On 9/16/10 9:49 AM, Robin Schwab wrote:
Those are very weak arguments: social impact... cultural connections...
Maybe. But an all-free-software policy can be defended, even on the grounds of pure expediency.
I'm a developer and I've worked in situations that were a mix of proprietary and free software. I much prefer it when it's all-free, or at least as much as possible.
I have frequently had to tell people "sorry, that's impossible" when working with a proprietary tool. When we are working with free tools, the only limit is how much attention or skill we can bring to the problem. If necessary, we can write the software ourselves.
Also, if we know that all of our software and data can be replicated without limit on any server, backups, archives, even a developer's machine, that's a huge win for many reasons. It's easier for ops, easier to archive, easier for remote developers, easier for researchers. The WMF doesn't have to have anybody doing useless tasks like tracking software license compliance.
When we /a priori/ exclude one or the other we will miss the chance of using the really best software.
Yup. We are not using the best software today. We are trading that for the assurance that we can do *whatever* we want, today, or in the future.
Given this situation the only alternative we have is to actively let somebody program the requested feature or to wait until somebody does it spontaneously. Both ways it may take years to have a satisfactory result.
I agree that this sucks, and there ought to be some better way to fund free software development. Right now we rely mostly on developer caprice, or relatively unusual situations where a company finds it in their interest to give away their code.
However, that is the angle we should be working on - how can we fund the software we want to have - rather than looking for some compromise with proprietary software, which we know will come back to haunt us.