Arguments related to Free Software

Q How do you convince enterprises to resort to Free Software when they argue that Free Software is not secure? It’s foolish to think that Free Software is not secure. Proprietary software is terribly insecure. But I don’t try to convince businesses. I don’t focus on trying to convince people to use Free Software. I focus on showing people how Free Software is necessary for their freedom. Others are trying to convince people in different ways to use Free Software—i think that is a secondary job. Qmost

people new to the Free Software world do not consider Free Software mature—for example, GIMP vs Photoshop, Libreoffice vs MS Office, etc. How does one deal with such arguments? If you don’t focus on freedom, if you don’t think of proprietary software as a threat to your freedom, then you might consider which software to use purely based on practical considerations. Proprietary software developers are not always incompetent. They don’t always do a bad job. So either one may seem better, practically. But if you recognise that a proprietary program is an attack on your freedom, and it’s a system of digital colonisation, then you will look at the choice in a different way. You will see the proprietary software as intolerable, and would want to know how you can get free software. So if a free program can do the job at all, then you would find that better. Anything that is good is better than anything that is bad. Once you recognise that proprietary software is bad, you will obviously choose the better program (read: Free Software). I would rather have nothing than use a proprietary program, and that’s the choice I make. If there is something that I can do only with proprietary software, I will rather not do it. Qwhat

would be your advice to software developers and hackers in terms of what to do and what not to do? The way you learn to participate in Free Software development is by doing it. If you use a program, and wish