[Foundation-l] Two tests for the freeness of activities related to project content

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Milos who do you want to kid ? A new computer with all the trimmings is able
to have multiple pieces of software open at the same time, it is able to
listen to music, have muliple applications running that contact the Internet
and it still performs really well. An old computer may be able to run
Firefox or Open Office and it does work on Windows XP or Linux  in the same
way.

The key point is that there are two demographics and they should not be
mixed to make a believable argument.
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > When you conflate impoverished and principled readers, you are talking
> about
> > two distinct demographics. The issue is that modern software requires
> modern
> > hardware and when there is no money for software, chances are that the
> > hardware is substandard. This is not the case for "principled" users.
> They *can
> > and do *buy the hardware to run the latest and greatest software.
>
> Modern free software requires hardware old 5 years (surprisingly,
> contemporary processors are around 2x1.5-2.5GHz, while 5 years ago it
> was around 1x2-3GHz; 5 years ago ordinary new computers had
> 256MB-512MB of RAM with a possibility to buy more; now new computers
> have 512MB-1GB of RAM). A lot of companies have 2 or 3 years of
> hardware recycling period and older computers are usually donated or
> sold for small amount of money. You may run very well all important
> new free software (Firefox, OpenOffice and similar) with 5 years old
> computer. (Actually, I have 4 years old laptop which works quite fine
> with the newest software.)
>
> While hardware is some issue, it is much lesser issue to find someone
> to donate to you hardware or to buy it for 50 EUR/USD than proprietary
> proprietary software for 500+ EUR/USD (or, even, for a couple of
> thousands of EUR/USD).
>
> So, while this Gregory's argument is not an absolute one, it is very
> close to the reality.
>
> > An impoverished reader might use skype, a principled reader would not.
> One
> > group is about cost to them and the other is about principles.
> Politically
> > it is expedient to make these group seem to be as one. They are not. It
> is
> > for instance known that Microsoft prefers people to use their software
> > illegally then to have them use other software. It is for this reason
> that
> > the argument that copyright violation is stealing is a lie; when
> Microsoft
> > truly believed this, it would fight illigal software everywhere equally
> and
> > this does not happen.
>
> I don't have anything against anyone who is using "illegal" software.
> But, I don't want to use it because I am not able to improve that
> software; as well as I am not able to be sure that my products made by
> using such software would be supported after some amount of time.
> Also, I have a limited time in my life and I don't want to spend a lot
> of time on learning technology which I may have to abandon because of
> a management decision of some company.
>
> So, we have a lot of practical problems related to adoption of
> proprietary software -- if we are thinking about our [collective]
> future.
>
> And about using Skype: Yes, Skype is good enough (but: just because
> there is no better software) for communication. However, it is not
> possible to upgrade Skype with your own needs. I am sure that anyone
> who is working with sound and video is able to find a number of very
> useful things which Skype is not able to do, while it wouldn't be a
> big deal to make it if it would be free software.
>
> BTW, Skype is not the only software which is working well for VoIP.
> Ekiga is working quite well, and it worked very well (as Gnome
> Meeting) 5 years ago. Actually, it doesn't have daily peaks, like
> Skype has because communication is a direct one; as well as you may
> improve Ekiga, while you are not able to improve Skype.
>
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