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

[Krishnakant Mane <krmane gmail com>]

On 01/08/2013 12:02 PM, Alex Midence wrote:
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

I beg to disagree.
It is true that we the free software advocates dismiss use of 
proprietary  software just because it is not free.  But we have a very 
strong reason to do so.
Here the issue is not about features, it is about the digital freedom.
It is about the direct advantage (cost being least for many like me, I 
can buy software for sure ), that we find important.
Of course I must also mention here that free software always has a 
potential to grow much higher.  browsers like Firefox, media players 
like VLC, web servers like Apache are best examples.
We must understand here that FS movement started with this very purpose 
and without forcing any one to do what we do, we strongly dismiss closed 
non-free software for their practice of taking away user's freedom, to 
initiate, propagate and request for advancement or development of a 
software.  Or for the fact that programmers like me can't make the 
software do what we want.
FS hackers always did what is best and took features from every where, 
but always made it sure that community is free to agree or disagree.
Today I do face miner limitations on Ubuntu with Orca.  I have herd 
people talking about a lot of features in closed software which could 
have  made my life slightly better.  But I value my freedom and I think 
what ever is missing will come into Orca by and by.
So the reasons for not liking proprietary software is not about quality 
or features at all.
Again, one is free to do, say and beleive what they think is right.
It is just that we believe that software is an essential comodity and is 
a representation of knowledge/ ideas, which should be free.
Let's make digital society a better place.
happy hacking.
Krishnakant.