Josef Dalcolmo dalcolmo@vh-s.de writes:
Florian.Weimer@RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.DE said:
I'm not sure about that. In the past, the big companies tolerated a certain amount of copying, in order to help spreading their software among home users etc. ...
To continue a little bit on this line of thinking, (e.g. spreading the word,) it is imperative to give people the opportunity to try free software. The fact is however, that many of us are bound to use MS software,
"bound"?
either because it was forced upon us,
"forced"?
or because we need to deal with documents in that format,
"need"?
or simply because it not worth while to reboot your computer every time when you want to switch programs
Ah, I think this comes much closer to the point: It's more or less just laziness. Maybe you should read Kant's "What is Enlightenment?"---most of it is still relevant today (see for example, http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/what-is-enlightenment.txt).
I still have to meet someone who is actually *forced* to use proprietary software. People make decisions and claim that, as a consequence, they are forced to use proprietary software. Maybe it's time to question the decisions.
Unfortunately, the latter method has been hampered by the fact that many free tools are only running under Linux and Linux is "only" an operating system.
This is not true. For example, the GCC release criteria listed many platforms on which GCC should run, most of them using proprietary operating systems.
My point is: it would be great if the whole GNU/Linux system would be ported to Windows: Linux as a program running in Windows.
I think Microsoft is selling something like GNU/Interix, and there is Cygwin.