>
Hmm, maybe LibreOffice?<br>
<br>
If you don't want compiling every week, stop using Gentoo (or LFS, or<br>
whatever) and move to a distro that uses some less GCC CPU time.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
><br>
> When it comes to advocacy, when in the past I was advocating a move to OSS<br>
> products, in the future I would advocate for using products that can work<br>
> with both MS and Linux, or using heterogeneous systems.<br>
><br>
> As far as I am concerned, OSS is no longer future-proof, and has to be only<br>
> a of my product mix, not the only one.<br>
<br>
</div>Hmmm... that's rich.<br>
<br>
RMS says a few words and all of a sudden the whole Free Software<br>
shutters? Kindly explain your logic to us.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
--<br>
Tzafrir Cohen | <a href="mailto:tzafrir@jabber.org">tzafrir@jabber.org</a> | VIM is<br>
<a href="http://tzafrir.org.il" target="_blank">http://tzafrir.org.il</a> | | a Mutt's<br>
<a href="mailto:tzafrir@cohens.org.il">tzafrir@cohens.org.il</a> | | best<br>
<a href="mailto:tzafrir@debian.org">tzafrir@debian.org</a> | | friend<br>
<br>
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