When someone searches for OpenOffice, Firefox, VLC or any other popular open source package on the internet, are they necessarily going to get the genuine article?
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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lozz
43 weeks 20 hours 51 min 35 sec ago
Proprietary competitors, too
It's not difficult to imagine Ballmer smirking and saying;
"Well.....if you'd have been prepared to pay for a proper M$-Office license you wouldn't have all this trouble. M$-Office is designed to work with other M$ products while this FOSS stuff is only for hobbyists."
Most proprietary companies would positively welcome buggy, insecure copies of Free Software giving FOSS a bad name.