On 16 September 2010 19:02, Neil Kandalgaonkar neilk@wikimedia.org wrote:
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 ateast 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.
+1
I'm a sysadmin. Proprietary tools are the bane of my existence and the object of considerable fear and loathing. They are to be avoided as absolutely far as possible. Any exceptions had better (a) have the best excuse ever in history (b) be replaceable with an open source equivalent as absolutely soon as is feasible.
Your mileage may vary, but I suspect it won't vary much.
- d.