2 Mar
2012
2 Mar
'12
10:33 p.m.
I know that the FPGA code for the Diskferret is
available, so if you
want to modify it (at your own risk, of course) to read some other
type of disk then you can do so.
Yessss...assuming the binary blob the FPGA vendor requires you to use
to convert it into something the chip can take (a) doesn't explode on
your changed code and (b) is still runnable by then (does its
license-to-use expire? does it depend on an OS whose license-to-use
expires? does it insist on phoning home? etc).
And thirdly, there;'s the question of support.
I've had _much_ better
support -every time -- from the authors of free software than from
commerical software companies.
Me too - and that includes working at places with serious (expen$ive)
software support contracts. I'm sure good vendor support does exist,
evenin the commercial world, but it sure does seem to be a lot thinner
on the ground in the commercial software world than in the
gratuit-&-libre software world.
What I know is
that people deliver good work when they are
motivated. I see no evil in the fact that people get paid because
this can be a very good motivation. It also enables you to spend
money for things that make the product better. You also can spend
the money to train programmers [...]
I think that's one of the msot insulting
things against all the
excellent free software uthors that I have ever read. Are youy seriosuly claiming that a program like gcc is
no good
becuase it's free and that the programmers who wrote it are clueless
and not motivated?
No, I don't think cb was claiming that. Rather, I think cb was
claiming that paying programmers does not make a payer evil, nor the
resulting code bad. I agree with both parts of that; while I see
positive correlations in each case, I think the correlations are not
the result of direct causality, but rather that all the relevant things
correlate with basic philosophical and societal stances.
Furthermore, you appear to be confusing "code written for pay" and
"closed-source code". There are people paid to write open-source
software. (I've even been one of them, sometimes.)
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