Re: [orca-list] How many people us voxin?

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

If, if, if,.  Look, I'm not going to lie and say I've never had an issue
with Jaws or Open Book or any other proprietary assistive software I've
purchased.  I've had many.  Lots of those remain unresolved such as the
glaring lack of support for open source technology in Windows by the main
screen readers.  I've had crashes a-plenty, bugs not a few and headaches
galore from that stuff I paid so much for.  However, absolutely none, not a
single one of those issues over an unbroken  period of constant use spanning
15 years was due to Eloquence.  It is, quite literally, the very last thing
at the bottom of a truly monstrous list of possibilities when it comes to
something having gone wrong at which I even consider pointing a finger when
troubleshooting an issue.  It's the proprietary stuff under constant
development and updating that winds up having the infuriating bugs not the
old and unmaintained speech synthesizer.  

I respect the free software movement.  I think it serves a very necessary
purpose and the world would've been a much poorer place without it.  I use
the stuff and am a willing participant in its communities sharing what I
have learned freely when I think it will help someone.  I've even written
some documentation on it and would gladly do more if time and circumstances
permit.  What I don't like is when its advocates dismiss software out of
hand due to its proprietary nature or imagine that just because software is
free, then it is intrinsically and inevitably better than that which is not.
That sort of thinking smacks of bigotry and a willful blinding of oneself to
the possibility that somebody who chose not to release his or her code to
the public produced an excellent and, dare we say it, even a superior
product.  Both have their place, free and non-free and I think PEOPLE not
software ought to be the ones with the freedom to use whatever they want so
long as it works for them and no laws are broken in the process.

Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Kyle
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2013 11:59 PM
To: orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] How many people us voxin?


But who is actually making a living from abandoned software that the
developers, whoever they are, no longer support? Although I feel the free
(as in freedom, not price) software model is by far the best way to
distribute software, unrestricted, preserving the freedom to use, run, study
and distribute the software, either free of charge or for a price, I will
never begrudge a developer's need to earn a living. However, when the
developers of a software application no longer wish to maintain the
application, especially for more than 10 years, then the proprietary model
certainly doesn't make sense under any circumstances. I refuse to give
anyone my money for a software application, no matter how much I may like
it, if they are unable, due to license terms and the abandonment of the
source code to the outer realms, to help me if something goes totally wrong
with my system because of the application that I purchased in good faith.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
--
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
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