[Linux4christians] Free Software is not about free software WAS Weighing In on the Freespire Debate

[Michael Hipp]

Alan Trick wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-05-11 at 13:24 -0500, Matthew Lewis wrote:
>> NOTE: I wrote the following in a Christian spirit of constructive
>>  criticism (not criticizing any members of this list, BTW).  It turned
>>  out more like a rant. Please understand I don't mean it that way; in
>>  fact I actually felt quite calm while I was writing it! ;)  Anyway, I
>>  don't have time at the moment to polish it up, so here it is in all
>>  its unpolished glory...
>>
>>
>>> As more people are willing to share time, 
>>> money, code, and other resources the 
>>> programs will get better.
>> Undoubtedly, but that's not the only obstacle.  The biggest issues are
>>  some aspects of the community itself.  I don't know about you, but to
>>  me the most major problem I see in the way of OSS progress is a
>>  general snobbish attitude (*not* apparent on this list, by the way)
>>  about the "finer points" of a program - things like GUI's and so
>>  forth.  The result is that you almost never (or at least I almost
>>  never) find an open-source program that is as easy to use or contains
>>  the time-saving features that you'd find in a non-Free application. 
>>  (The day someone shows me an open-source text editor that I can be as
>>  productive with as EditPadPro is the day I'll switch.)
> 
> vi, you insensitive clod! :P
> 
> Actually, for most of my work I just use Gedit. By the looks of it,
> Gedit is as least as powerful as EditPadPro (at least gedit 2.14 is).

Gedit and Kate are both excellent. Among free editors Jedit and Sci also stand 
out. Course, there is always Vim or Emacs. But I've never yet found anything 
in FLOSS or Linux to replace my beloved TextPad (www.TextPad.com).

There are lots of proprietary apps that I *prefer* to the free alternatives. 
But the list for which there is no "good enough" FLOSS alternative shrinks 
every year.

In the realm of technology and toys, we live in a blessed era.

Michael