Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Software freedom is the only viable business model.

[Robinson Tryon]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Will Hill <will.hillnotes@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think sales figures for non free software and so called "cloud" services
> will show you that the world does not think spying is funny.

I'd love for this to be the case. Do you have any numbers, hard facts,
etc.. I can use in my presentations? This would be a great talking
point for many of us.

> Free software is the only kind of software people should trust, so it's
> ultimately the only software people will be able to do business with.

I agree that it's hard (impossible?) to trust software for which one
does not have the source code, however trillions of dollars of
business are conducted every day using both Free and non-Free
software. Do you mean that Free Software is ultimately the only kind
of software that people will *want* to use for business?

>  People
> do understand this, even if they have not had software freedom explained to
> them well.

How would people innately know that Free Software can provide better
guarantees of trust than non-Free software if they don't really know
what 'Free Software' means?

> The only question is how long people will let monopolists control choke
> points.  Besides being wrong and lawless, there are many more losers than
> there are winners.  No one wants to work very hard when the game is stacked
> against them.

Everything starts with education. If people don't understand the
playing field, the players, or the game, then it's very difficult for
them to make sensible decisions. Just getting people to use open
formats or accept Free Software is only the first part of the puzzle.

Best,
--R


-- 
Robinson Tryon
QA Engineer - The Document Foundation
LibreOffice Community Outreach Herald
qubit@libreoffice.org
802-379-9482