Disclaimer: Actively avoids Apple products
Open source software won't take over by being 1.86x faster and using a totally sweet heap sort algorithm. I'm a geek and I find that kind of thing interesting at an intellectual level, but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. "Normal" people absolutely don't care and won't put up with the hassle.
With Steve gone, there's a taste-shaped hole in the entire technology world that I can't see anyone stepping in and taking over. Until the open source world gets its own Steve Jobs -- someone out there who starts focusing relentlessly on the users (how to make software "just work" and look/feel great at the same time), it's never going to unseat the dominant players (as much as I might want it to).
Stuff like that is FUD though, linux sound support is pretty good these days and the amount and variety of devices supported dwarfs the best the commercial world has to offer. In general, Linux support of legacy devices is amazing.
Newly minted hardware without a factory supported driver is a different kettle of fish but you can't really blame the Linux driver writers for that, they need information to work with and if manufacturers are not going to supply that info it needs to be painstakingly recovered, which is not always possible and almost always incomplete to some extent.
Who cares? It doesn't work. When I buy an Apple laptop I know all the hardware works. That's it. There is no blame to Linux devs (I've counted as one at times). This is the real world -- I'm not giving out consolation prizes to software that almost works.
The vast majority of people are like that; my use of the first person singular was not an accident, I count myself among them. It's not a matter of assigning blame, it's a matter of recognizing reality.
For Linux to take over the consumer desktop market, it doesn't just need to be as easy to install and maintain as Windows or OSX; it needs to be significantly easier. That is the hole a "Steve Jobs of free software" could fill.
But thanks for proving his point by calling him a liar.
But that sorta proves his point. Linux isn't good to normal people today just because it's full of geeky magic dust. It is good today because it "Just Works™".
How about freedom? Is freedom from, for example, capitalist overlords more important than life?
People give their lives for freedom all the time.
>A great man has died, and all RMS can think about is what this means for the Free Software movement? //
Meh. I don't see the problem with someone who didn't know Steve Jobs personally simply addressing how a change in leadership of Apple Computers affects him and his causes.
Mountains out of mole hills if you ask me.
Steve Jobs wasn't the enemy of freedom RMS paints him as. That he personally wrote letters against DRM on media-stores and against the closed-platform called Flash asking everyone to favor HTML5 made much much difference in those two specific areas than most things Stallman did lately.
(Funny, reminds me that that FOSS advocates here on NH are okay with Android prolonging Flash's life and using closed-source software only as a means to gain market share)
Granted, he never open sourced the whole operating system, but why would he? To see Apple collapse again while Dell/HP and others strive? What's the point? Then we start all over again? We'll have open-source chips manufactured by 2 or 3 companies? What's the fucking point?
Seriously, I'm tired of Stallman's half-assed socialism. It's an offense to me. You don't destroy capitalism by destroying companies, or people. You destroy capitalism by destroying the core of it...
Yeah, it's ridiculous. The "player" makes the choices, they get the blame.
Every time I see someone talking about how they just do what they have to do to feed their kids someone else steps up to say that they feed their kids without hurting others.
> Steve Jobs wasn't the enemy of freedom RMS paints him as. That he personally wrote letters against DRM on media-stores and against the closed-platform called Flash asking everyone to favor HTML5
Sure, against some DRM. But the iPhone and iPad are locked down.
Really, he was just against the other guy's walled garden while trying to steal bricks from it for his own.
> Funny, reminds me that that FOSS advocates here on NH are okay with Android prolonging Flash's life [...]
I wasn't aware I had to complain against all problems in every post. The love-in for Steve prompted these complaints. If there was a love-in for Android you'd see the anti-Android opinions coming out.
> Seriously, I'm tired of Stallman's half-assed socialism. It's an offense to me.
I don't think you know what the word means. I believe you're pretty offended though.
> You don't destroy capitalism by destroying companies, or people. You destroy capitalism by destroying the core of it...
Oh, do tell, our fully-assed socialist leader.
The change in leadership at Apple occurred in mid-August when Jobs officially stepped down. You could even argue it happened back in January when Jobs took his final medical leave and turned day-to-day operations over to Tim Cook.
Where was RMS's sigh of relief then, when Jobs effectively relinquished his role? No, he chose to post this right after Jobs died. I find his post tactless and highly offensive. I've never been a fan of RMS, but this takes the cake.
