FSF Attacks Windows 7's "Sins" In New Campaign 926
CWmike writes "The Free Software Foundation today launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it 'treacherous computing' that stealthily takes away rights from users. At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven 'sins' that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users. They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading privacy. 'Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,' said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft's Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have 'malicious and really complete control over your computer.'"
Re:These people are delusional. (Score:2, Interesting)
If you have can point to some part of their argument that's flawed, then do so. Otherwise, stop the smear campaign. I half suspect you're being paid to attack the FSF by the one organisation that has something to lose from the truth getting out.
Re:"Teach a man to fish" (Score:4, Interesting)
And often, going fishing will result in you coming back with no fish whilst at most supermarkets you can pretty much be sure to get a fish.
The difference is, in one case you can get your own fish and the other you keep having to pay every time you want to eat fish.
While I'm a diehard linux fan... (Score:5, Interesting)
... I'm frankly getting sick of the FSF. This latest stupid campaign reads like it was written by some petulant teenager without the first clue as to the realities of life and it tars the rest of us who support (and in my case actually write) OSS with the same idiotic uncompromising brush.
Message to Stallman - close source will be around after you've retired from your cosy ivory tower paid-by-the-taxpayer college job so get over it, learn to live with it and stop making other OSS advocates look and sound like immature fools.
Re:FUD FUD FUD and more FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, how does Windows do any better or worse at this than any other OS? Unless you're referring to the ability to edit the source code (and face it, the *vast* majority of computer users have no interest in doing this, and most don't even know the interest between a kernel and a desktop environment, nor dot hey care to know), Windows is an OS much like any other, from the user standpoint. It stores files, runs programs, communicates with other computers, connects with peripherals, handles multiple user accounts, and provides a UI. In fact, the perspective of the average user is even simpler - a computer has to be able to open documents and photos, connect to printers and cameras, install and run tax software (or whatever), browse the web, and download / manage music libraries.
I'll grant you taht the Windows way of doing these things is different from that of other OSes, but then, so is the OS X way, the GNOME-on-Debian-based-LInux way, the KDE-on-RPM-based-Linux way, the custom-configured OpenBSD way, and so on. There's no OS that the average person can use that will teach that average person about computers in general rather that system-specific knowledge. Nor does this surprise me; when people say that they view computers as tools, they don't usually mean the hardware, they mean the software they use and the devices connected to it.
Re:These people are delusional. (Score:3, Interesting)
your points
1- yes, MS forces everyone to buy high-end PCs.. to surf the web... something my i815+celeron, 512 megs from 10 years ago still does perfectly well... under XP. 7 won't run on it, so I'll be forced to junk it.
2- Mafia henchmen don't really want to beat up people, it's their bosses that tell them to. FYI, MS is not really in the content business, so no, they don't DRM much of therir own stuff themselves, since the don't have stuff to DRM to strat with (and what little they have, the DO DRM... ever had to reactivate XP 10 times in a day because your DVD drive was flaky ?)
3- on-line upgrade purchase for the OS are indeed a first for a consumer version of windows. What's more, there is a strong intuitive "if the code is there already, what can't I use it "? gut reaction to the practice, so the FSF's argument might not be bad. The point is not that it's pionereed, or unique, it's that it's an easy sell as a negative point.
Education (Score:5, Interesting)
i don't like it at all (Score:2, Interesting)
Replace Outlook (Score:1, Interesting)
No, I'm serious. Offer a credible alternative to Outlook in Free Software so that a mobile phone supplier doesn't need it to sync calendar and contacts. Outlook is crap, but there is no credible alternative (don't say "Evolution" because it means you haven't actually *used* it).
Windows SMB has SAMBA as API compliant alternative - no such luck for Outlook. Free loses.
Until you manage this there is *no* chance a business will turn to alternatives. None.
Re:And we should attack the FSF... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party) [stallman.org]
Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization.
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
Re:And we should attack the FSF... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, actually, it doesn't. Well, up to a certain point it does, but ultimately it is self-defeating.
If you pay attention to advertising campaigns and market share, you will note that there's a strong correlation between *positive* advertising campaigns and the ability to attain and retain first place in the market. Not that everybody who runs positive advertising get into first place, but rather the converse: just about everybody who gets into first place, and stays there, does so while running positive advertising.
Take, for example, the fast food industry. McDonald's runs positive advertising like nobody's business and has to my knowledge *never* run a negative ad, and none of their competitors can touch them. Burger King periodically runs negative ads (directed, usually, at McDonald's) and has slipped from second place to, what, fourth or fifth now? Taco Bell *stopped* running negative ads in the eighties, switched over to all positive ads, and climbed from Nth place right up to second. Yes, there are other factors. The advertising isn't the whole cause of any of the above. But the advertising is also a component.
You can see the same thing in political elections. When a campaign boils down to "the other guy sucks", it generally goes down in flames. Successful campaigns look more like "you need our candidate, for these simple positive bullet-point reasons". John Kerry compared himself (and his running mate) to the opposition, and he was defeated by 34 electoral votes. Obama talked about his vision, and he was elected. (There were other factors in both cases, of course. Lots of other factors. But the advertising was also a factor.) You can run through the whole history of all the US Presidential election campaigns, and you'll see that in general the positive campaigns have a much stronger tendency to win than the negative ones. Talking too much about the opposition is self-defeating.
We could look at any number of other industries, but let's bring it around to computers: up through the late nineties or so, Microsoft ran all positive advertisements, and their market share was on the increase. Then they started running negative ads, and their market share is on the decline now. (Granted, there wasn't a lot of room for it to increase further, since it peaked somewhere above 95% around the turn of the century.) Apple never learns: they keep running negative ads for Macs, and their market share languishes in the low single digits. (They have quite good market share in the music player market, but all the iPod advertising is positive.) Again, there are other factors. But inasmuch as the advertising is a driving force in market share dynamics, positive advertising is a positive driving force, and negative advertising traps you beneath a glass ceiling of your own making.
Re:And we should attack the FSF... (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>He never had more than 33% percent of votes
Interestingly, that's how much support the Americans had (about 33%) when they declared independence from the British Empire. It appears "one-third" is some kind of magic number, where if you can rally that level of support, you gain enough leverage to control national politics.
Of course it helps if the remaining citizens take a "whatever" outlook. It makes it much easier to get what you want if the general populace just doesn't care enough to pay attention.
Re:And yet, Portal + Browser get no attention (Score:3, Interesting)
If you think this is bad, just wait until the Google Chrome OS, where a large fraction of things done online are tied to the online services Google provides. This is control that would make Microsoft including Internet Explorer in Windows seem like a minor event in comparison.
Re:FSF is not very truthful in this campaign (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>You can get angry at MS for including a browser and a media player with their OS,
What Microsoft did to Netscape (drive their $30 Navigator browser out-of-market) is approximately equivalent to Comcast announcing "we'll give everyone free MP3s" and thereby driving Itunes.com out of business. It's called anti-competitive monopolistic behavior, and it's explicitly forbidden by U.S. Antitrust Laws that were passed ~100 years ago.
>>>*enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies"
This is the part that scares me most. The idea that someday I may not be able to backup my CDs or DVDs, due to Windows blocking that action, troubles me. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared every user has the right to make a backup, and they even have a right to record live programs (time-delayed viewing). Who is Microsoft (or RIAA/MPAA) to overrule the supreme court and say "nope; not allowed".
Re:And we should attack the FSF... (Score:3, Interesting)
Two years later while I was reinstalling his nonoperational Vista (for the third time)
I've given up supporting Windows in my family. I flatly refuse. I've found a more effective use of my time is to burn CDs and DVDs for family visits.
When my wife's vista laptop died, she thought she'd get a free ride and I would fix it for her. I threw a fedora disk at her and said when thats installed, I'll help, until then I don't care. 7 months now, and the most I've been involved is helping with wireless and initially configuring her e-mail aside from some initial "best practices". Since then, she has learned how to help herself has become quite independent, which makes my home life much more enjoyable with less "fixing".
The kids PC is an old Gateway, running CentOS, and I rarely have to help the 3 (he's a webkinz fan), 6, and 9 year olds with it. It just runs, and allows them to play and discover, as opposed to update and frustrate.
Re:And we should attack the FSF... (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually agree with your belief that positive campaigning trumps negative in the general case. However, I think some of your logic is wonky. You ignore the reasons why an entity will go to negative campaigning - i.e. they're being beaten. If you're on top, if you are the best, then you have a lot to be positive about and to sell yourself on. If someone is beating you on the positive, then you have much more pressure on you to try and undermine your opponent's strong points. Correlation and causation and all that cliché, but there may well be a case that losing pushing people towards negative. You can see that in the instances where campaigns don't go negative until they find they're at risk of losing.
Re:FUD FUD FUD and more FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, i'll give them this point. But Microsoft has added support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, however it was the ODF guys who weren't even able to spec out something basic as formulas in a spreadsheet specification.
And, since Windows 7, it even has integrated ODF support in WordPad.
The claimed support is incompatible with ODF spec in every way imaginable.
Re:These people are delusional. (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you insane? Removing support for older versions?
Windows 2000 (released on Feb 17, 2000) is supported until 13 July 2010.
Windows XP (released in Aug 2001 is supported until April 8, 2014
True story. In 1997 I bought a PC running Windows 95. Due to the defective design of said operating system, it had to be reinstalled every 10 months or so. An annoyance, but not a serious problem... as long as I could get the necessary security patches and browser updates to keep the system current to the Internet environment. Some critical OS functions also did not ship with Win95 (VPN for example) and had to be downloaded and installed separately. But these patches and upgrades were available only via a live download/installation process from a Microsoft server. Given its vast resources there is no reason they couldn't at least keep that server up indefinitely even though they weren't adding new patches or upgrades.
On December 31, 2001 Microsoft terminated support for Windows 95 and shut down that server. As it happened, on Christmas Day the OS had done its "Day 300 crash" and I needed to reinstall, but didn't get around to it until January 2 or so. And all I could do was reinstall from the original disks, now outdated to the point of uselessness. So I had to abandon a computer only 4 years old.
Re:These people are delusional. (Score:1, Interesting)
Are you insane? Removing support for older versions?
Windows 2000 (released on Feb 17, 2000) is supported until 13 July 2010.
Windows XP (released in Aug 2001 is supported until April 8, 2014
Now please, list for me, the free software OS distributions that are provided with security fixes for 10-12 years after release?
I'm actually curious about this, not being a follower for reasons not pertinent to this discussion: How long does Apple support their old OSes?
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:FUD FUD FUD and more FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not at all concerned about look and feel as such. Just about education.
Given the number of people out there who seem to get completely lost when the GUI changes in the slightest, even though the functionality is substantially the same, apparently a rounded education in computer use will require stretching the student's minds a little in that area, such as by exposing them to a variety of GUIs.