Comment 1656 for bug 1

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»John« (john.denton) wrote : Re: [Bug 1] Re: Microsoft has a majority market share

>
> Btw why don't ubuntu community demand free computers, so free hardware too?
> Why is it just that operanting system and software that are demanded to be
> free?
>
You're completely missing the point. It's just that some people actually
realize that freedom is infinitely more important than price.

Let me borrow the words of Matthew Garrett:
"I was greatly relieved to discover that commercial software sucks just as
much as Free software does, except I can't fix the bugs myself."

The only way to debug or customize proprietary programs is by begging it's
authors to do it for you (since they're the only ones who can) and hoping
that they eventually comply with your demands.
I can tell you that the vast majority of them just doesn't give a shit, but
don't take my word for it and see for yourself.
You can try paying them, but I guarantee you'll never be able to afford the
outrageous prices they'll charge you.
Again - don't take my word for it and see for yourself.
Proprietary code is notorious for being a steaming pile of crap held
together by truckloads of duct tape and the list of ancient bugs, that it's
authors never bother to fix until it's too late just goes on forever.
Try being the only one affected by one of them and see what happens.
There could be thousands of others like you and as far as the ones in
charge are concerned, it's still nothing compared to the hundreds of
millions of those who were lucky enough to never hit that bug, so it stays
exactly the way it is, otherwise it's wasted profit.
There's just no way in hell you can ever trust such code to be reliable and
secure, because you would be completely insane to trust the corporations
producing it.

Nobody's trying to imply that libre software can never have the exact same
problems, but at least it's inherently fixable, because the code is
publicly available and anyone can do what it takes to the benefit of
everyone else. This freedom makes libre software the
only sustainable solution. That's what this is all about and I just can't
see where you got so terribly misinformed to come up with the whole "us
demanding gratis software" thing.

Bottom line is that you can trust only code produced by people sharing your
interests, which makes libre software superior even if it's seemingly
lacking in whatever respect.