Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How To Play WMV (thread drift - slaveryware)

[Bob Young]

Andrei Slavoiu wrote:
> --- Bob Young <BYoung@××××××××××.com> wrote:
>
>> That's a very shallow definition of the "essence of
>> freedom," from the
>> perspective of most end users, your scenario doesn't
>> really change anything.
>> From the end users perspective s/he is still
>> dependent on someone else to
>> make the changes. I wouldn't say having a choice of
>> who to be dependent upon
>> actually qualifies as "freedom."
>>
> Nobody needs to depend on anybody for their coding!
> Programmers are not a secret society that hold their
> ways secret! If you don't find anybody to do it for
> you, or if you don't want to pay for that, then you
> can buy a copy of "Programming for Dummies" or "Teach
> yourself C++ in 10 minutes" (note that if any of this
> books really exist, it is a simple coincidence).
> So everybody HAS the freedom. If somebody is too lazy
> to learn how to use it, it's their own fault.
>
You're absolutely correct, everybody and anybody in the entire world 
*may* if they want to, modify an OSS app/utility/driver, I've stipulated 
that over and over again.

What I'm pointing out is, the vast majority of people who have this 
choice (the people using OSS), don't exercise it in any way. They have 
absolutely no interest in doing so, and they are never ever going to be 
interested in doing so, and that is as it should be. I'm not suggesting 
that OSS should be abolished, or anything like that, I'm just saying 
that in comparison to CSS this supposed "freedom" that OSS provides, 
isn't really all that valuable from the perspective of most end users. I 
will grant that it is a more important issue for people who can 
read/write code or have interest in doing so, but that's a pretty small 
percentage of the population.

-- 
Regards
Bob Young
-- 
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