Forum Topic

Apologies

Very sorry, the same message was sent once but did not appear, but has now appeared multiple times

Chris Bell ● 6614d5 Comments

I think you should be apologising for using acronyms without explaining what they stand for!  How on earth do you expect anyone to understand or respond to your post? Is it aimed at those already familiar with the term FOSS (in which case why not use it in the post's title?) Or was it just an opportunity to have a rant and get it off your chest (like this probably reads).

M. Anderson ● 6614d

"I think you have just confirmed my point about people who have not heard about Free Open Source Software, FOSS."If you believe that many people haven't heard of FOSS (and I agree with you on that point), why did you not explain what FOSS is in your "Chicken and Egg" post?  Indeed, if your presentation of the FOSS issues were more straightforward, it might be easier to understand what message you are trying to put across.  I've just tried to access your website to learn more after a quick visit this morning, but was greeted by "This site is unavailable because it is too busy."  Seems unlikely at this time of night.

Richard Jennings ● 6613d

I think almost everyone is wary of free computer software. As the Russian chargé d'affaires said on Radio4 last night, so charmingly, 'The only free cheese is in the mousetrap'.

Susan Kelly ● 6613d

I do appreciate what you say, but in fact there is a huge international effort to provide the best possible products. Anyone is able to view, assess, and suggest amendments to, the original sourcecode. Much of the rest of the world has already dumped commercial operating systems and moved to stable, reliable, Free Open Source Software  You may already be using Firefox, and your ISP may be running on Free Open Source Software, My home mail system is running on Exim that was originally written by Cambridge University, and the same basic package still runs the Cambridge University mail system, handling over 800,000 staff and students, plus the Demon Internet mail system, plus many others, Ealing Council website, and even some Microsoft updates, are hosted on Apache webservers. It is accepted that a Microsoft system requires about five times the IT effort to keep it running compared with a Unix compatible system. There has never been a Unix virus, although there are continuous attempts to crack any Unix compatible system because there are so many more useful facilities available.   If you have a look at my website you will find a very brief history and a number of references. I download much of my software from the University of Kent "www.mirrorservice.org" but there are many other university sites such as Warwick, Oxford, Heanor (Eire), and others worldwide.  You mention the Russians, during the Cold War era America  blocked all sales of PCs to Russia, so the Russians were buying Acorn computers, and they really appreciated their quality. They were delighted to learn programming using Acorn computers, and many Russians eventually moved to Unix Compatibles.  China is working with the Open Source community to develop a complete Chinese Open Source solution, so beware that the default language may eventually change from English to Chinese because English speaking programmers are likely to be vastly outnumbered in the future.  Many pieces of computer hardware such as modems and routers are running on embedded Unix compatible software.

Chris Bell ● 6613d

"The entire Demon website was down last night for scheduled maintenance, back this morning. Please suggest any improvements and report any errors or omissions."Well, for a start you could tell Demon to put up a more helpful and accurate message the next time they do scheduled maintenance rather than pretending that the site was too busy.  But I guess you meant improvements to your site ...Basically, I think you haven't given people a good reason to try using FOSS or convert to it.  Over the years I've tried out lots of free software.  Some of it is brilliant and I carry on using it.  The rest is often lacking in basic stability and usability.  If you offer free software that people haven't heard of, of course they will be suspicious.  If they have already invested (money, time, skills) in Windows, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, etc etc, they may not see a good reason why they should even try it out.I find the multiplicity of operating systems confusing. Unix, Linux, GNU, Debian ...  each one seems to be cobbled together from bits of the others.  I see from your site that Linux-based systems are not immune from security issues, so we'll still have to worry about firewalls, anti-virus software, "known security vulnerabilities" etc.  The impression you give in your Debian Information page is of software under constant development, some hardware incompatibilities, possible immaturity or limited facilities for multimedia, and some issues with hardware drivers that I didn't fully understand.Frankly, I don't get the impression that using this stuff is that easy.  Who are you targeting in your campaign?  Is it just IT professionals and enthusiasts, or do you expect millions of ordinary PC users to see the light and start using FOSS? 

Richard Jennings ● 6612d