An alternative to Skype

[Steve G.]

1. You can't say RMS is not a leading voice of free software. Then there is
mint. Then there are others.

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.

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.

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).

5. If one considers OSS a religion, their Gods have just lost some of their
shine.

On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 10:35 AM, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir at cohens.org.il>wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 09:19:55AM -0600, Steve G. wrote:
> > I am neither planning nor recommending to boycott GNU or FSF. I also
> drive
> > German and Japanese cars.
> >
> > I AM planning to maintain alternatives to them - that is, while my
> attitude
> > in the past was to find ways to use open source solutions even if it
> meant,
> > often, spending days fixing bugs and glitches (using third party patches
> or
> > instructions), I am now going to use MS or Apple solutions instead.
> > Specifically, I will use Skype, VMWare and VirtualBox on Win7, iTunes on
> > Win7/OS-X, etc. instead of compiling every other week on Linux.
>
> Hmm... diversity. How nice.
>
> So when VirtualBox gets abandoned by Oracle, or Skype gets abandoned by
> Microsoft, where will you move to?
>
> Or when OpenOffice.org gets abandoned by Oracle, where will you move to?
> Hmm, maybe LibreOffice?
>
> If you don't want compiling every week, stop using Gentoo (or LFS, or
> whatever) and move to a distro that uses some less GCC CPU time.
>
> >
> > When it comes to advocacy, when in the past I was advocating a move to
> OSS
> > products, in the future I would advocate for using products that can work
> > with both MS and Linux, or using heterogeneous systems.
> >
> > As far as I am concerned, OSS is no longer future-proof, and has to be
> only
> > a of my product mix, not the only one.
>
> Hmmm... that's rich.
>
> RMS says a few words and all of a sudden the whole Free Software
> shutters? Kindly explain your logic to us.
>
> --
> Tzafrir Cohen         | tzafrir at jabber.org | VIM is
> http://tzafrir.org.il |                    | a Mutt's
> tzafrir at cohens.org.il |                    |  best
> tzafrir at debian.org    |                    | friend
>
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>



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