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Ben Goodger wrote: > Kai's "advice": > > "Proprietary software, though providing vital functionality, is inherently > inferior to free software, " I doubt Kai would agree that any proprietary software provided "vital" functionality. That is subjective and there are plenty of users who have absolutely no need for any proprietary code. I doubt that any of the problems you have described in this thread would actually prevent the operation of the computer. You described them as "things which annoy you" - e.g. if this was a bug report, that counts as "wishlist" or "Request for Enhancement" rather than the more urgent "grave" or "critical" severity. "vital" is a subjective assessment - to me it means that without this software the OS simply does not boot, crashes frequently or becomes otherwise inoperable for all users. i.e. /dev/ is vital, packages like the core utilities: ls, cp, grep, etc. If the software isn't needed by the base installer, I would hesitate to call it vital. > whether or not said free software actually does > anything with any degree of success. I think here you're harking back to an earlier discussion with me - the point is that the free software alternative needs people to contribute bug reports and patches, people who care about this particular functionality and have a desire to help. That is (one reason) why free software alternatives should be installed in preference to proprietary code, despite not having all the functionality of the proprietary version. The free software version improves quickest when there are people willing to help. > Just dump Flash, and persuade every > single Flash animator to use SVG and Javascript, regardless of the fact > that > these, comparatively, are utterly useless. I think you missed a "IMHO" there. I do not find the Flash plugin utterly useless. There again I haven't an artistic bone in my body and I'm relatively happy if the plugin simply shuts up the warnings from the browser about "This page needs missing plugins". ;-) (I also regularly browse the internet in a text-only browser because it's easier to find stuff.) > DO NOT attempt to suggest improvement, etc - > that would be pointless. Sadly, it is all to true for proprietary interfaces. Suggesting improvements to work with proprietary code is often pointless - because the effort required is immense and the risk that the next "upgrade" will break your code is very, very high. The only long term solution is to have access to the once proprietary codebase. Projects like Samba have my unswerving respect because what they set out to do (and achieve) is one of the most unrewarding and frustrating types of development - to reimplement someone else's work without their assistance and sometimes despite outright resistance. > Lastly some advice: features diminish > productivity, I'd agree there! :-) Features can have a catastrophic effect on productivity because a new feature can disable the entire programme. That's one reason why I like to work on v.small utilities and why I'd love to have a smaller version of apps like gnucash. > I got this "advice" perfectly well. I simply fail to see why anyone would > want it, let alone give it. Life isn't fair. We cannot grant all your wishes all the time. Sometimes the honest answer is a negative answer but that doesn't mean the request for advice should be ignored. > What right has > anyone to tell me that I should not use Flash, or fglrx, or win32codecs? Well, if you expect support for any of those features, those offering such support have every right to express their opinion that your use of these proprietary packages is actually getting in the way of a solution. You asked for help, Ben, please don't be upset if that advice runs counter to your expectations. Some problems are not solvable within the confines of this group, many problems are much wider than a simple patch or bug fix and some issues contain ideological, political or legal barriers. Those on the list who offer support would be negligent if they omitted to cover these limitations. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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