Bad idea, bad for Free Software

Story: Using Automatix2 to add popular apps to UbuntuTotal Replies: 1
Author Content
swbrown

Dec 07, 2006
9:59 AM EDT
Making proprietary applications trivial to install and use reduces the pressure of having a Free alternative. This means less pressure on the vendor to create a Free version, less advocacy for others to support Free versions (e.g., media codecs), less programmers interested in trying to solve the problem with code, and less ego reward for doing so as fewer people will care strongly about it as they hadn't been feeling constrained by the lack.

It might sound like a nice harmless perk to include, but it can set the community back decades.
tracyanne

Dec 08, 2006
1:13 PM EDT
Then write a free replacement for all that proprietory software, and make the free replacement easy to install.

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