"People are ignorant, but we already know that. As usual, I’ve read something really stupid on Twitter this morning. It said: I hope Apple will develop for everyone [every OS]. I think it would be one of the worst things to ever happen. Why do people want to install non-free software on free systems?

Is free software really capable of serving end users or not? This issue has political consequences, which is part of what makes it important: either free software is "minor league" or it's "major league". Which we believe has a big impact on what our expectations can be and what our political and ethical stance towards proprietary and free software should be.

I wrote a post a few days ago about the bits and pieces of proprietary software that are still a necessary part of my technological life.  As a follow-up, I thought it might be interesting to look at the other side of the coin, by considering how many people would be able to survive without free software.

"Dave Cross encourages the dependence upon proprietary software by complaining that the Free Software Foundation’s recent 25th birthday video should have been distributed in non-free formats so people could see the video..."

"Free software is a good thing, its empowering, I might even go as far as to say its the way things should be done. One of the biggest threats to free software at the moment is “web services”, or if you’re an airy fairy Web 2.0 person “The Cloud” (airy could, geddit?).

Is your software budget pipeline filled with rust? Do your customers, vendors and friends have to save their files in a different file format so you can open them? If your software cabinet looks like it would be a better fit in a software museum, there is hope — hope in free software.

Free software is software you can study, modify and share without restriction. But unlike proprietary software, there is no big budget marketing campaign behind it. Rather, people discover it and come to value the freedom it provides. What are these people's motivations for working on free software? Why is community and sharing so important? Why should everyone be using free software?

Free software for video is currently in sad shape. The only two widely distributed free video editing programs, Kino and Cinelerra, are nowhere near as capable as competing commercial software

We live in turbulent times, that’s for sure and the financial crisis is the one to blame. There is a very difficult situation in my country these days and lately there is much anger and discord among people. The Free Software Community is a part of the society, so it is affected by these phenomena. Many people don’t realize one thing.