[Linux4christians] Weighing In on the Freespire Debate

[Rob Matlack]

On Wed May 10 2006 20:40, JT Moree wrote:
> It makes it virtually impossible but not completely impossible.  Take
> redhat linux.  everything in their distro is gpl so CentOS is basically
> the same thing but vendors want the red hat name and support.

That is the point. They are not selling the software, but support. To some 
extent this is the case with MS Office as compared to OpenOffice, but the 
real issue is people's perception of compatibility.

> What about wikipedia?  isn't is a descent example of a community project
> on a large scale?

Yes, but that is not comparing apples and apples--the MS Office/OpenOffice is 
a better comparison. But even that comparison is not the same since office 
suites are used by a wide band of users. Compare BibleWorks with BibleTime. I 
use BibleTime and I appreciate all those who have labored to develop it, but 
it has a narrow usage and hence fewer developers and cannot begin to match 
the power and capabilities of BibleWorks. Also, wikipedia (and I will quickly 
speak beyond my knowledge here) does not have to deal with all the 
copyrighted material that an application like BibleWorks does. In a OSS 
project who can negotiate with all the publishers and come to contract 
agreements with them. How would their royalties be paid? There may be simple 
answers to these issues. Another example is Win4Lin. Why is there not an OSS 
application for it? Partially I suppose the answer is philosophy, but I would 
also suggest that, like the Bible study software, the market is narrow so 
there are few interested developers. My point is that I don't see how only 
OSS can provide quality applications for every need. As far as I know there 
is not an OSS parallel to Libronix Digital Library system and Galaxie 
Software's Theological Journals Library which I run under Win4Lin. If it were 
not for this non-OSS software I would be running M$ (at the time I switched 
VMware was the only other option--now I think there might be some others but 
ease of use is worth something to me).

Thanks for the discussion, which I suppose by now has little to do with 
Linspire ;-)