[mdlug] Stallman

[Robert Adkins]

Ingles, Raymond wrote:
>> From: Robert Adkins
>>     
>> His extreme beliefs are just difficult to 
>> gel with the reality of the world. Not all software would work with the 
>> model he presents. It would be awesome if it could, but the world just 
>> doesn't work that way.
>>     
>
>  On the other hand:
>
>  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man
> persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
> depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
>
>  :->
>   
    ...and that is why I do have some respect for him. His work has and 
will continue to do good for the world of software.

    I do believe that all he has done and all he will succeed in doing 
is keeping the software industry from becoming a duplicate of the Video 
Game Arcade of the 80's. Wherein such a world you would sit at your PC, 
pop in a few quarters to boot it and then a few more to open your word 
processor and then a handful more quarters to type past 500 words and 
still a few more quarters to keep your PC operating, while you save your 
document and then a few more quarters to make one single print of your 
work. (Thus making it cheaper to not own a computer and use pencil and 
paper everything.)

    As cool as it would be, I am still unable to see all software work 
in the model he envisions. I could see it working if software was 
written with a very obtuse interface, as some GNU utilities and many 
F/OSS applications are written. Thus, necessitating support.

    As it stands, I already deal with many commercial software packages 
where the vendors try and sell us "Support Contracts" and I tell them to 
blow off, because their stuff works, we never call support and the 
"updates" that are part of the support contracts aren't even mildly 
interesting features that would benefit us. Also, from reading about the 
update "chain" from one software package we use, the majority of the 
changes had been changing all the menus around and changing option 
screens, while only adding one or two real features... (Which is hardly 
worth the expense.)

    Forcing a need for support, by either writing an obfuscated 
interface or changing menus (willy-nilly) is not what the software 
industry needs.

    -Rob