about warez.at

[Florian Weimer]

Josef Dalcolmo <dalcolmo at vh-s.de> writes:

> Florian.Weimer at 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.

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Florian.Weimer at RUS.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/
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