[CLUE-Talk] Just a Philosophy

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 15:02:35 -0600 (MDT)
jbrockmeier at earthlink.net wrote:

> I'm sure most of you have seen the story on Slashdot about
> Bill Gates' comments on the GPL and its place in the "ecosystem."
> 
> I've written a response to these comments, you can find it on my
> site at:
> http://www.dissociatedpress.net/stories.php?story=02/04/20/3700698
> 
> I'm also curious to know, how do other folks in CLUE talk to
> non-techie people about these types of issues? Do you discuss
> software licensing with your non-techie friends or why these
> issues are important? What kind of reactions do you get if
> you do bring it up?

The few who do understand it just shrug. They're not interested in doing
anything about it. I guess their computer isn't a big enough part of their
lives? Or, it's just an appliance. It's like, if Ford did something
anti-competitive, would they sell their car? Nope, not worth the trouble.
For the ones who don't already understand, they have no interest - again,
the computer is just an appliance.

Here's an example. The other night, a friend was asking me how to get
Acrobat to open PDFs on the internet. I asked all the usuall questions,
and he really didn't distinguish between AOL and Google. Also, still
running '95 with the MSIE "upgrade".

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