Re: [Fsfe-uk] Mac OS X refund

[MJ Ray]

Kevin Donnelly <address@hidden> wrote: [...]
> That's my point - for the average business person to emote about global 
> warming and then do little about it in practice could be seen as 
> hypocritical. [...]

It's a similar problem, too: what can the average business do about
it?  SMEs are 90+% of businesses, so the average is somewhere in the
SME sector, but we can't switch 100% overnight without losing
business.  TTLLP tries to be green, but we still ended up using a
diesel van to move some GNU/Linux servers from London to Manchester
last year.  I really couldn't see another way to do it in the time
available and keep that business going on free software.

I agree with the point about emote and practice being different - in
practice, most of our travel is sustainable (cycles and trains) but
we've not (yet?) taken the government money that I think was available
to publish/emote a Green Travel Plan for our business.  With free
software, we've been much better at using it than we have at promoting
it to our market - but is there money similar to GTP funds out there
to help us promote it?

A related Q: is starting a new enterprise with 100% free software much
easier than switching an existing one away from proprietary software?
Does that suggest barriers to entry are raised by proprietary software
producers?  Are such barriers fair or in keeping with a free market?

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
Webmaster-developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder,
consumer and workers co-operative member http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ -
Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/